This is another in a continuing dialogue on doubt and faith:
Over the past year of our correspondence, Helen, I've frequently sounded the theme that belonging to Christ inevitably means belonging to people, noting both the wonders and the warts that mark the church's record in times past and present.
Your point has often been how often those warts have become carbuncles--and worse--in your experience. You have indicated that blog exchanges (about which I know so little) with seriously inquiring people have been more engaging than gathering for congregation worship. As much as I think there's more out there than you've found so far, I respect your care in steering clear of judgmentally writing-off people who do value worship together and what follows.
A fresh focus is in order: My understanding is that you welcome a direction that centers on the man Jesus as the New Testament presents him in his fully human person, and see where we're led by inquiring together into his beckoning words, "I am the Way" (John 14:5). I am glad to join you in this and hope we're clear about what we're getting into. What I keep on learning about affirming Jesus' humanity as a follower on his Way is that it can surprise, re-route, terrify, and fulfill life as nothing else can.
Kids illustrate what I mean. When teaching them through the years I've asked: "How would it be to have the boy Jesus on your soccer team, or seated behind you in class, or buckling down to study math and spelling assignments?" The answers are understandably tentative at first because the very image is unsettling--Jesus that close, that human. Their instinct, or perhaps our incomplete religious formation in their young lives, leaves them baffled and uncomfortable with Jesus as a midfielder or a classmate across the aisle. But they do come to welcome him in his love for kids that doesn't make him a nag, but one who has been a kid himself. They always relate to his Jerusalem visit at 12 when his irked parents looked frantically all over the city before finding him in the temple. More seriously, I've seen troubled or critically ill children show great courage as they hang onto him as the friend who has been where they are and thus can lead the Way.
Grown-ups as well. Once during the heyday of race riots and the Vietnam War, I started a sermon with an appeal for volunteers for a lively week ahead at Grace Lutheran: On Monday hosting a supper for inner-city gang members; Tuesday our guests are River Forest Mafiosi; Wednesday is open house for conscientious objectors; and before I got to Thursday there was a palpable stir of unease, no one yawning. This was not a ploy but an effort to get real in preaching Jesus' call to follow his Way which welcomes the unwelcome and raises literal hell with "those who trust in themselves that they are righteous and regard others with contempt" (Luke 18 9).
I'm continually inspired by followers of the Way who hear Jesus' hard as well as soaring words and go from Sunday hearing to weekday doing. That can range from taking in homeless to reconciling a broken marriage, serving guests at a hospitable table to helping Katrina survivors rebuild battered homes, making time for companionship with sick and lonely people to making civic and corporate life a notch better despite heavy odds--doing these things and a good deal more because Jesus calls them to this Way and not just any way.
You challenge me, Helen, from where you stand, by making me revisit the basics of the Christian faith and wrestle with them ever more seriously. Jesus' humanity is a core truth of those basics, not in denial of him as the Savior sent by the heavenly Father for the world, but as the Way to him and life in God's fullness.
Garrison Keillor puts a finer point on all this in words that are as down-home as they are hopeful:
"What else will do ... in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word? ... Gentleness of spirit everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids ... faith rules in all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through."
