Douglass Church - Douglass Blvd Christian Church

Therefore, as Jesus embraced the child as a symbol of powerlessness and death, we’re called to embrace our own lack of power, relying on the love and grace of the most merciful parent of all.

Moreover, embracing powerlessness in ourselves opens us up to the welcome we must now extend to the little ones, those who’ve been left behind by the rest of the world.

Only in that realization can we become great. Because, after we realize that—sterling stock portfolios and winning personalities aside—any greatness that emerges isn’t something we ginned up on our own; it's God's.

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We no longer have to wonder whether we have any responsibility for our brothers and sisters, those who can’t stand up any longer by themselves.

We no longer need to ask whether those who’ve been forgotten, abused, or kicked to the curb are our people.

Through the grace of the cross, we’re able to see not competitors in the food chain, not threats to our individual projects, not nuisances for which we have neither the time nor the energy, but family ... family everywhere we look.

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So, requiring us to live lives that look like Jesus is a pretty tough thing to ask of us. But if I, who claim to follow Jesus, won’t live a life struggling to be faithful, how can I continue to call myself a follower of Jesus?

If I, who claim to live a life shaped by the cross, don’t speak up for the weak, the poor, the forgotten, the bankrupt, those to whom medical services have been denied, to whom injustice is woven into the fibers of existence—if I don’t lift my voice—even knowing that I don’t have all the answers—then how can I ask anyone else to follow Jesus?

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And even after all this time, the church is often just as quick to erect barriers to keep people out, turning customs into dogma, human precepts into doctrine.

Unfortunately, many people’s experience of the church is having the ladder pulled up just as they reach for it.

“Thanks for inquiring. But we’re just fine. We’ve already got things pretty much the way we want them … I mean, the way God wants them.”

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In a world in which every detail has to be nailed down before we move forward, where every nickel has to be accounted for before we strike out, where every eventuality has to be covered, the notion that God is in charge, that God will provide is seen as naïve—if not ultimately unwise.

But maybe there’s a wisdom that Christians are called to practice that trusts God’s love enough to give thanks—even when giving thanks looks like the last thing any wise person ought to do.

Maybe living as wise in the unfolding reign of God involves a set of practices the rest of the world deems gullible and unrealistic but which signal our hope.

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And as painful as it is, Jesus says that for the fire of transformation to be kindled—the fire of God’s change in the world—we have to speak the truth about our current mess and the new world God desires.

We live in a world where division feels inevitable, but Jesus announces a world where divisions are healed—not by passively ignoring injustice but by shining a light on them.

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Elijah goes to God seeking relief, a remedy for the great weariness he feels in his bones. He wants God to change the world, but all God offers to do is change him. Presumably, being in God’s presence is of greater value to us in our pain and despair than any stop-gap measures or dime-store remedies we could conjure up on our own.

We often want God to fix the world or take us out of it, but what God offers to do is to sit beside us in it.

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Translation: “Bad Wall”

In the face of God, I see one who prefers to tear down walls rather than maintain them, the one who calls to us from near at hand rather than keeping us far off.

In the face of God, I can see one who is not satisfied with the distance that separates us, the distance that keeps us suspicious of and hostile toward one another—but who seeks to reconcile us, to stand among us, to bring us near enough to see one another's faces.

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As long as we think that what we have, who we are, and what we’ve endured depend solely upon our initiative and the strength of our own determination and courage, we wind up flailing about, convinced we can do God’s work better than God.

Whenever we start thinking it’s about us, we lose the ability to offer ourselves to the world as a fragrant offering of love and sacrifice.

It’s not until we let go of the idea that something native to our own virtue is what allows us to become the people God wants us to be that we’ll ever be able to taste the life God has in store for us.

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But in the face of failure, Jesus isn’t waiting around. He’s already headed out to the villages to continue doing what God sent him to do. And he’s not content to do it alone. He sends his followers back out into what must have felt like a hostile world to continue the work they’d already been rejected for.

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