The community that will take anyone!

Why would we ever consider opening our community to folks no one else wants?

You'd think that Jesus' command to do so would be enough but clearly it isn't because we (those of us who call ourselves Christian) have a long history of deciding who is acceptable in our community and who is not.  Sometimes the dividing line is race; sometimes it is gender/sexuality.  Sometimes the dividing line is wealth or social position.  Sometimes the dividing line is personal hygiene or mental status.  But we have lots of ways to keep our communities rightly pure - which means keeping some folk out.

Perhaps a portion of our failure to build a community like Jesus envisions is that we have lost track of ourselves and our own need for Jesus.  We have forgotten that there was a time or place where we were in need, we were standing alongside the road abandoned and forgotten.  We have forgotten what the face of pain and suffering, sorrow and rejection, despair and defeat look like.  We have thrown away all our pictures of ourselves from back then.  We have wiped our memory clean.  We were never like that.  Ever.

Maybe.  That isn't my story nor is it the story of many believers I know, but it could be yours.  For most of us, the community of faith that gathers around Jesus is the very place that took me in when my pain was so great.  It is the place where I go because it is the kind of community that shows up when my life is falling apart.  It is the place where I have learned to show up for you when you are falling apart.  It is the place where Jesus promises to show up for everyone, all the time.

I count on the promise that where 2-3 are gathered in his name, there Jesus will be.  I count on his promise to be present in the wine and in the bread.  I listen for his voice and trust in his ultimate will for this screwed up creation.  I count on all this being true.

I am grateful for all the others who are able to love an imperfect me.  I am grateful for the opportunity to return that love, to serve others, to give what I have, to bear one another's burdens.

These are the things I try to remember when confronted by today's craziness and unruly, demanding people.  These are the things I try to cling to when the misery before me is too much to consider and so I want to turn my eyes away.  These are the things that send me back to attempt to show the face of Jesus to the ones I want to avoid.

I need a community who is gathered around the cross if I am to have any chance at all of remembering God's abundant love for me, a poor miserable sinner.  Because the world either tells me I do not measure up or it does all it can to convince me I am perfectly fine and getting better every day.

When it's all going to ....... in a handbasket, this is what I remind myself:  I belong to Jesus.  Some days it works.