What is Christianity about?

"So much of Christianity seemed to be about claiming sides, about making distinctions, about finding a set of beliefs to cling to that excluded other people or made them scapegoats for all the evil in the world."*

What is Christianity about?

Christ?  The one who was crucified for claiming that God directed his path, a path of forgiveness?

Love?  Even when it means inviting 'those people' to dinner and accepting them as friends?

Forgiveness?  Although accepting forgiveness requires that we have something that needs forgiving.

Compassion?  All the time?  For everyone?

Being faithful?  Keeping our eyes on God knowing we will stumble, fall, fail, and generally mess it up on a regular basis?  Knowing we will be walking in the dark most days trusting in God?

Worship?  Is worship a once a week occurrence or a lifestyle?

Generosity?  How much is 'generous'?  Are we talking time, talent or money?

Or, is it a set of rules that make us feel good and clearly identify who 'those people' are?

I know that faith in Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, is a challenge on good days and nigh impossible on the bad days.  I know that the assurance of God's love, the very idea that I am called 'God's beloved' is powerful every day.  I know that without the witness of others, the communion meal and the richness of God's word, I would be shallow, lost and generally insufferable.

What are you thinking here?  Has it gotten easier or harder to live the life of faith? What story could you tell?


A quote from Sara Miles' book, "take this bread", page 161

An ancient faith no longer practiced.....

 

When Barbara Brown Taylor visited the ruins of a church from the land where St. Paul baptized the first Christians she found only "vestiges of an ancient faith no longer practiced in the land."

"Such a thing is not impossible [here]; that is what I learned in that ruin on the hillside.  God has given us good news in human form and has even given us the grace to proclaim it, but part of our terrible freedom is the freedom to lose our voices, to forget where we were going and why.  While that knowledge does not yet strike me as prophetic, it does keep me from taking both my own ministry and the ministry of the whole church for granted.  If we do not attend to God's presence in our midst and bring all our best gifts to serving that presence in the world, we may find ourselves selling tickets to a museum."

The entire book is worth the read for all who claim the name of Jesus.
The Preaching Life, Barbara Brown Taylor, Crowley Publications, 1993, p 5.