Love: The Command to Return
Follow series, Letters to the Church (1)
Greetings to those of you who may stumble upon this message and I hope today has found you and has been good to you.
We are all hurting. Every single one of us, everyone around us has new struggles unimagined a year ago. I’ve been grieved like most of you have been in the last several months as we all have been forced to come to grips with disease, economic hardship, political theater, and societal breakage unseen in most of our lifetimes. In response, I have felt an overwhelming urge to return to writing again as I come to grips with our present reality. That urge has led to the first of what promises to be a series of outpouring here, if for no other reason to cope and to also sort my thoughts.
But my grief and this letter isn’t for everyone. It’s for those who call themselves Christians.
I identify as a Christian, so I am included in the words that follow. I write this letter to and for all of us who claim to know a reason for salvation, who claim to follow a man who walked among us to teach us about the true origins of Love. This is for those of us who sing together in belief in a Messiah, whose sole mission on this earth was to show us a path to redemption and so that others could learn something other than darkness from us. But before I begin, I pray for each and every one of us to be encouraged and for Jesus and His wisdom and in His mercy to show us His Truth and the path where each of us must tread.
In the book of Mark, beginning in chapter 7 and verses 1–21 in the New Testament of the St. James version of the Christian Holy Bible, Jesus uses a parable to teach those in audience about things that defile. In the account, Pharisees and some other teachers of the law are gathered with Jesus and His disciples. They look upon the disciples eating and ask Jesus pointedly why they are eating with unclean hands, considered a grave societal sin and against the acceptable and established way of the leaders of the land. In response, Jesus calls back to the teachings of Isaiah, calls them (again) hypocrites, and boldly makes this statement: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ This is strong language, but He doesn’t stop there. He goes in for the final blow to further illustrate how so-called laws are obeyed but only as a means to an end. He concludes, restating to all who have gathered around with this message: it isn’t what you put in your mouth and into your stomach that defiles you…but that only which comes out of your heart through your mouth that will.
Later, those same disciples who lived and walked with Jesus ask him to explain, to which he replies ‘are you so dull?’ (I find myself chuckling at this reply and can imagining Him facepalming.) He re-explains the parable, then drops this truth bomb: “it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come — sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Interestingly, he calls them thoughts. These thoughts and held beliefs cause us to become defiled, to become unclean and contaminated as living beings. And those thoughts? We are told we are defiled before they ever become actions.
Some of us have forgotten that malice, deceit, lewdness, slander, arrogance, and folly are on the same playing field with the ones listed before them, and it shows. ALL of these evils defile a person, not just the ones some like to use as weapons to prove a stance as a follower of Christ. And there has never been a more clear display of this truth than online or in person, whether it be over face coverings, which doctor is right or which drug is working, social justice events, or political affiliates and those who follow them blindly. It has never become easier to act in wicked and unchecked ways without consequence than right now. The entire world — Christians included — has roared in anger and is living this out, and everyone feels justified in their actions and behaviors. And by everyone, I mean everyone.
If you claim to follow Jesus and want to walk as a disciple, I call on you to repent. I am convicted as I type these words, because I have fallen short of who I professed to be, what I profess to believe. It’s why I’m writing this, because I am deeply broken as a sinner saved only by Grace, a Hellraiser needing Mercy. And I haven’t been one of those who will openly attack those with whom I disagree, and neither have I taken a stance to be unwilling to consider their viewpoints.
Our first step is acknowledging that this last year has ripped at the hearts of all around us — our neighbors, our families, our friends — and fully see the pain and suffering and struggle we all commonly share. Every person is broken. It may very well be that most of us didn’t realize we were being tested to put our faith on display in a moment of darkness because we have enjoyed the ability to worship and congregate at will and serve our communities without thinking about how easily that could change. Guess what? It did. And when it did, we did not respond in a way that shows our allegiance to Love and Mercy. We betrayed it. The rooster has crowed three times. We must confess our heartbreak and deep anger and pain to God, and then surrender the jumbled mess of our emotions to Him. All of them, regardless of how we arrived at this point in time.
To repent, to truly repent, is to intentionally go beneath the wreckage of our hearts and find the conviction of acting in ways against God’s will. Then we must choose to turn back to the path He alone should reveal. It is not our jobs to convict or condemn those around us who are as far from what we believe or do or feel. It does not matter how wrong or misguided we believe our neighbors to be. We are called to love God with all of our hearts. All. And we are called to love our neighbors as we would ourselves. Every single one of them. We must all kneel, pray, and repent, then refuse to do anything but continue that same practice until we can again become what the Church should truly be — the shining example of Love so that all men can be healed.
If you believe this to be true or even possible, then right now you must examine your own heart and actions and intend with your whole being to live in a way that allows our neighbors — those struggling to pay bills or with disease or with deaths or with identity — to see past us and to see the Love that God has for them. Period.
We cannot begin to even become the light, that sanctuary, because we are unclean. We are defiled. Our offerings have never been filthier. We must do the hard work to clean ourselves from the inside out and find the path that leads us back to following Jesus. We cannot Follow until we get clean, until we stop making ourselves unclean, until we find Love again for our Lord, for ourselves, and for our neighbors.
The Church will remain choked by darkness until her members do this. The entire Christian Bible tells this story over and over and over. Guess what? We are repeating those stories right now. I am not only grieved with those individuals, but with those who lead groups in buildings that were shuttered. In some ways, I believe this shutdown was corrective.
In Acts 17:24, Paul tells those claiming to be extremely religious in Athens, “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.” Later in verses 30 and 31, Paul proclaims, “While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
I’m looking at every leader and believer who professes a calling in this life, a purpose beyond survival in our ever-changing world. I am a faceless nobody in any Evangelical circuit where there are those that would have you believe they are anointed in ways that mere mortals are not. And hear me, if you are among those who took it upon yourselves to stand upon a stage to sell a political stance or shout in megaphones to break laws or to sell merchandise to wave in rallies of any cause that destroyed your neighbors? Hear me plainly and loudly as a voice from a crowd of sinners: You are blasphemers and should recognize that there are consequences beyond the shallow punishment that this world will grant you. If you took these moments of despair for those who are lost and used it to profit off of the pain and suffering of those who desperately needed something more than the freakshow that the latest elections and their empty promises have delivered? You are the ones who will fall first and hard. That is happening right now. God will not be mocked, or did you forget? He isn’t your salesman, He’s the Savior. He’s the Messiah. You will bow before that fact and be muzzled if you do not choose that path for yourself first. You are lukewarm, and He will spit you out of His mouth. Evil is the manner by which faith is tested and His mercy is shown. That’s literally the first book and first chapter. RTFM.
There’s one more group of Christians I want to address, and those are the ones who went invisible. It is easy to see and point at and rebuke the actions of those who acted in obvious ways against the written words in a Bible we use to justify and hopefully guide our lives. It’s harder to see the actions of those who seemed to go into hiding, who disappeared when the world started eating itself. (There are those who went online to try to stay in reach of their communities and sometimes that offering didn’t measure up. By no way is that an obvious sin, so those are excluded from this next plea.) I’m talking to those of you who hid in fear or out of anger. I fall into this category as one who serves, and I’ve struggled with this area the most. I, too, became angry at what I saw the church falling down, so I checked out. I felt rejected by my leaders, those who know how much I did and wanted to do. I openly confess this because my repentance right now is around this particular area. I, too, made it mostly about me and not nearly enough about everyone around me.
In turning back to what I believe is trusting God and resuming my walk to become a better human and disciple, I feel I can make the statement that those of you who took a position to hide or remain silent during the time when the church (aka the believers who couldn’t gather) needed you most will be shown firsthand that was a foolish, foolish mistake. If you know you are called to lead those and decided to ditch, your calling to stand up and proclaim the goodness of His name in the middle of a fire did not somehow disappear. Your weakness doesn’t negate what you are called to do. You have remained fully visible in those moments to God. My prayer for you is that you turn away from your fear or sloth and start doing your God-given appointment. After all, you of all people should know He will do what He does. If you’ve forgotten, you probably need to go read about Jonah. You are accountable for your inaction more than your actions in this moment in time. It has never been more important to stand and trust that God is here and to remind the rest of those needing encouragement that Truth.
To finish getting the overflow of what is in my heart out in words, I conclude with this.
We have entered an age of reckoning. Your neighbor, the one who thinks all Christians are hypocrites or maybe even tinfoil hat aficionados believing in make believe, that neighbor is as subject to manipulation as we are in this moment. I am pleading with you to see that either in our actions or our silence, we have failed those around us. Christians have allowed themselves to be shown up as fools, no less vile or dangerous as those who built careers in defiled embrace and have gone on to attack those who want nothing more to serve their communities. Why? Because the world cannot tell the difference. That is on us. We have failed to step into the worst moments of our lifetimes and demonstrate actions over empty platitudes of belief. We have failed to show love to our neighbors and stand on the foundation from where that comes. Swallow this whole: The world is right.
I call on all of us who serve, who lead, who believe, who scream in anguish at whatever is causing us to hurt to just stop. Stop, and breathe. Be still. BE QUIET, for God’s literal sake. Let no unclean words come out of our mouths. Let us pray right now and every single day and confess that we have failed to follow Jesus in critical moments where we were called to rise, to LOVE. Pray for our hearts to be mended and for us to be shown where our hurt has caused us to care more about ourselves than our neighbors, where we betray our own faith. Be reminded of this: In the New Testament gospels, Peter draws a sword and cuts the ear off of a man trying to arrest Jesus after He is betrayed by Judas. This arrest leads to Jesus being sentenced to death, and Jesus and His companions know it. He tells Peter to drop his sword, chiding ‘those who live by the sword, die by the sword.’ Jesus then heals the man Peter struck, restoring the man’s ear. Please see this: Jesus heals the man complicit in His arrest, knowing He will die…but He rebukes His disciple first. Even then, He corrects Peter in Love and then demonstrates that same Love by healing the man who not only fails to acknowledge him as The Christ, but the one leading Him to His crucifixion.
Hear the rebuke. Let it ring through your mind and settle into your heart as it breaks it open. If your sword is digital and your chosen battlefield is social media? Drop your sword, and craft all of your words only through a lens of respect and Love. Look upon those you would correct as friends as Jesus looked upon Judas in the middle of fatal betrayal. And if you need to be reminded of why, it’s all there in that Field Manual.
Turn, repent. Only then will the church and her purpose have any chance to become relevant again on a scale to stand against the Wolf already breaching the gate.
May we all Love God and our neighbors every single day as we learn to follow the One who loved us first. May we all learn again we can be the Light.
In Christ and love,
— E
