When I struggle to describe the tumultuous times we are living in, a word that comes to mind is Koyaanisqatsi, which in the Hopi language means ‘unbalanced life’ or ‘life in disorder.’ We are living in a state of dissonance with the environment, our neighbors, ourselves, and with God. We are witnessing the unraveling of our culture’s long-respected tradition of honest civil discourse, which leads us to wonder, often incredulously, what is the truth?
In the Lutheran tradition, we profess Luther’s 500-year-old proclamation of Sola Scriptura (scripture alone) as the source and norm of truth. While this may be a cause for derision among those outside the faith, it is often misunderstood. The Bible isn’t a science book written to disprove evolution. It’s not a history book written to refute archeology. It’s not a blunt object given to beat others over the head with so they’ll shape up and live the way we want them to live. Scripture is the manger that cradles our belief that God steps into this broken world and redeems it through a love that is both passionate and relentless.
Theologian Frederick Buechner writes, “To understand what the gospels are all about, you have to understand their unblinking reflection of everyday reality. There is no place here for saccharine, happy endings or soft-boiled hope. Rather, the gospels record the tragedy of human failure, the comedy of being loved overwhelmingly by God despite that failure, and the fairy tale of transformation through that love.”
For Buechner, what is required of us anytime we share the gospel story is simply this; that we tell the truth. We tell the truth even when it’s a difficult truth, even when it’s a truth others don’t really want to hear. The gospel, he writes, holds a mirror in front of us so that we can envision this Christian experience from all angles, both the good and the bad of it.
Jesus knew all about how unbalanced our lives can become. He often found himself standing squarely in the midst of conflict. No matter what Jesus taught, when he healed, how many he fed, or who he raised from death, there was always someone standing off to the side pointing out that he wasn’t doing it the right way, or proclaiming that “we’ve never done it that way before.”
Jesus’ command that we love those who offend us, those who hate us, and even those who wish to harm us, is a tough pill to swallow sometimes. But how we respond to those who seek to hurt us is perhaps the ultimate measure of our desire to live as disciples of the risen Christ. We are called to live out the gospel alongside neighbors whose worldview is often very different from our own.
It is through this experience of living day to day in the midst of diversity that we come to see just how deeply God cares about how we live together as a community. God loves us so much that he was born into this world to help us love one another better than we ever could on our own. We are defined as disciples by our love for those who have been cast aside by this world. We bend the arc of history by our love for those who have hurt us. We challenge the disorder surrounding us through our joyful proclamation that God loves this world so much that he suffered and died for it.
In the brief and beautiful epistle of 1st John, we read, “We love because he first loved us.” This is more than just a catchphrase, a slogan, or a mission statement. It’s the very definition of who we are. We are invited to live as people of the cross, willing even to die, as Jesus did, out of love for the despised and the broken. We are invited to live as people of the resurrection, willing to risk everything in order to share the love of the risen Christ out in the community that we have been given to serve. We do this in the conviction that we are already beloved.
In these times of Koyaanisqatsi, of life out of balance, we are compelled to seek the truth in the midst of finger pointing and shrieks of “fake news.” We are invited to be a people devoted to expanding the very definition of community so that those who live in fear; the fear of illness, the fear of loneliness, the fear of exclusion, the fear of poverty, the fear of deportation…whatever… will know that God loves them.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Tom Murray of the Lutsen Lutheran Church and Baptism River Community Church of Finland.
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