for the Body: a story, a confession, and a plea

prologue

I'm really not sure how to start this.  I could tell you a story, I could quote a Bible verse or two, I could just come out and say it.  But it's all so complicated, the result of weeks and months of agonizing, the processing of my jumbled thoughts and emotions, the desperate prayer that this can somehow be more than powerless commentary on a less-than-ideal situation.  My prayer is that somehow my words will translate to action, most of all action on my part.  Maybe that's why I'm writing this: to come to some sort of conclusion as to how, then, I should live in this broken world.  I am writing this as it comes; it'll most likely be rambling, disjointed, the overflow of a heart that is both hopeful and broken, both thankful and longing.

This is a story, this is a plea, this is a theory, this is a confession.  This is my heart for the body of Christ.

i. a story

I sat cross-legged in a stranger's living room singing random songs campfire style with a group of people I had just met that day.  And I knew in that moment I'd come home.  I had found the community that I thought I'd never find post-college.

And for the next year, I was proved correct countless times.  I had so many conversations with friends and family back home in which I commented on the blessing it was to have friends that I hung out with almost every day.  There was always a new adventure, always someone who was up for getting dinner on 30 minutes notice.  We all lived in separate places and yet it was like we were family.  Community.

My social life was unprecedentedly awesome.  Yeah, there were some really sucky things about my first year here.  I was an emotional wreck for much of it, but never because I didn't have amazing friends who were always there for me.

I don't know why it changed.  Well, to be more accurate, I think there were so many forces at work dragging us apart.  Romance at times got in the way, tore us apart.  Some began dating and drifted away, some didn't begin dating and drifted away anyway.  Some broke up.  Ah, the curse of the "single's Bible study."  And, of course, our beautiful community was attractive.  We soon had so many people wanting to be a part of our group, and we couldn't sustain the community over that large of a group.  The revolving door of friends that is life in a military town meant that we had to continually adjust to key members of the group leaving, sometimes for good.  Life got complicated.  The community fractured.  We split ways.

But more than that, we stopped living life together.

So many times after the split I tried organizing large group events.  Sparse attendance plagued them.  I'm not the social magnet our old leader was.  People think I'm weird, I don't have good ideas, I'm shy, I dunno.  Maybe we have too many game nights and need to go to movie nights.  Maybe we need to go mini-golfing more.  Maybe I need to stop using Facebook to organize and go to word of mouth.  Maybe I need to have someone else be the ring leader - maybe they'll follow someone who is cooler than me.  Maybe it's 'cause I'm a woman.  Maybe they'd come if a man organized it.

And maybe we fell apart because I was too cynical.  After all, if I've learned anything in the past year and a half, it's that small things and insignificant people can cause an avalanche.

God forgive my cynicism.

ii. sermons and scripture

There's this sermon that I've listened to a few times now by Jonathan Martin, preached the weekend after the Boston Marathon bombing.  He talks about the gift of prophecy, and how it's not prophetic to make commentary on a broken world - anyone can do that.  It takes true faith to look at a broken situation and speak hope into it, to see the restoration that is on its way despite the hopelessness of the present.

Above all, that's what I want out of this post.  I want to speak hope, not just cynically comment on something that has caused me pain over the past months.  And I want to speak words that I can back with action.  Words are so useless if they're not accompanied by action, if they're not reflective of a heart that is soft toward God and one's neighbor.

In Matthew 25:40, Jesus says, "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me."  Why exactly does he say something like this? I grew up hearing this verse repeated again and again, but I don't know if I ever understood it exactly.  I am coming to believe it is because we are the body of Christ.  We are the manifestation of God in this broken world.  If we do not reflect Christ in the way we treat the least of these, we not only misrepresent Christ but also injure his very body.

I have been coming to see my faith as, rather than an individual and pietistic pursuit in which I strive to be a better person, a communal effort in which I band together with others of like (and sometimes not so like) mind to serve God as the body of Christ in this world.  If I'm the elbow, there needs to be a hand and a foot and an ear and an eye and a mouth.  We need one another.  The world needs us, not as individuals, but as a body.  That's where the power is located, when God's people live in community.

iii. the paradox

I don't think my small group ever had it right.  Sure, things were pretty great when I first moved here.  God moved in us as we lived in community.  And yet, we were pretty narcissistic, even if communally so.  We were focused on the fun we had, on the social elements of life in our small town.  And I think that's ultimately what took us down.  We were so focused on how awesome we were that we forgot that we are only Christ's body as long as we exist for others.  Not just ourselves.  We forgot to reach out.

We had so much fun eating food together, going to the beach together, watching movies together.  Those things were all good.  But eventually it was no longer enough.  God's people aren't God's people so that they can have like minded friends.

Every Wednesday night at 6 we visit a local assisted living center and talk with and play music for the residents there.  For a while there were so many of us going that we talked about splitting off and having some of us do other ministries.  Every night after we were done we'd go eat together as a group.

Maybe that was our downfall.

The focus (even if only for me) was on the food rather than the assisted living.  I went to the assisted living because it meant I'd get to hang out with my friends afterwards.

I think that's often why we go to Bible study, why we go to church, why we do pretty much everything.  Church or outreach are good excuses to do something "good" and something social all at the same time.  But until God's people exist for the other, until the heart of everything we do is to offer a drink of water to the thirsty and food for the hungry, until we empty ourselves completely in order to serve, we are nothing.  My life is so me-focused right now.  There are a few things I do for the church and more generally for God, but those things take up a minute portion of my time, and often I do those things for ulterior motives.

I want to live to make God known.

But I can't do it alone.  After all, I'm only the elbow of the Body, and a chapped one at that.  And that's where things get so insanely complicated.  I need my brothers and sisters.

But they're gone, it seems.  We're hopelessly fractured.

iv. a resolution

I resolve to live for others, to poor myself out in sacrificial ways for my brothers and sisters and for the aliens within our gates.  This will take the form of daily decisions, both small and large, to die to myself and to put those around me before me.  I resolve to live prayerfully, humbly, and boldly.  I resolve to welcome those around me even when my introversion screams at me to not.  I resolve to curse my social awkwardness and reach out anyway.  I resolve to take steps to orient my schedule increasingly for Kingdom pursuits.

I can't do it alone.  I resolve to pray continually that the body of Christ will rise up, that we'll come together, that we will be one.

epilogue

God forgive my wounded pride, my selfish desires, my bitterness.  God forgive my cynicism and my anger.  God forgive me for making my life about me.  God forgive me forgetting to serve my brother and my sister and the strangers in our midst.  God forgive me for making excuses, for resorting to passive aggressiveness and gossip.  God forgive me for forgetting that this is Christ's body, and that what I do unto the least of these, I do unto Him.