A Bitter Bride
I feel like I am in a fight with a friend. I love her. I do. I’d do anything for her, but she keeps engaging in self-destructive behavior. It is not even who she is. I’ve seen her in better times. I have seen glimpses of who she could be, but it is like she doesn’t want anybody to see who she really is. She lashes out at people. She plays hide-n-go-seek; lurching out like a wounded animal just to poke at people with sharp sticks.
She acts self-confident, but it all has the smell of fear. She won’t listen to the wooing of her fiancée who loves her. She says she wants to be more like Him, but grappling in her own strength, the two show little resemblance. For a couple of years people walked around with wrist bands that said, “What Would Jesus Do? I always wanted to get some really big ones made and drape them around churches. The church is supposed to be conforming to the image of Christ, but it often seems to be conforming to the image of the Pharisees that Christ called a “broad of vipers”. The church is supposed to be found in Christ, not having a goodness of its own, but a goodness that comes through faith in Christ. (Philippians 3:9) The church was never meant to display its righteousness, but the righteousness, the grace, of the God who would forgive people such as us.
The qualifications for church are our acknowledgement that we are a mess and in need of a savior, not that having it all together we no longer need a savior. Knowing who we are in Christ should foster barefaced honesty. How can we look down our noses at our neighbor suffering from the same heartsickness that we have, lacking only the cure?
What if we revealed something of the true face of Christ to each other? What if we looked out (and in) at a world devastated by our choices and chose to lay our lives down? What if our response to a sinful world was to lower ourselves, drop our pride and humiliate ourselves to do nothing other than reveal the love of the Father? What if we come clean that we are naked, battered and broken, knowing that it is Christ alone who will clothe us in His goodness?
I love the church. Not the edifice or the artifice, but the promise. Set on the backdrop of the beauty of God’s creation, this world is still an untrustworthy place. In moments of self-protection I can hurt those I love. In need, others can hurt me. Both leave me longing. Longing for people, friends who have dropped the pretense. Those who will laugh and cry without fear of how they look. People who will enter into each other’s lives and reveal another taste of grace, another glimpse of the Father’s heart.
“And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (2 Corinthians 3:18-4:2, NIV)
Tags: Christianity, Church, honesty, life, transparency
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