Church: Put on Your Crash Helmets!

It happened in worship this morning at the Next Church conference.  Next Church is a group of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders who are thinking and talking about what’s “next” for our denomination. 

This was my first time to participate at an annual conference that’s been growing in attendance in recent years; a pilgrimage this year that grew to nearly 700 participants!  And it was amazing.  I was reunited with friends a colleagues that represent more than 25 years of my life—some of them—and others who may sustain me and my ministry for the next 25 years! 

But, I’ve been accused of having an “old soul,” and no doubt, for one of the first times in 25 years of ministry, I felt old.  For the first time, I felt the weight of tradition and stayed-ness that is a part of ME, being more buffeted by the winds of change that God’s Holy Spirit is blowing through my church.  Here-to-fore, I watched the older folks be blown around like strong winds in downtown Chicago, where you’re simply blessed to only lose your hat and not be carried not-so-merrily down the street by the wind! 

The unwritten part of the liturgy was this, “Church, put on your crash helmets!”--words made famous by Annie Dillard’s description of what it means for us to be called by God out into deep waters, to be at risk in a world of risks, in ways that are uncomfortable and should be more expected than not.  An experience that matched the intended theme of this conference, “beyond our walls,” but also one that I fully recognized as a word of warning.  There was rough water coming in this liturgy just ahead. 

I knew these words, about crash helmets.  I knew some of the words that were coming in the liturgy.  “This was serious,” I thought, but I still wasn’t ready. 

We literally were invited to catch and use our BREATH as a part of God’s Spirit. 

The worship leader read the written liturgy, a poem “Wage Peace” written by Judyth Hill, beginning:

Wage peace with your breath.
Breath in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
 Breath in terrorists/and breath out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields
Breathe in confusion/and breath out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen/and breath out lifelong friendships intact

These words came after jarring images for me during the celebration of communion.  An image of persons wearing orange jumpsuits and whose heads were covered in black bags.  Tortured detainees?  ISIS prisoners?  Except the image held the Supreme Court building in the background, and a Police Officer standing as if at a pulpit. 

In light of recent pictures in news, I found this image jarring, frightening, and dis-comforting.  Just give me a little Jesus, please.  The Jesus who love me, who loves us, the Jesus who displaces violence with love.  I am a part of that love.  Give me my Jesus, please! 

I was uncomfortable and angry.  I began parsing a carefully worded e-mail in my head to the leadership team.  How dare they take away my Jesus! 

And then it hit me.  That is my Jesus. 

The Jesus who was tortured, who was unjustly condemned, associated with the worst human beings.  The Jesus who dwelt his last night on earth in control of those who would make him suffer and die, abused, surrounded, poked and prodded, dehumanized.  There, in fact was my Jesus, crucified in front of me. 

And what was discomforting even still, or perhaps even more, how often was it that my church would seek to deny THIS Jesus in favor of the one who only comforts us, but cannot save us?  How much my stayed Jesus teaches me to love my comfort, my safe theology, my safe faith—that actually saves little. 

JESUS, beyond my “stayed Jesus” dares to save the world—promised John’s gospel in last week’s lectionary passage (John 3: 14-21).  And so it is that this Jesus, the one present in suffering and dying, the Jesus of protest and proclamation, beckons me and my whole church beyond where I am comfortable.  And we need crash helmets! 

Can I imagine a world, a church, a faith, a hope, a Jesus-incarnation that dares us to “breath in terrorists and breath out sleeping children and freshly mown fields? 

It’s too idealistic, some will say. 

It’s too offensive, others will decry. 

“It’s not realistic,” “it can’t be real,” we’ll say--standing at the foot of the cross. 

The truth is, I’ve been taught to see Jesus in all of these places of death—be they torture, the death penalty, abortion, or the death penalty.  I see Jesus, I know Jesus—reaching out in love, displacing the victimized.  “He takes our place,” some have taught me.  He redeems.  He loves.  He makes right—in the way only God can make right.  But this is not the comfortable crucified Jesus, hanging blithely in front of the sanctuary or on necklaces. 

In all these places, Christ is dying; but Christ is raised by God.  Christ is dying and Christ is being raised, again and again.  This is Jesus who transforms the world, who transforms the church, who transforms me. 

Sometimes, I’m afraid of letting things die in me.  It is the way I’ve been taught, the church I know.  Hang on! 

Because when it’s dead, part of me will be dead. 

But the great mystery of faith is that just at that moment when we are afraid we are dying, or at just the moment we ARE dying, we are already being raised. 

Easter is coming, and this story of death is the story of resurrection.  “I believe, Lord, help my unbelief.”  “Help me die, Lord, so I can be raised.”  And then, a crash helmet seems wise; but really not necessary. 

No.  I wasn’t ready for that. 

I am now, profoundly grateful for it. 

Maybe, when it happens NEXT, I’ll be a little more ready.  And, God-willing, I’ll be even more willing to embrace it. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania