A double-edged sword...

Living and loving the church of Jesus Christ is a double-edged sword, yes?  On one hand, there is solace, comfort and accountability in an authentic and trusting community of faith that empowers and encourages us to carry the Cross of our calling. I can't tell you how many times I have been strengthened by the horizontal connections of my community as they have shared hope and sustenance with me and those I love.  And I know this is true for other pastors and laity, too:  we have met the spirit of Christ in community and we will never be the same.

On the other hand, however, lest I sound too romantic or triumphal, let's also honestly acknowledge that this Christ is still crucified and wounded - and sometimes in agony, too. And these encounters with the broken body of Christ can be frightening, painful and often exhausting.  Again, I can't tell you how many times I've shared time with those who are suffering only to be resented because I can't take away their pain. Or blamed for things in their past. Or just used as a means to an end given the magnitude of the suffering.  And to say that this goes with the territory is true - and over time I've come to expect it, too - but never takes away the sting of hurt.

St. John of the Cross wrote:  Why, after wounding this hear, have You not healed it? And why, after stealing it, have You thus abandoned it and not carried away the stolen prey? (I know he is speaking of his own "dark night of the soul" but it still plays on other levels for me, yes?)

So I understand why many busy themselves with important projects that can be measured and evaluated.  I grasp why some drift into the higher realms of esoteric thinking and abstract theology.  This incarnational stuff hurts - and a ministry of simple presence doesn't look very productive!  The poet, Scott Cairns, gave the double-edge sword of a ministry of simple and compassionate presence an interesting twist in something he calls "Possible Answers to Prayer."

Your petitions - though they continue to bear
Just the one signature - have been duly recorded.
Your anxieties - despite their constant,

relatively narrow scope and inadvertent
entertainment value - nonetheless serve
to bring your person vividly to mind.

Your repentance - all but obscured beneath
a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more
conspicuous resentments - is sufficient.

Your intermittent concern for the sick,
the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes
recognizable to me, if not to them.

Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmakingly
righteous indignation toward the man
whose habits and sympathies offend you -

these must burn away before you'll apprehend
how near I am, with what fervor I adore
precisely these, the several who rouse your passion.

Ouch... pretty powerful and insightful words to this man. Today, as I listened quietly to the grief and unfair tragedy of one dear friend - aching to make it better and knowing there was nothing anyone in this realm could do - I found myself praying for the other, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace" and praying for myself, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference." 

Afterwards, I read an email from a person who wrote, "Yesterday I SANG for the FIRST time EVER in church." Man, this is a total double-edge sword.

credit: Georgia O'Keefe