Sunday is almost here again and millions of Christians are getting ready to go to church.
I am one of them.
People will make this weekly pilgrimage for many reasons:
Some of them will go to celebrate God’s victory as evidenced by the past election outcome.
Some of will go to acknowledge God’s provision for our nation.
Some will go to find hope in the stories and the songs.
Some will go to send tearful laments to the Heavens.
Some will go to find solace in spiritual community.
Some will go simply because it’s Sunday.
I’m not exactly sure why I’m going, to be honest.
I’ll be at church, although I admit that my heart’s not in it.
I feel like I’ve seen things this year that have changed too many things:
What I know about my neighbors.
What I feel about my country.
What I believe about the American Church.
Maybe even what I trust about the very character of God.
I feel like I’ve lost more than a good bit of my religion in these days, and honestly church is the last place I want to be right now.
My job has always been to reassure people in times of suffering, that God is still there, still working, still loving, still good. For two decades I’ve had to be a perpetually positive cheerleader for people, encouraging them that all things do indeed work for good for the faithful; that whatever is happening, however sad or discouraging or horrible it appear may appear to your eyes—God’s got it.
To be honest those things are a really hard sell for me these days.
It isn’t that I don’t still see good, loving, compassionate people who are fighting for the stuff that feels like Jesus to me out there, it’s just that I am finding less and less of them in his Church. They are doing it not as part of his people—but to defend others from those claiming to be. They are faced with having to oppose Christians to try and replicate Christ.
I am seeing too much of his Church sanctioning racism and downplaying the genuine fears and the grief of people of color.
I am seeing too much of his Church salivating in the wake of the election, at what it might do to the LGBTQ community.
I am seeing too much of his Church boasting about “taking back America”, and I know what those code words really mean.
I am seeing too much of his Church remaking him in their fearful, vengeful, bitter image and preparing to fashion their government similarly.
And I’m no longer sure how to be in this Church or fit in it or work within it. I’m not sure I want to do any of those things because I am tired of Jesus people doing damage to Jesus’ people. I am exhausted from living in the tension of trying to be a peacemaker partnering with those always at war.
I’d really rather stay home today.
But it’s Sunday morning and the sun is up and I am up, and maybe it’s spiritual muscle memory, or maybe it’s guilt or obligation that is making me rise and get up out of the bed and walk out the door. Maybe this is a fruitless endeavor and I’m just going through the motions and trying to stave off the inevitable extinction of my faith.
Or maybe it is the last defiant holy ground in my heart that still believes that this thing called the Church is worth wrestling with and fighting for; maybe it is the very heart of Jesus, reminding me that lights are most need in heavy darkness and that I need to strain to be that light now. Maybe I am being the loving resistance he compelled his people to be when it is most needed.
I’m praying it’s the latter.
