Theology is not meant to stay in the
realm of the theological. It is meant to impact your life and make
us live like Christ. How do we do this? I am constantly torn
between my desire to see all people being the people that Christ sees
them as and the suffering that is going on in the here and now. The
only hope I can find in this is that we are ultimately responsible
and at the same time God is ultimately responsible. We are called to
be God's hands and feet and body in the world. Yet we are a body of
believers, not individual believers. If it were up to me (or any one
person) to make sure the world was a good place, this world would be
in bad shape indeed. Luckily, it is not up to me, it is up to the
Holy Spirit, acting through people everywhere.
It is this tension that calls me into
more service at all times. This tension of knowing that I am not
responsible for everyone's well being, but I am responsible for what
I can do. I felt this tension this afternoon as I walked away from
the Convention Center. I was asked by many people for money for
basic necessities. Inside this massive building we are discussing
things like: Which comes first our welcome into God's family through
baptism or our welcome into Christ's life through communion? Or how
do we faithfully respond to the diversity in our Church? Or how do
we reimagine the Church for the future? These are important
questions. Yet for many outside of the Convention Center the
questions are much more practical: How will I pay for my daughter's
new shoes if I go see the doctor today? How will we have food to eat
tonight? If I leave this abusive relationship will I ever see my
children again? Where will I sleep tonight? These are the questions
of the people in the streets. These questions, just like the
questions about theology do not have an easy answer. I believe that
we need to be the people that live in this tension.
We all bear the image of Christ, who
came into the world to show us that true life is possible. However,
when we begin to segment our lives into the “religious” side and
the “real” side we begin to lose the vision that of Christ's
light for the entire world. My faith matters. My action matters.
It is through faith that all things are possible, (Mark 9:23) but
this faith creates action. Faith without works is dead (James 2:13).
Our actions and our faith are two sides of a triangle. The third is
love. Love is what gives our faith and our actions life. No matter
what we do, if we do not do it in love, it is useless. (1 Corinthians
13: 1-3). It is love for God the Creator, as experienced in the
resurrected Christ and in the life giving Holy Spirit that drives us
into being a people of the new covenant.
We love all well by living in this
tension of a God who has already created a new vision for society but
is giving us the opportunity to be a full partner in creating this
new society. This society does not depend on me or you individually,
it depends on us as the Body of Christ to follow the Holy Spirit who
guides us into the just actions so that the answers to our
theological questions generate responses to the practical questions
asked by people both within the Church walls and outside of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment