It Is God Who Establishes Us: Pentecost Tuesday
LOOK: Upper Story, Lower Story (from When Old People Talk to Young People), Sedrick Huckaby - Source
READ: Psalm 26, 28; Psalm 36, 39; Deuteronomy 4:15-24; 2 Corinthians 1:12-22; Luke 15:1-10
PRAY: Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Come, Holy Spirit,
fill the hearts of your faithful,
and enkindle in us the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth.
Amen.
DO: Throughout the first week of Pentecost, I'll be sharing excerpts from my upcoming book, The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Way of Jesus in a Fragmented World. In Part 2 of the book, I invite us to consider Jesus invitation in Matthew 11:28-30 to “walk with him” as an invitation to walk with his church. First, I want to tell you about the community that shaped my default imagination for church.
STABILITAS
Stabilitas (stability) means to make a vow to a life of fidelity to the monastic order. We could think of it in simpler terms as a promise monks make to not to run away when things get hard. For those of us outside of a monastic community, saying yes to walking with Jesus as part of a stable yet changing church requires humble, listening prayer and loving, embodied presence with God and each other, trusting that the same God who never changes is also making all things new.
SPACIOUS STABILITY
What spacious stability is and what spacious stability is not
A commitment to stability is not synonymous with believing our church is the right or ideal place for everyone who calls themself a follower of Jesus. Instead, spacious stability is a trust that the particular church in which God has placed us is good for God’s purposes. Spacious stability embraces a holy restraint from projecting our ideals onto the church where God has placed us and trusts that—even when it feels like a painful stretch—God knows and cares about our need to feel welcomed and at home. Spacious stability allows us to wait in hope for all that God purposes for us and our church community to be accomplished.
Saying yes to spacious stability leads us to a creedal expression of faith: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of us all. In this way, we are connected with every com- munity of faith bearing witness to the triune God.
Saying yes to spacious stability is not the same thing as ignoring teaching, character, or actions antithetical to Jesus’ teaching, character, and actions. Those who are committed to the reality of God’s good church are best suited and called to address the wrongs within the church. Saying yes to spacious stability does not prevent us from walking with Jesus, who provoked holy change by sitting at tables with Pharisees, along with tax collectors and prostitutes, year after year—and then, after that, by turning over tables instead.
Saying yes to spacious stability affirms that the actual place where I worship, live, and work is where God is for me. God is in the reality of my life, not the idealized version I’m prone to wander toward.
Saying yes to spacious stability helps us walk the restful way of Jesus in all our relationships—friendship, marriage, parenting, and even our work relationships flourish with a commitment to stability. We grow in our capacity to live in con- templation and community with Jesus, others, and ourselves.
CONVERSATIO
Conversatio (conversion) means to remain open to change and is the harmonious counterbalance to the commitment of stability. We can imagine how important this commitment has been in the fifteen centuries since Benedict began forming his monasteries, and—with empathy—to the changes churches have navigated within our lifetime. As we grow in our capac- ity to be present in the reality of our church community, we listen for the Holy Spirit’s invitations into fresh expressions of our love for God and each other. We surrender to the reality that growth is a lifelong process and that when we walk with Jesus, we are, in fact, on a journey with all the uncertainties that entails.
SPACIOUS CHANGE
What spacious change is and what spacious change is not
Saying yes to spacious change is saying yes to the tension between certainty and uncertainty. It’s a willingness to be wrong and to change our minds as we listen to the Holy Spirit and our community. Spacious change embraces a holy recep- tiveness to new learning and expressions within the church to which we believe God has led us, and trusts that—even when it feels like a painful stretch—God knows and cares about our need to feel secure within a trustworthy community who won’t seek change for the sake of change alone. We trust that God is the one who has given us the good desire to belong in a congregation that can change and grow, not at the demands of others, but for the sake of others.
Saying yes to spacious change is to embrace holy curiosity —a characteristic that nurtures and tends our commitment to further growth. We desire to retain childlike faith even as we desire to mature in the faith.
Saying yes to spacious change is to embrace the virtues of God rather than trying to signal our own. Rather than treating the church as a message board for cultural change, we welcome wholistic transformation even when the process is long and leads us on the paths of suffering that often accompany change. Saying yes to spacious change, we share in the suffering of a culture that God is making new.
Saying yes to spacious change provides a healthy balance to stability in all our relationships. We are constantly changing, and so too are the people we love. We grow more whole, not more fragmented in our love, as we embrace the realities of change. As we grow more like Jesus, we become more like our true selves, always coming full circle to belovedness.
If committing to spacious stability is being present to reality, then committing to change is being present to unpredictability. Years ago, when our oldest son was asked to pray at a family meal, he closed the prayer “Thank you for being an unpredictable God.” The words took me by surprise as something I’d never thought of as one God’s better qualities. Now, when I am feeling the disorientation of change, I echo Andrew’s prayer: Thank you for being an unpredictable God.
Author Joan Chittister makes one of my favorite observations about what it means to embrace stability and change in the church when she says that living in this tension helps us “commit to our own adulthood,”and Andrew’s prayer offers a kind of response of worship to the God who fathers us into a mature relationship with Christ’s church. As we walk with Jesus, we learn the rhythms of stability and change, and as we practice a Rule of Life, we make space for both. Through stability and change, we worship Jesus for being the one who laid down his life for the church and who now sits next to the Father, holding all of us together.
—from Chapter 3, “Walk With Me: Saying Yes to Spacious Stability and Change in the Church,” pp. 103-106
This week we'll talk a bit about Jesus invitation to walk with Jesus in the unity of diversity in God’s beloved community—the Church. I hope you'll walk with me this week with a sense of anticipation that God's heart toward you is steadfast and good.
Sign up for reader's guides and bonus content for The Spacious Path!
How would you begin to describe your experience with stability and change in the church? What is helping you to embrace both stability and change in your current church community? What is making it difficult?
Read, reflect, journal, and share your own responses with the rest of us in the comment section below.