will you join us,
join hands with us,
as we stumble and fumble our
way towards light, love
and truth?
will you share your stories
with us and listen
patiently to ours
accepting that each of us
is wonderfully messy,
broken, & hurting,
making a pathway towards
our own wholeness?
will you eat with us,
dream with us,
grow, and work and weep
with us?
will you listen here
for God with us,
and dare to see him in
the others soul?
will you ask your questions gently,
and accept our questions too,
and when there are
no answers (yet)
will you wait with us
and walk with us,
we long to walk with you...
for in the end, you are not you
but us...
Picture Emmaus Journey (mine)
So what is this invitation all about? If I am honest it is about a yearning in my own heart for a living loving community of people who own their own brokenness, long for wholeness and have come in some way to see that the only way to find this is to seek God. More specifically to seek God in Christ Jesus who slipped into vulnerable human flesh and entered the messy brokenness in our world in poverty and was quickly exiled. God in Christ Jesus who walked with and welcomed the outcast, the sick and the sinful, who challenged those who thought themselves whole and holy, and blessed the poor and mournful. God in Christ Jesus who ended his human life nailed to a Roman cross in unbearable agony yet prayed for the forgiveness of those who nailed him there.
I yearn for an accepting and love drawn community who have no need to wear masks of respectability, no need to live up to the standards of others, who erect no barriers of race, creed, sexuality, gender, mental health, riches or poverty, literacy or illiteracy. A community that might just begin to look like heaven because they are beginning to understand the truth that heaven is in their hearts and the love of God is somehow built into their DNA.
I am tired of the attempts of the communities who call themselves Church demanding standards, men must not wear hats in Church but women can, oh and please sit and stand in all of the right places ( but we won't help you there). Tired of the fact that the hour we set apart on a Sunday ( or any other time) is not a place of equipping and nurturing and feeding, an oasis in the desert of a challenging world but often a place of stress and conformity, a place where many are excluded because they don't fit. Tired because I have been complicit with the system and can be no longer.
I long for a sacramental community, an open table, a respect for the sacred, an an acknowledgement that while we are a work in progress together we might catch a glimpse of heaven. I am not writing this to be critical, not to say that there is nothing currently good in church but to express my own desire for something more, something deeper, for something more real because the reality of our condition is not something we seek to hide from one another.
This invitation is not an invitation to come and join me either ( unless you happen to live in Blackpool or the surrounding area, then you can), but an invitation to listen to the longings of your heart and to hear within those longings the longings for us in the heart of God. God in Christ who offers us this invitation:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. ( Matthew 11:28- 30)
