Does it Matter?

I'm a relatively unimportant person. I'm important to a few people...my kids, my husband...and the dog. I am very important to the dog. I carry a bit of weight around particular tasks in my job. I'm the one who organizes Sunday school, for example. People think that makes me important, but it doesn't, really. Anyone could do it. I just happen to be the one in this time and place that gets it done.

I don't have a powerful job or lots of money. Therefore, I have little influence in the business or political spheres. Like most of you, my representatives to congress think I am worthy of a form letter and not much more. I guess I should be thankful that an e-mail or phone call gets a form letter...but letter never has anything to do with the opinion I express.

I have moments of importance. When I inquire about buying a car listed on the internet, I am important until the salesman figures out I wanted to pay the "gotcha" price and not something four to six thousand dollars higher. When I have time or skill that someone needs, I am important.

But in the grand scheme of things...I'm not going to be in the history books. My face will not beam from a granite mountaintop. I haven't started a movement, and I have resisted, so far, the impulse to murder anyone.

I was listening to Dave Isay talk about starting StoryCorps on NPR, "a project to give people of all backgrounds the chance to share and record the stories of their lives." He describes writing a book about homeless people in a New York City neighborhood. He brought the galley of the book to the flophouse and one of the guys opened to his page and ran down the hall shouting "I exist! I exist!" That, for Isay, was the "clarion call." He began StoryCorps to "tell [people] their lives matter and they won't be forgotten."

Now I am fully human, and there are times I wish I was important. Moments call out for recognition beyond the dog's total adoration and attention (which, you understand, happens for the 15 seconds before he eats, while the food is sitting on the floor and he is "waiting" for permission). I'm not dead yet, so I occasionally dream about writing a book like Eugene Peterson, painting a picture like Georgia O'Keefe, or singing like my daughter.

But here's the thing. My life matters and I won't be forgotten. I commit my life to the idea that I have been invited to participate in the mission of God, the God who creates, redeems, sustains, rules and transforms all things and all people. "Importance" in this culture doesn't really matter. What's important is how God chooses to use our lives, and we don't have to know how that shakes out.

I don' t even need a book to tell me I exist. I am a child of God. That gives what I do right the power and influence of God's very self...and what I do wrong gets dismissed or re-routed into what God will use for God's ultimate purposes. Today, I sit at my desk, type on this little, unimportant blog, write curriculum for the Christian formation of this congregation, and celebrate that I exist in the mind and heart and purposes of God. In that, my life matters and I will never be forgotten.

We Are NOT Broken...NOT!

An acquaintance posted this on his Facebook Page:

Christianity has it wrong. We are not broken. We are not fallen. We are not flawed. We are simply fragile. We are beautifully distractible. We are self-invested because of love but that love also gives us a slight bias toward justice. We are so deeply invested in life that we can, at times, deny the larger good for the experience of the moment. We are not broken. We are human. We are flesh and blood, and we are experiential. Sometimes that makes us better. Sometimes that make us worse. It never makes us less. Or sinful. Or unredeemable. It means we are real. It mean that life has a relentless hold on us. The struggles, the stumbles, the seemingly endless short-fallings simply point to our humanity not to our unworthiness. They mean life is difficult -- but they also mean life is vibrant - pulsing with potential, ripe with possibility, constantly presenting lesson from which to grow. YOU - you are not broken. You are a unique expression of God here on Earth. You are bursting with potential that has not yet been expressed. You are God's beloved. You are NOT broken. You are in process. You are love hoping to not only be expressed but to be recognized.

I agree with some of what he says. I do think we are unique, flesh and blood, and experiential. I know we are redeemable. I think life is vibrant--pulsing with potential, ripe with possibility...at least at those times when circumstances haven't overwhelmed us with hopelessness. But, consider this.

IF we are just fragile and distractible, then really, not much is wrong with the world. We don't need to work for marriage equality or food security. We don't need to worry about damage to the environment or discrimination on the basis of anything. Because...we are not really broken. We'll get there. Remember, "because of our love we have a slight bias toward justice." If that's the case, the funeral protesters of the Baptist church-that-shall-go-unnamed are a unique expression of God here on earth, just hoping their love will be recognized. The attempt to eliminate SNAP grants while cutting tax burdens for the wealthy is just a reflection of our "real-ness."

If we are NOT broken, why should we work on our marriages, our political system, our relationships with each other and the world. We are right...if slightly distracted...and should just wait for the rest of the world to come to us.

Really, if we are just "fragile and distractible"..."in process," then all we need is time. What we don't need is God. Well, maybe we need God a little--mostly to recognize our unbroken, potential selves...our unique selves that just need a bit more time to grow. If God could recognize that and quit calling us to humility and service, all would be good.

It is so tempting to buy into this perspective.  Some years ago, I would have relished the positive tone. I believe with my whole heart that God creates us good, but we are born into such a broken world, it is impossible to extract ourselves from the brokenness. And, the insistence that nothing is fundamentally wrong reveals the depth of our sin.

Ah, there's the word. Sin. Christianity has many things wrong, I'll admit. Could it be, perhaps, because we are such sinful creatures? Exclusive theology...sin. Focus on earning our way to heaven while we ignore the hell on earth...sin. Preserving power structures in Christ's church that enable a few to prosper and many to suffer...sin. Forgetting that God is always doing a new thing in our lives and our world and clinging to the way-we've-always-done-it...sin.

Christianity has it exactly right when we recognize the depth of our brokenness. It is only then that healing begins. It is only then that we are willing to let God's grace work on us. If we're not broken, why should we do anything different at all.

We are beloved by God and, in fact, bursting with potential, but until we truly accept and confess our brokenness, the process by which God moves us toward God's definition of good (sanctification, for you theology nerds), will slow to a crawl (because we cannot ultimately stop what God will do). The love to be recognized is God's, in which we live and move and have our being.

If I "buy" this guy's perspective, then the health and well-being of the world is up to me. I can be just a little better, a little more focused, grow and little more, and all will be right with the world. Frankly, if the hope of the world is up to me, or my fellow human travelers, I don't see much hope. If the hope of the world rests fully in God's grace and love, then I can participate to the very best of my ability, in a faith community which nurtures me in the journey and holds me accountable for participating. I can do this because I trust that God is working out God's purposes. I see glimpses of the Kingdom, I see the mighty acts of justice in the past, and I can trust that all the brokenness that surrounds us in this time and place will not have the ultimate say.

We are the broken, flawed, fallen, distractible, beloved of God. And because we are beloved, God continues to work to bring us, and all our fellow broken, flawed, fallen, distractibles to the place of love and trust that will eventually become God's Kingdom here on earth.