After church I mentioned to someone who told me I should write that I was going to start this blog, and she was overjoyed at the possibility of sharing with someone outside our church the things I had said in church. So I'm making good on my word, only sooner. No need to wait until that hypothetical "tomorrow" if the blog is here waiting for me today. It's still scary to me, but while I have the momentum, while I still have some affirmations echoing in my head, I will offer this to you, reader, and whomever you think would feel better about their own doubts and personal sense of hypocrisy if they read about mine. And so I humbly submit to you what I said in church today. I send it out into the world for you to use in whatever way makes the world hurt a little less.
Why I’m Still Here
The way Pastor Bill explained this service to me, it’s not my job to speak about why I might not be here, but rather to explain why I am still here in spite of the kinds of things Andrew and Matthew just pointed out. However, having been educated in the classical strategies of persuasive argument, I don’t want to minimize the fact that I really might not be here.
On the most obvious surface level, let’s just say that I have other things to do. Like most of you, I am over-busy. I could do some of these things on Tuesday mornings while my daughter is in PDO, but I go to Pastor Bill’s Bible study instead. I could do them Thursday nights, Monday afternoons, Sunday mornings, Thursday mornings, or the times when various committees and planning groups meet. Instead, I’m here. I could be cleaning or cooking or running or practicing music or writing or reading or biking or swimming or volunteering at the elementary school or tending a garden or decorating my house (you get the picture,) but I’m doing religion.
Not only am I busy, I am also undeceived. I may have grown up an innocent in the church, but at this point I’ve been to college and graduate school. I’ve met some get-ahead non-Christians and befriended confirmed atheists. I’ve glimpsed some of the ugly side of religion in general and of this church in particular. I love you people, and I’ll say more about that in a minute, but I’ve served on the Staff Parish Relations Committee; I’ve helped hire a youth pastor and spent nights and weekends in conflict resolution over performing that duty. I’ve seen what happens when someone starts saying something about how we should love and include everyone, even, say, homosexuals. It’s not always an easy or heartwarming experience to stick around.
So obviously there’s more to this church membership thing, and some of it is this: you people are my family. Literally, my parents and sister and nieces also attend this church. But it’s also for me as Pastor Bills says it will be at a baptism. The people in this church are parents and siblings to me. The people in this church helped raise me, and they are currently helping me to raise my children. On any given Sunday, I can sit in the choir and see out in the congregation the people who taught me the songs “Jesus Loves Me” and “All God’s Creatures Got a Place in the Choir.” I could point out the people who taught me to give thanks before eating, the people who taught me the Ten Commandments, the people who taught me the Lord’s Prayer, the people who, when my youngest sister was hospitalized with kidney failure, showed up at our door night after night with multi-course meals for us two girls still left parentless at home and who showed up at the bloodbanks for the sister who was not. Here are the people I sing with and the people who came to my band concerts this past December. And there’s a whole other list of people who are raising my children, who are their family and therefore mine.
One reason I am here every week, almost every day, is that I know that what you do in a family is show up. Even if you’re busy. Even if you know someone is going to say something annoying or act predictably irrationally. You show up at holidays and birthdays and graduations and baptisms and hospital beds and band concerts. It’s what a family does. I’d be lying if I said no one here ever made me want to stomp out muttering self-righteous things. But I’ve also done that to my mom. She’s still my mom, and I’m every day thankful for that. I’m here because, as Jesus said, you are all my mothers and brothers (Mark 3:33-35). You are stuck with me. I appreciate that when I show up, you hug me and smile and almost never stomp out of the room muttering.
But now for the harder stuff. I have some bigger issues with the church than being busy and having been shown the dirty laundry. The bigger issues are the ones that make me balk when asked to speak in church and the ones that make me hesitant to represent myself as a Christian when I’m not in church. I won’t get into the details of how I disagree with some of the interpretations of the word “Christian” and how it’s portrayed in the media. I won’t mention any of the historical “Christian” moments I so vehemently disagree with. Let me jump right to my own heart and, after many years, make my confession before you: the reason it’s really and truly surprising that I continue to participate in religion the way that I do is that I am not sure that there is a God. Yes, I was born into the United Methodist Church to parents who also grew up in the Methodist Church. I’ve been attending this church in particular for 32 of my 36 years, and I’ve never been really certain that you all aren’t completely deluding yourselves. So now it’s out there and you know it. It’s a very uncomfortable thing to say aloud anywhere, much less standing in the front of the church.
So then why church? Sure, the people here are my people, but I do have other ways of making friends and finding community. I belong to a running group and a concert band. I have friends from college. I could join the Geneva Mother’s Club and the school PTO. I could even come here only on Sundays, or better yet, just on the big holidays when everyone else is sure to be here too. Why spend a lifetime showing up to and reading about and talking about something that might not even exist?
Perhaps part of the answer is that I’m really hoping to be convinced. Those of you who have seen God, felt God, heard God, and claim to know Jesus are the kind of people I want to be. Sure, there are unappealing Christians in the world. But there are also Christians like Joan P and Judy B, and I wouldn’t mind being either one of them when I grow up. Sure, there have been terrible things done in the name of religion, but there have also been things like Kids Alive and Appalacia Service Project and Third Tuesday Suppers and all of the things that are happening in Taurage as a result of our church’s support. Missionaries have conquered and trampled and killed in the name of God, but they’ve also run homeless shelters and soup kitchens and built orphanages and drilled wells, no questions asked, and it seems to me that those are the people who are really following the Jesus I keep studying. I want to do those things too. I want the courage to love the world as much as the Bible claims God and Jesus do. I want to make it hurt less.
I take communion once a month along with the rest of you because even though I’m sometimes pretty skeptical about the existence of God or the reality of the resurrection, I still do want to sit down at a table where a guy like Jesus is host. I really really like what he did and said. I adore his stories. I like the God he claims to know. If there is a God, I hope he is as Isaiah says. I hope he cares less for the rituals than for the people who are sincerely and unintentionally hungry. I hope God is as Jesus claims and that he will chase after the one lost sheep even if that means leaving the rest of the others to take care of themselves for a while. I like the vision of the way the world would be if Jesus was, in fact, Lord.
I long for the world to look like the Kingdom of God. I like the thought of a world full of forgiveness and not violence, a world where no one needs to go hungry, a world where the most valuable possession one has is love. I ache for a world where no one feels like a widow or an orphan. I like the thought of love covering a multitude of sins, of love casting out fear. I may not be ready to leave my net full of fish and my father in the boat; I may not feel like I can leave my family or sell all of my possessions just yet, but it seems like as noble a goal as any to someday be like some of the people I’ve met while spending a lifetime in the church. And, quite honestly, I don’t know anyone outside the church as worthy of emulation as some of the mothers and brothers and sisters who have been in this room today.
Jesus promises, “Seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9). I stay in the church because I know that a person rarely finds something she isn’t taught to see. A couple of years ago, in trying to find the answer to a bizarre dysfunction in one leg, I saw a number of different medical professionals. The physical therapist found a muscle imbalance. The chiropractor discovered that my hips were out of alignment. The surgeon didn’t even examine me: he only looked at the MRI results that showed two herniated discs in my lower spine. The neurologist couldn’t find any reason for the problem at all and told me to just run. It was a very frustrating experience, but from it I saw firsthand that a person eventually finds what she has been trained to look for. For me, having sincere doubts is not a reason to leave the church. It’s the reason I stay.
So now you know. I am perhaps not who I seem to be. Perhaps, for me, a state of complete conviction is impossible. If that is the case, I imagine I will seek forever because equally impossible for me is the state of lazy capitulation to my doubts. I may sometimes doubt the existence of God, but about one thing I am sure. If there is a God, yours is it, and He’s the One who will seek out every last wandering sheep, even the ones who were lost while standing at the front of the church.
Amen.
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