This is an excerpt from Jesus Heist regarding the reality that we are all better off when we are real with one another and share our struggles. Otherwise, we end up hustling for attention and comparing our insides with other people's outsides. We as clergy know this best. Yet, we oftentimes struggle to be honest with each other about the reality of ministry. You can purchase the book here.
Excerpt from Chapter 10: Walking Together
Jean Vanier,
founder of the L’arche communities,[i]
believes it is a more nourishing to our human relationships when we share our
weakness and difficulties than when we share our qualities and successes.[ii]
When we bear witness to the cross in one another’s life, we recognize that “to
be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefore unloveable.” Vanier
continues, “Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are
desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the
inner pain.”[iii]
The work of Jesus is the work of seeing one another for who they and we really
are. We must quit the illusions of success and perfection. Instead we must own
our brokenness, our starvation, our suffering, our struggles, and our deep
poverty of spirit. In doing this, we are Christ to the other; we are genuinely
present for the other.
Vanier writes, “Jesus
is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick,
the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with
the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus”[iv]
This is a tragedy of course. That there is suffering in the world is tragic,
and that they should suffer alone is horrific. God in Christ Jesus upon the
cross steps into the suffering lives of people to bring about great healing.
This is the paradox of Christianity and the cross. So too when we step
alongside the lost and least. This living as Jesus, this being, and doing as
Jesus is how we are to make our way in the world. Rather than some kind of
moral law, Jesus offers us life with one another. In this, there is something
beyond a life of agony for all.
I believe that if we look at Jesus and his relating to others, we see this very different way of living, moving, and being in the world. The church that is challenged to be the ecclesia must learn to stop pretending righteousness in order to enter the world as Jesus does. Furthermore, we can’t expect anything in return—no butts in pews. We enter, witness, and are present at the foot of another’s cross. There is no bait and switch. We are simply giving up our safety and walking into the streets of Nanjing, come what may. We are giving up our safety and entering the fray of the world. After all, Jesus never promised safety. He did promise a cross. We walk into the wilderness with Jesus and we are going to do some things that will make our righteous friends raise eyebrows.
[i] L’Arche communities are residences where people with and without
intellectual disabilities share life together. You can read more about their
work here: http://www.larche.org/
[ii] Pamela Cushing, “To Be Fully Human,” Jean
Vanier, accessed May 13, 2016,
http://www.jean-vanier.org/en/his_message/jean_vanier_on_becoming_human/to_be_fully_human
[iii] Jean Vanier, Becoming Human (Paulist Press: New York, 1998), 10.
[iv] Jean Vanier, Community and Growth (Paulist Press: New York,
1989), 95.
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