That Moment You Call Yourself Out

Ever have one of those moments when you're preaching and you suddenly find yourself inadvertently calling yourself out in the sermon you're preaching?

I had that moment Sunday.

After a tense conversation with some friends about a Mother's Day post in which I voiced my frustration of our hypocrisy, I found myself deleting a sentence I had just written, "If you have a problem with my attitude or my thought, then either unfriend me or hide me. I don't care which." Sentences, such as that, come out of frustration and should not carry any weight to them, but they do.They carry a lot of weight and even if we do not mean them, we still said it. Despite what John Mellencamp says, what we in fact do say does matter just as much as what we do.

I didn't think much of that statement, since I thought better of it and did not post it, until I preached this sentence, "We cannot live absent of one another thus we must live in the tension of our hypocrisy, no matter how frustrating it can be. We are bound together in Christ and to the world." I came to the full realization in that moment, as I looked out into the congregation, how easy it has become to remove people from our lives. All it takes now is a click of a mouse and we can choose to no longer be connected to one another.

I have unfriended many on Facebook and I have been unfriended by many as well. I have unfriended for many different reasons: from annoyance, politics, racist posts, ignorance, etc. I have hidden people from my timeline due to their insistence I vote for someone or re-post some picture that tells me if I love Jesus I'll re-post and if I don't, I'll go to hell. I have left groups both open and closed and I have left social circles because I was done with arrogance and egos.

Some of those decisions, you can claim, were done for appropriate reasons, and some were not. The truth remains, we cannot escape one another. We deeply connected even when we wish were not. We cannot escape one another.

In the movie, "The Mask of Zorro" Diego de la Vega tells Alejandro not to chase after Capt. Love. He tells him to be patient and wait for Love to come into his circle. Recently I have become fascinated by the concept of a social circle, especially has mine begins to expand. If we are living life together, and are bound to one another, than I cannot remove someone from my circle once they enter into it. Once they become a part of my life, I cannot simply exile them, they are now a part of the circle for better or worse. Thus it is true what Bonhoeffer says, "...for we are members of one body not only when we want to be, but in our whole existence. This not a theory but a spiritual reality that is often experienced in the Christian community with shocking clarity, sometimes destructively and sometimes beneficially."

It is hard to remain in community with one another, especially given how we've come to understand it. We operate in a lot ways so much like the world that we are doing more harm to our community than good. We seek to exile the sinner, the weak from our community because they remind us of our own weakness. In doing so, we bring death to the community for the community cannot live without the weak. It is important to remember that "In suffering and enduring human beings, God maintained community with them."

If God has maintained community with human race then are we, God's people, followers of Christ, not supposed to do the same? Are we not supposed to maintain community with one another even when all we want to do is slam the door and leave?

I know I fall victim to the line of thought that removes others from my circle but I was reminded in a dream last night that the Christian community circle is far greater than any circle I could conjure. The dream went like this:

I awoke inside a run down town home in south Richmond and I noticed my shoes had holes in them. I left to walk to the store to buy a new pair. When I got to the shoe store, a few miles away, I struggled to find a pair that fit. Nothing would work. Every shoe in the place was a size 4 and I needed a size 11. Finally, I discovered the right shoe and the right fit. I picked them up and an employ stopped me, "Sorry, sir but you do not have any money to buy these shoes. I am going to ask that you put them back."

I was shocked. How did he know I didn't have any money? I frantically searched my pockets and my wallet was not with me. I put the shoes back and proceed back to my apartment. Feeling the sense of urgency I room the distance and return back to the place where my apartment was but it was no longer there. I was now broke and homeless. I was alone.

Wandering the streets, three men appeared beside me, each bearing a striking resemblance to a few Unidiversity ministers. They proceeded to put new shoes on my feet and guided me to a car I had never owned and there in the glove compartment was my wallet and a key. I started the car and then I woke up.

An odd reminder of the importance of the Christian community.