Not fixers, but creators

The risk of being a Christian that cares about justice is that we can easily define ourselves by the people we serve. We need the poor, the oppressed, the marginalised, for our sense of identity. These people become the sole focus of our work, and it is through them at we get our sense of worth.

This is an unhealthy state of affairs. It is actually a kind of co-dependence, and a disincentive to eliminate poverty, oppression and marginalisation. If there are no poor to serve, then what will I do? How will I enact my faith? How can I understand who I am?

"Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world's greatest need", writes theologian Frederick Buechner. I like this definition. It says that vocation based purely on the needs of others is no vocation at all. It must be met by something else: our own passion. I understand passion to mean a kind of creative impulse: a desire to make music, an imperative to write beautiful computer coding, a wish to connect deeply with others in conversation, an urge to drive a car so fast you feel like you're flying. Mix those things with the world's greatest needs, then you have a vocation:

A musician plays guitar and sings in a nursing home, causing people who can barely walk to get up and dance.

A computer engineer writes software to help doctors keep track of their patients.

A socialite talks to people on the train, and soon the whole carriage is talking.

A car-enthusiast takes a young boy, who doesn't have a dad, for a run in his V8.

Ultimately, it is our passion, our desire to built, grow, create and breathe life, that enables us to keep doing the work we do. If we are faced with only the great burdening mass of need in the world, and have no passion, then we have no ability to bring life. And we face our own deaths in this process as well. 

We are called not to fix, but to create.

The daily grind of 'sin'

When I was a kid I had a Kids’ Bible, which contained boxes with queries, discussions and kid-related dilemmas. I remember one of them, which posed the question: “If God forgives me of my sin, then what does it matter if I keep on sinning?”

I can’t remember the full content of the ‘answer’, but the Kids’ Bible raised a good question, which I’m sure many of us have considered at one time or another. It can be a theological dilemma that adults have struggled with as well.

I think that the quandary comes from our focus on Jesus as the means of forgiveness for past sins. Through Jesus’ death, we are cleansed of our sin, we are justified before God, and now we are reconciled for eternity.

Although this is true, it is only half of the story. Because after Jesus died, he was resurrected – showing us that life with Jesus had only just begun. With the emphasis on the work of Jesus’ death, we sometimes forget about the call of salvation through Jesus’ life. As Paul puts it:

“For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Romans 5.10).

For all the talk of ‘sin’ in our churches, I think we sometimes forget that we are still sinners. Redeemed sinners – yes – but this is just the beginning. The call to discipleship is a daily renunciation of all that is dark, all that causes death, in our individual and collective lives.

I fear that it is precisely our theology of ‘sin’ that causes us to be blind to its presence in our lives and in the world. By telling ourselves that Jesus has dealt with sin – because, in a way, he has – we forget that it continues on, causing damage and death. Christians fail to treat each other with love, fail to stand up for justice. And we find ourselves caught in systems that oppress and exploit. Though we are reconciled with God, we are still gripped by sin.

It is almost as if we ‘externalise’ the sin in our lives, and use others as scapegoats for the sin that still lurks in our hearts. So we demonise others: people who are gay, women who have had abortions, or for the more ‘progressive’ of us, Liberal Party politicians. Sinners are people who are not like us, we tell ourselves.

Many of us fall into the trap of believing that because we have been redeemed from sin, we no longer need to think about its presence in our lives. We live in a culture where ‘sin’ as a concept is out of vogue, and we like to think of ourselves as victims instead. For all of our talk about us being ‘sinners’, I think that we in the church are liable to make the same mistake.

Reconciliation with God has been achieved, and now comes the hard part: of walking beside Jesus in his life, day by day. Life with Jesus is life in abundance – but we must deal daily with the reality of our sin. 

Death defying act

In the hospital room banter,

We find life defying death. 

Ash Wednesday

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." (from Psalm 51)

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent. It is a time of burning, of letting go, of gathering the ashes. It is a time to remember that we are, in our essence, ashes: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust". For all of our aspirations, all of our pride, all of our power, all of our worth...we are dust. Ash Wednesday reminds us of that.

Lent is a time for letting go of the things that we use to surround our vulnerabilty, and to let ourselves be fully, simply human. Lent is a time for laying bare our broken spirits, for it is in our broken spirits that God works.

As new life grows in ashes, so does light enter the cracks of our spirits. But I'm getting ahead of ourselves. Today is but the first day - a 'burning off' to prepare for the journey. Forty days of travel with Jesus. The jouney ends at the cross...the resurrection is a long, long way off.

For now we are ashes. 

Loyalty or fidelity?

Is there a difference between loyalty and fidelity?

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