This week we’ve been looking at various aspects of what it means to be the
church. Today, I want to address the paradox of how the church can be both
beautiful and ugly at the same time.
Jesus came into our fractured world to manifest the beauty of God’s reign and
revolt against the evil powers that separate us from God and others. He came to
revolt against and ultimately abolish every ugly wall that separates people from
one another, whether this wall is Western individualism, classism, racism or
religion. He came to end all hostility between individuals and people-groups
while creating “one new humanity” (Eph. 2:15).
The reign of God is manifested to the extent that we who follow Jesus
manifest and reflect this beautiful truth and revolt against the evil powers in
our lives, our society, and our world that work to fragment relationships and
isolate people.
The church is a kingdom community to the extent that it reflects and
participates in the beauty of God’s own triune being. But this doesn’t mean that
kingdom communities always look pretty.
“Pretty” is about how something looks. “Beauty” is about the way
something is.
The beauty of kingdom communities doesn’t reside primarily in how pretty they
appear. Their beauty rather resides in their authenticity grounded in love,
revealing what the members of the community actually are. And the way we
actually are is sometimes not very pretty.
To illustrate, I think my own small group community is beautiful. But it
certainly hasn’t always been pretty! There have been times when different people
in the group have felt misunderstood, excluded, mistreated, disrespected, judged
or offended. We always love each other, but sometimes we experience deep
conflict and pain. There’s been a few times when I personally simply wanted to
opt out.
Now, our group could have easily avoided these ugly episodes by simply
keeping things superficial and hiding hurt feelings behind a polite smile. We
could have decided to look pretty. It’s my impression that this is how most
people relate most of the time, especially in churches. Yet, while this
superficiality may keep a group looking pretty, it’s actually profoundly ugly.
For this isn’t authentic. This isn’t healthy. This isn’t loving. And for this
reason, this isn’t kingdom.
If we are to truly reflect God’s love in the way we relate together, we must
start by being committed to truth, even when the truth is ugly. God’s love is
neither superficial nor duplicitous. To the contrary, God’s love always tells
the truth.
Think about this. Jesus’ death on Calvary is the ultimate expression of God’s
love, and it’s the single most honest statement in all of history. It’s the
ultimate example of God “speaking the truth in love,” which is a practice
disciples are called to imitate (Eph. 4:15). On Calvary, God speaks the painful
truth about us as well as the beautiful truth about
himself.
On Calvary God speaks the truth about us by demonstrating that we are sinners
who were so desperately lost it required our Creator becoming a human, dying on
the cross and experiencing the full brunt of our bondage to sin and the devil in
order to save us. The ugliness of the barbaric crucifixion of the sinless Son of
God exposes the true ugliness of our rebellious nature and our bondage to
rebellious powers.
At the same time, on Calvary God speaks the beautiful and honest truth that,
despite our ugly sin, he sees us as possessing unsurpassable worth, as evidenced
by the fact that he was willing to pay an unsurpassable price to redeem us. And
in demonstrating the truth about our sinfulness and unsurpassable worth, God
demonstrates the ultimate beautiful truth about himself.
On Calvary, God reveals that he’s the kind of beautiful God whose love will
not let anything ugly get in his way. He’s the kind of beautiful God who
continues to love and pursue us, despite our ugly sin and self-imposed bondage
to the powers. He’s the kind of beautiful God who is willing to do anything it
takes (and it took everything) to reconcile us to himself. And he’s the
kind of beautiful God who is willing to cross an infinite distance to enter into
our humanity and the excruciating ugliness of our sin (2 Cor. 5:21). On Calvary
God reveals the beauty of the perfect love he eternally is, precisely because on
Calvary God was willing to enter into the ugliness of our sin.
On Calvary God “speaks the truth in love”—which is why Calvary is at once the
ugliest and most beautiful event in history.
Now, where God reigns, it looks like Jesus. So, to the extent that God reigns
in a church, this community will manifest the revoltingly beautiful honesty of
Calvary. It will be a community of people who “speak the truth in love.” It will
be a community of people who confront their own and each other’s ugliness. It
will be a community of people who are willing to suffer in love as they work
through their own ugliness and each other’s ugliness. And, for this reason, it
will be a community of people who reflect the revolting beauty of God’s
love.
Communities that forego this difficult honesty and rather insist on looking
pretty preclude genuine community. Not only this, but their duplicity fosters
emotional and spiritual sickness. Everything that needs addressing and healing
is hidden, and, as John Bradshaw once said, wounds that are concealed are wounds
that cannot be healed. By contrast, kingdom communities are beautiful precisely
because they’re willing to be ugly. They replicate the beauty of the love of the
triune God who revealed his beauty by diving headlong into the ugliness of our
rebellion. And for this reason kingdom communities are healing.
When people are in communities where being loved isn’t conditioned by how one
appears, one is able to risk being real about wounds and imperfections. And this
openness and honesty is a crucial step in overcoming those wounds and
imperfections.
Certainly my group doesn’t manifest this sort of kingdom love and honesty
perfectly. Like everybody else, we are all works in process. But we have a level
of honesty and vulnerability I’d previously never imagined. And, consequently, I
have personally experienced a level of healing I previously didn’t even know I
needed.
- Greg Boyd
No comments :
Post a Comment