Loving a Church That Wounds

The woman sitting across from me holds a mug of steaming tea and decades of resentment. Years ago, a priest convinced her father that a woman could have no reason to pursue medicine, to become a doctor, and she could never forgive that priest or the church behind him for ripping away her dream. Traces of bitter disillusionment still eek out in her words.

What answer do you even give to a story like that? I nod, mutter, “I’m so sorry,” and listen clumsily. I try to give my presence to the pain. The only response I can offer to decisions made half a century ago is resist the urge to distance and defend myself and instead acknowledge that the reality of the blow still stings today.

Meanwhile, the unanswered questions brew in my mind, raging at how a Church that claims to be the ambassadors of God’s love for all humanity could inflict so much damage.

I wish her pain were more surprising. The truth is, a thousand versions of that same tale have likely been told in as many languages around the world. Like the rest of us, I’ve heard more than a few stories of harrowing hurt wrought under pristine steeples.

Not long ago, I sang with a crowded room of worshippers, more aware of the pain around me than ever before, and I wondered how any of us dared open our mouths for the weight of it. Manipulative power, cliquish division, pending divorce, broken confidence, gossiping condemnation, sexual assault, legal accusations, a child’s death, a friend’s betrayal. All packed into one room. All proclaiming the love of the Creator.

I couldn’t stop the burning question: How are you supposed to cherish a Church like this? 

Let’s not imagine Jesus would walk into our churches today without flipping more than a few tables.

I’m sitting in class reading about Christians disenfranchising their Muslim and Jewish neighbors in medieval Spain. I’m walking the streets where Castilian Spaniards forced conversions in ways that Jesus never did. Wouldn’t it be easy, though, if the damage done usurping the name of Christ the world over remained confined to history class? Last year, I sat with indigenous leaders in South America who talk about church as a synonym for ethnic oppression. The challenges that Martin Luther King, Jr., issued the White American church for its apathy in addressing racial injustice continue to ring true today. It’s happening everywhere, and it’s happening today in 2018.

A few years back I read a story that has haunted me since I opened the first page. As a sixteen-year-old girl, Anne Jackson was coerced into a relationship with her engaged youth pastor, the man who should have been shepherding her soul. After excruciating years spent coming to acknowledge her need for healing, the church that should have sheltered her instead dismissed her continued struggles and shut down her request to share her story. Readers might redirect the focus of her narrative to detract from the church’s authority, they explained. And so for years, she stayed silent.

Would a thousand Annes in a single city be enough for the church to open its ears to its victims? Or a man vying to claim political power by using the name of Christ, but unwilling to accept the authority of government or God in his own life as a sexual abuser of teenage girls?

When did our priority become defending institutionalized human church leaders? The veil tore; the Holy of Holies was opened, and soon afterwards the Holy Spirit descended upon the children of God to counsel and guide. Jesus is the one who gave us direct access to the Father, Jesus is the one we will answer at the judgment seat of Christ, and Jesus is the one who said His disciples would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. Is that ultimate truth strong enough to hold all this raging pain in full, honest view?

“Let us hold firmly to the faith we profess,” declares the author of Hebrews, “for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet He did not sin.”

We profess Christ’s righteousness, not our own. He sees and knows the pain each of us has experienced, and the pain each of us has inflicted. That may be the hardest part of all: admitting that along with con men and conquistadors, we, too, have abused the gospel of Christ.  Every single one of us is part of the problem. He alone is our cure.

It’s Jesus. Wholly Jesus. Always. Only. Ever. Jesus.

The moment we believe anything else – yes, even the Church body – is our solution, we are guaranteed disappointment. We are still the disciples who desert Him when He asks us to stay awake and pray. Amid our massive, complex Christian enterprises, we still often fail to give that simplest, most life-giving gift of our presence to those facing their own eleventh hour.

In these easily exhausted bodies, we are Christ-followers who still sleep-walk through our days. But that is what He told us would happen, with every day known and every day redeemed.

And yeah, I’ve hurt and I’ve been hurt. I’ve regretted thoughtless words, I’ve set unfair expectations, and I’ve valued my reputation above the needs of others. I’ve let others’ words and actions rip into me and wanted to walk right out of that body of believers without ever coming back, because even mundane situations can leave a brutal sting. Not one Christian platitude about happy forgiveness can whisk that ache away.

But in those moments, I’ve found spaces to press in closer to Him. When we see our human failings, we can strip away the superficial images superimposed on Christ, intentionally or not, by our human friends and mentors. We can lean into the living person of Jesus and realize that our faith was never about us anyway, and only ever about Love bleeding on a Cross. Those moments, those genuine, solitary, aching moments with no one around, offer no human reward. As a result, they can become some of the most raw and valuable, if we will only bring our bitter disappointment to Him.

He transforms and He redeems and He sets us standing firm on the craggy, jagged mountain peaks to witness all the thrilling grandeur of His created world in full sight.

I’ve seen it: He wants us to wrest away our trust in everything but Him and trade that pain for confidence in Him alone.

But I’ve seen, too, the beauty of the body alive with His life. As He refines and redeems again and again, I’ve seen how He uses His people to set hope in the hearts of the hurting and firmness in the feet of the falling. We can lead and learn from one another, holding each other accountable as we continually point each other back to the Father. We can make space for one another to bring our aching disappointments, and we can do the best, hardest work of humbling ourselves to ask one another’s forgiveness.

Through the twisting turns in each of our stories, we can love the body of Christ because the story’s not about us. It never has been and never will be. It’s about Him, His life pouring out into us.

Come Sunday morning, the disciples gathered praying, while the women sought out Jesus’ body to mourn in community. On that dawn His followers were wide awake to witness the wonder of the resurrection. Until we reach the land of endless day where all is light, we will sleep and we will wake, and in every waking we will proclaim together the unwavering glory of Christ.