If there has been any spiritual question that has been plaguing my mind lately it is this one:
"What are you doing?"
This question being directed to God of course. In the Missional Leader, Alan Roxburgh says that one of the things we are called as we face the unraveling of our culture is to look around where we are and begin to identify what it is God is up to. Sounds easy enough until you start asking the question and looking around. The more I see, the question because less "What are you doing?" and more "Are you doing anything??"
Where the question has led me is toward the continuous re-evaluation of who God is and how God functions in our world. If we want to know what God is up to, it seems like we better have some sort of idea of who God is and how God acts in our world. While I feel like I spend a lot of time in the presence of soemthing Holy, something greater than myself...I am still searching, learning, listening. And if I have a masters degree in trying to learn more about who God is and I am confused then I wonder how confused the other people are...
...or have they stopped searching? Embracing superficial spiritual band-aids like "everything happens for a reason" or "God never gives more than we can handle." As my mom so bluntly pointed out at a recent church meeting, "you do know that isn't in the Bible, right?" Or just plain writing off the possibilities of a divine power?
I used a quote in my sermon this Sunday about how we need to begin to ask ourselves are we becoming more of the people God is calling us to be or less? How we answer that question depends very much on how connected we are to our world, to one another, and to that divine power which I believe is manifest in our world as a reliable yet random source of grace and love. It calls us to examine the world around us and search for what, if anything, is God up to? In all the chaos, in all the loss, where is our loving and faithful God?
As I reflect on the recent murders in Arizona, as I remember the tradegies happening chronically around the world, I have to ask myself...How have we become so disconnected? So lost? That we would forget what it means to be human? And that we would be unable to see God, even if just for a moment?
A fellow clergy person posted an article today that analyzed the relationship between the current political rhetoric in the extreme right and the violence that occured this past weekend...a person quickly posted in response; "was she serious? crazy people are going to do these things regardless of political rhetoric!"
Maybe it is our ability to compartimentalize the events of our lives that has disconnected us from one another and from God. But I truly believe, Everything Matters. If the Holy Spirit acts as a light within each of us it makes sense that God's power is impaired when we deny the importance of our connectionalism, when we are apathatic to the consequences of our actions, or likewise stubbornly refuse to play witness to the implications these actions have on one another. It has made me think that, perhaps, God is waiting for us to connect the dots. Like that Christmas light string..when one bulb goes out the whole thing doesn't work?
The work of Christians can be as simple as connecting that light which already exists inside each one of us and with that taking responsiblity for the things we say and for the things we don't say. In the Kingdom of God, that which as Progressive Christians we strive to create in this place and at this time, all losses matter and all are held accountable. God calls us to repentence, out of our disconnectedness and into community. Breaking boundaries, holding hands, speaking out and shutting up...this is no utopia. This is the Kingdom of God.
It isn't an original thought to believe that God is in the brokenness. That is Biblical. It's what God is doing with that brokenness that interests me and how I can be a small part of that. I'm keeping my eyes open, even when its embarrassing or uncomfortable or painful. That I might see more clearly the light of God's healing power in the darkness of our broken world. But in all this connectional displacement God's sending us a message...we are it: the hope for the future and the promises for a new way. There are no exemptions. We all count.
In all this mess, in all this jagged brokenness, is a challenge to the Light Holders of this Age: Let's gather together and admit that we count...let's connect in new ways, across new terrain and through new language, that for all who have eyes, God's actions might be just a little easier to see.
