new thoughts for me

I am the chair of the Conference Council on Youth Ministry – arguably the most fun conference council in South Texas! It is populated by students and adults who love young people and who work tirelessly to bring the Gospel of Christ to teens. I spent the last couple of days with my council in Marble Falls. We played together, worshiped, and did our annual planning.

During our morning worship, we were singing our praise to God. I was looking around the room at all the sweet faces of youth and adults who had just spent four exhausting weeks leading summer camps for all the kids in Southwest Texas. They had given of themselves to serve the Lord. We were in a spectacular spot on Lake LBJ. The sun was streaming in, the open water all around us, and the communion elements were on the table.

We had to improvise a little bit with the bread and juice. Somehow we had forgotten the elements. So, we found a grape Capri-sun – though it must have been white grape since the liquid looked more like apple juice. For the bread, we had a plain bagel.

The singing came to a close and painfully I shared what was on my heart:

We are here in a beautiful place and you are all such beautiful people. We are of one mind and one accord. The unity of the Spirit is among us. Our worship of God is easy in this place – and it should be. And it is real. But, it is not the only place we are called to serve. In truth, much of our work and worship is to be done in the sewers of the human spirit. And that is being generous. Most of the world – often even the church exists in the selfish sewer of human depravity. We spew filth on ourselves, on each other, on our God, and on his servants.

Worship and service to God is more often not in a place of beauty, but instead in a place of desolation and waste. Jesus didn’t come to save pretty people, he came to save those in the sewers. Jesus offered more than words – I confess that I often only offer words. Jesus told us the greatest love is the love that lays down his life for his friends, then he called us friends. More than just offering words, Jesus laid down his life for all people. By his sacrifice he made us – he made me – who are enemies of God by our sin – his friends. He mopped up our sewer stained lives and made us gleam as though brilliantly white.

Our faith is messy. Consider that the great symbol, the great memorial, the great mystery that binds us together with God comes in the form of a broken body and shed blood. Blood that pours from hands and head and side is the enabling agent of a new covenant of peace.

In my daily scripture readings this week, I read the following and was mightily convicted. I know I don’t live this as I should, but pray God I am learning and growing in it.

1 Corinthians 4:11-13: (Paul describing the apostles) “To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.”

And 1 Corinthians 4.20: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power.”