Gospel opens door to world around us
As a standby passenger called to board at the last minute, I rushed into the cabin of the plane, the attendant almost closing the door on my backside. Breathless, I found my seat and collapsed into it. Before I could regain any semblance of composure the lady beside me smiled and thanked me for being an answer to her prayers. I wondered what in the world she had been praying for, given my awkward arrival. Then it hit me – my clerical collar – an automatic door opener for conversation.
The collar does that, invites conversation. It’s one reason I wear it when traveling and the reason some clergy do not. On that day it invited a trip-long conversation about God with a person eager to tell her story. I offered an ear, which was welcomed, and later told a faith story of my own. The encounter meant something. The invitation was automatic. As I look back on it, I am thankful.
The real story of course is not about collars, but about being the Church. It is about being reminded, all of us, that the calling of every congregation, of every Christian, is to live and serve in a way that without qualification opens the door into conversation, into questions of faith, for those who already believe and for those who wish they could. No one should have to wonder whether their questions and stories are welcome and can be told. It is in consistently opening the door to the world around us, to the celebrations and to the cries, that we live out our calling.
Our Diocesan Convention theme this year is “Living a Scandalous Gospel.” It is a theme I promoted and am enthusiastic about. We will have time at Convention to flesh this out and to grapple with what is scandalous about the Gospel of Jesus, what it says to us and calls us into. For if we are not scandalized by it we may well be missing the point.
To live our faith in a way that signals to others an invitation to conversation can be inconvenient to be sure. I had other plans for my flight; i.e., an Inland article to write, a presentation to prepare. Both had to wait. The One who called himself gate, who is the true door opener, seemed to have had other plans – the kind that extend well beyond an airplane encounter to the world, to the voices calling to be heard and to the needs begging to be met.
While one cannot begin to cover the scope of what “Living a Scandalous Gospel” means, we can at least look at one way Jesus was a scandal to those around him, by caring about those others did not.
At a time when 24 hour news cycles are consumed with the style of glasses a Vice Presidential nominee wears or the hair transplants of the other V.P. nominee, it somehow seems naive, out of touch or misguided to actually care that people in India have no water to drink; that an Anglican Bishop in Sudan must walk five miles through life threatening territory to communicate to the outside world; or that a working woman in this country spoke last evening about preparing to sleep in her car for the first time and for days to come.
You and I can name the needs. In fact, not to do so and to then act on them is itself scandalous. May we challenge ourselves and each other to follow wherever Jesus leads.
