Acceptance Begets Love

                I attended the new membership class at our new church today.  It is a Methodist church that hired my wife to lead the worship team about 6 months ago. We went around the room for the first half of the class and people talked about their faith walk and how they had come to attend this church. Many people expressed that they felt welcome and how the members of this church were so warm and friendly to them. The new pastor touched on some of the core beliefs in the church.  Most important of these is to walk out Jesus’ love to the world in practical ways.  She mentioned the major Christian creeds and they are not required. I was especially relieved because I have some core issues with the Nicene and Apostolic Creeds which many churches require you to agree with, publicly, in order to become a member.  After the class I went up to talk with the new pastor. I started out, “I’ll join, if you take me. I have some pretty unorthodox beliefs.”  She smiled and spoke with me for a few minutes, sharing one of her less widely accepted beliefs.  And she shared how she doesn’t preach from it when she does her sermons. And then she said reassuringly, “you don’t preach from where you are.”  This hit me at the core of my worry.  You see, one of the things on the sheets that we filled out ways we are interested in serving.  I saw the teaching Adult Sunday School option and heard a voice saying, “you’ll never do that.  Your beliefs are too unconventional.”  Her comment went right to the core of this worry.  Maybe I could use my seminary training to teach even though some of my beliefs would not be accepted.  I don’t have to go to that place to encourage people to discover scripture speaking to them. You see, in the book I have recently written I detail my unorthodox beliefs for all the world, especially non-Christians, to see. I believe that some of these less traditional views which I have found in some believers and in seminary will throw the doors of the church wide open for people who are leery of the Christian church.  But I also worry that they won’t be accepted in my church and it will cause problems for my wife in her position as a worship leader.  Behind this negative worry is the feeling that I won’t be accepted for who I am with what I believe.

                But the pastor’s comment went right to the core of this worry and relieved it. I believe that exchange is no less than God being present in bodily form on earth.  You see, it is widely accepted in Christian circles that God is triune, three parts that are in constant relationship with each other.  People say these parts are Father, Spirit, and Son (Jesus).  Which I do believe.  But I also believe there is a lot of wiggle room in that illustration because there is a lot of wiggle room in scripture when you don’t read it in black and white. And we also say that Jesus’s body is now the community of believers here on earth: the church.  When we had our exchange, the love of God came through her in our relationship and spoke directly to a worry deep inside of me: the fear of not being accepted when I show who I truly am.  And it rippled out into my life.  When I went to have a smoke after the meeting I pulled out my phone to connect with my wife who had gone home with our baby to take their traditional Sunday-afternoon nap.  I texted her briefly about my exchange with the pastor and how it made me feel.  Then I had a thought: what can I do to show my wife love?  I was listening to a Sara McLaughlin song on the way to the gas station where she pleads with God to accept her dying husband when “he comes to your door.”  The song is about a woman’s strong love for her cherished husband.  This song was in the back of my mind when I texted my wife “I would like to write for a while today.  What do you want to do?  Maybe I can take our daughter for an hour or something.”  On the way home she called and said that our daughter would not go down for a nap so she didn’t get hers.  I knew she must be tired as we get up at 6:00am to get to the church for her worship practice.  I told her I could take the baby while she rested.  It turned out that she suggested that when the babysitter came over for our “date” later that evening, she would sleep and I could go out to write.  Then we can have some time together after the baby goes to sleep.  The small offering of love I made, that came out of the love of God shared through my pastor, spoke to my wife as well.  And we may have some difficult things to talk about tonight, but I am going to show her this blog post.  I think it will set the tone for our conversation.  All this came from a small offering of love by one Christian to another.  How much more of a difference it makes when we share the love of God in tangible, person-centered ways to the people of this world who are hurting or in trouble or dire straits.  And how much can just a little comment out of an attitude of love change life for someone.  This is the community that God exists in: the community of relationships between people.  He is love and he is real.  He is on display any time one person gets outside themselves and offers love, even in the smallest way, to another human being.  Or to any living thing capable of relationship.  That is the God of the bible.  That was God in Jesus.  And that is my God too.  That’s one of the reason’s I love God and I see this truth of him in scripture.  And I see it all around me every day: the more I can take off my blinders to it, the more I become part of this community of love.  I want to take off those blinders and rid myself of all the ugliness that is inside.  But God is going to do it for me – through the love others offer to me. And in Jesus’ time his radical acceptance of others was experienced as no less than God’s love incarnate.  And you know what? It was.