Just between us, this call to radical hospitality is exhausting, isn't it? Every Sunday morning we are expected to be on the lookout for all these new people, welcome them and even give them our seats if they wish to sit where we ALWAYS sit. Everyone will wonder if I am even in church if they don't see me sitting in the same place! Worse, sometimes I don't even know all of the news because I am on greeter detail, and everyone expects me to talk to all the new people. Thank goodness I am not a greeter every week! Still during the meet and greet, I feel like I need to be looking for the new people, because someone will bring it up in my small group. Going to church recently has just been a lot more work than I remember.
In addition now there is this need to find people who don't know Jesus, when I have spent all of my adult life avoiding them. I was supposed to choose my friends wisely, remember? You become like those you are around, I have been told hundreds of times. I was very intentional about finding good Christian friends. I love being with people who study the bible and want to talk about God! Now I am being challenged to find people who don't know God and develop a relationship with them. I tell you, it is wearing me out. Have you noticed that people who don't know Jesus don't even care about how often I read my bible, go to church or even my very spiritual small group???
Studying Luke's Gospel is also a challenge. It turns out I can't even invite my friends to a party, I have to invite people who can never throw a party on their own. I am supposed to go find the lost, friendless, disabled, poor. They are the people I need to be inviting to church, to the picnics, to my home. I just don't really know that many people who are poor, or friendless and I worry about people with disabilities. After all, what if something happens? Will I know how to help?
Who is the center of my life, I am being asked. It's Jesus, isn't it? I read the scripture, I pray, I go to worship regularly, I give to the church, I have even written checks to support missions. Surely God is the center of my life, Church. Surely!
I am finding less and less to support the idea that worship should be for me. I can find nowhere in the scripture where my preferences trump others. As I read about Paul and Barnabas and all of the first followers of Jesus, I can't find a good example of gathering in a group of believers and shutting out the world. Even when it was a life or death situation, they still talked about Jesus. I am more uncomfortable all the time.
What a season, Church! Why couldn't I have remained happy in my own little Christian world? Why on earth am I called to such a time as this? Because I have been blessed beyond measure and I am being invited to help see God's Kingdom come, God's will be done? Because I have been grafted into the Body of Christ, and as a child of God I can afford to be uncomfortable, since my security is absolute? Because I have been shaped and formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others?
You know, those seems like a valid reason. Being uncomfortable is...uncomfortable, but it is a small sacrifice compared to what we have been given, Church. How wonderful that God calls us to discomfort together. Life will be different in the days ahead, and no one likes change. Still, what if we are the people who, for such a times as this, transform the world? Would that be worth some discomfort? I think so, and my grandchildren will think so too.
Discomfort may be a new spiritual discipline. Or an old one revisited. It may even look good on us!
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