Don't step on the crack!!

I shared a kid’s story on Sunday called ‘Don’t Step on the Crack!’ For as long as I can remember I have had fun with walking along a footpath or what ever and trying not to step on the cracks. When I come to a pedestrian crossing I usually make a decision on whether I step on the white line or the black, or live really dangerously and put my foot on both at once! Some of the stripes these days are well apart – or it could be my advancing years – and you sometimes have to actually jump to make it. Stupid stuff I know and one of these days I may grow out of it; but don’t hold your breath!

The point to my telling the story was that often within the life of the church you find yourself trying to avoid stepping on cracks. Just the other day I realized that I had got the protocol wrong for a committee that I have been leading; another crack stepped on and another dose of forgiveness sought! A lot of the time, if you are not careful, you find yourself second guessing everything that you do. ‘If I do this will it offend so and so? If I don’t do this I am bound to upset Mrs Kafoops.’

Then I read the stories of Jesus and reflect on the transformed lives of people that he met and touched and I begin to wonder. ‘What if we put aside all of the stuff that binds and constrains us and we determined to experiment living with and through Jesus?’ What difference would it make? What might be some of the marks of this kind of life?

I think that we would be a lot more transparent. Remember those times when Jesus just knew what people were really thinking? In pastoral leadership I often find myself having to second guess people. Many clearly have a very high opinion of ministers as they seem convinced that one of our major gifts is that of being able to read minds. As best as I know I try to be a model for being transparent. On Sunday someone said that they enjoyed my humanness and honesty. Well, I spent way too many years not liking my own humanness and being grossly dishonest to waste time nowadays masking it.

Whenever I read the stories of Jesus I am struck by the vulnerability of his journey. The very act of God becoming one of us is surely the ultimate act of vulnerability? As one who started a church plant five years ago from almost nothing, I am encouraged that Jesus hardly got a flying start at ministry either. Moses had Aaron to give him a hand and we know that Paul served under a leading teacher of the day; but Jesus it seemed was simply the local carpenter. I wonder what it was like for him in those first months as he left home and went to the Jordan to be baptized and then tested in the wilderness. Let’s remember that ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ was finally killed as a common criminal in what looked much more like a crushing defeat than any kind of victory.

When I worked for a short time with God’s Squad, the Christian Bikers gang, they wore a badge that read ‘Jesus – friend of sinners.’ I think that the church has still got a lot to learn from Jesus about openness. We are often too quick to judge and risk turning our backs on the very people that Jesus died for.

Finally I think that we can learn a lot from Jesus about being a people of prayer. One of the most powerful passages of Scripture for me is where we read of Jesus saying

Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

Luke 22:31,32

As one who has failed as much as – maybe more than most - anybody, I want to be a person who prays for someone in their struggles rather than be the one who smiles rather smugly and says ‘I told you so.’

If we can seek to build an authentic church community that seeks to manifest the above qualities in their personal and corporate lives, I wonder what sort of church we would offer to God and the people that we meet. We probably wouldn’t worry so much about stepping on cracks or any stray egg shells.