Involved

Church, I have a confession. I am a loner by nature. A wallflower who likes other people, but I have a rich inner-world I’m largely preoccupied with. I tend to stay to the edges. Groucho Marx gave me the motto for my soul when he said, “I would never be a part of a group that would accept me as a member.” I’m too much of a jock for the geeks, and too geeky for the jocks. I can mix metaphors of both, like saying “The Browns are like the Hufflepuff of the AFC North. They try really hard, and we like them, but that’s gonna be about it.” Not many get that metaphor. And of course I think it’s really clever.

All that is to say that I don’t have a natural need to be involved with other people. I have enough interests to keep myself busy and out of trouble. I wouldn’t need community save for sports and game nights. I could keep to my own highly cultivated circle of friends and social bubbles. I am not alone in this. It is natural to want to be around folks who look and think like you. There is a downside to this, however.

We are seeing a nation divided not just on political lines, but also divided on what constitutes a fact. Those who accept science and who doesn’t. It’s not that we don’t agree on the data, it’s that we have completely different sets of data and methods of interpreting them. And folks are actively calling people names outside of their highly cultivated bubble. Dehumanizing others.

This is the wrong way to go.

I speak as one who is recovering from this behavior. Recovering is the key word here, not recovered. I like what I like. I think I’m right. If I thought I was wrong, I wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing, voting the way I’m voting, etc. But the world is a little larger. For a long time, I was afraid of change and the wider world. I could barely figure out why my life was the way it was in the little village of Dennison. The wider world was a scary place filled with lies, evil corporations, and corrupt politicians who were in a secret satanic cult that wanted you to believe we landed on the moon. No one really taught me this, but it’s how my mind sorted the world and made sense of it. And it extended to everything. If I was in the circle, then it was inherently superior to any other circle.

Growing up, I thought that all Catholics were good, and everyone else was bad. Until my favorite teacher turned out to be… gulp… Protestant. Mrs. Keithley in the 4th grade. It blew my mind.

Browns fans are better than Steelers fans. Cavs fans better than Bulls fans. Those are pretty tame examples. Catholics are the best Christians. But I guess Protestants make good teachers… So maybe they’re okay… And Christianity is the best religion, all others were going to hell. Until I went to high school and we had a lot of Hindus in our school. And they were great people. Wait a second.

I grew up with Polish jokes and Italian jokes. Those were pointed, but could be laughed away. All the worst jokes were reserved for the black and brown people. No matter how I added it up, the math was the same: white people of any background were still better than black and brown people. Until I met my best friend Mauricio, who immigrated from Colombia. I met him on our 8th Grade trip to Washington, D.C. We didn’t speak each other’s languages very well, but we both liked to make funny drawings. That’s how we bonded.

And we had a family friend of Mel. He worked for the water company. My mom worked on his car. He was funny, smart, and a hard worker. As was my classmate Greg. They didn’t fit the black stereotypes that I had heard. The bottom fell out of all those stereotypes in college, where I was exposed to even more people.

My wiring hasn’t changed. I still am content to be on my own, or in the circles of my choosing. Yet I have changed my behavior and I seek out community mostly due to the fact that God chooses to be involved with us. Even when the world was at its worst, God chose to be in relationship with Noah. And then in Jesus, to be in relationship with all people.

My friend the Rev. Jon Komperda reminded me of just how involved God is in our lives. He said that when we were trying to build the Tower of Babel, create one monoculture all in one tower, God made it fall. God loves diversity. No matter who you are, you are a beloved child of God. Does this mean all sin is good? By no means! But grace outpaces sin.[1]

The good news is that God is involved in our lives. God has been tearing down my categories. Urging me to be more involved with people. I can’t be hateful toward a whole group of people if they are involved in my life and I am involved in theirs. The main place I work all this out is HERE. It’s by being church with you.

Church is how the world is humanized for me. Our sole issue is to spread compassion and not judgment in the world. To widen our circles until we cannot dehumanize another human. I don’t know if you know me, but I get really judgy. I am quick to offer my opinion. First to put my foot in my mouth. This is how I learn. I offer what I think and others say, “Well… I don’t know about that. Have you thought of this? Have you considered this? Here’s a story where the opposite is true!”

I’m open to being corrected as that’s how I become involved in God’s wider world. A world blessed and created by a God of love. It’s not as scary of a place because I’ve found that THOSE EVIL GROUPS OUT THERE are actually my neighbors. And they’re looking to help, not harm. 9 times out of 10, people want to help. I met most of these types of people at church. I’m involved in their lives, and they in mine. I’ve met very few folks who are only in it for themselves.

This is God’s design. It’s way harder to hate your neighbor that way. So when I look at the rainbow, I am reminded not to flood the world with my opinion. To not wash away all of the groups of people I don’t like or act like me. Instead, I’m reminded that our God is a God of diversity who wants us to be involved in one another’s life. All the colors of the rainbow. And more colors we can’t even see or imagine! That’s pretty cool.

Yet there is a limit to this. I said 9 out of 10, so what about the 1 out of 10 who are in it for themselves. Those who are actively dehumanizing and advocating violence against others have to change their ways. And how we witness to them matters. The way of the world is often “I will conquer and kill for this idea” where the narrow way of Christ is the exact opposite, “I will live and die for this idea.”

There are those out there who are saying that they will conquer and kill for this candidate or the other. That their way will bring about the best result, and it is almost always through excluding groups that are declared undesirable. Yet Christ’s way includes and humanizes the undesirables. The undesirables are who Christ is born to, who visits him in the manger, who he sits at table with, and who he appears to after his resurrection.

In Christ, God is not some abstract idea. God is with us. And Jesus is saying to us, “I want to be involved in your life. And I want you to be involved in your neighbors. Every. Single. Neighbor.” This is good news for our day. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1][1] See Romans 6:1-4

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