Jesus Came to Save and Not to Condemn
Many people, if not most people, carry a crippling sense of shame and unworthiness. We are like dogs with our tails between our legs, waiting for a cruel and unpredictable owner to whip us for some real or imagined fault. I sometimes wonder if it is because we so often experience the conditionality of love. I will only love you if… We may not articulate it as blatantly as that but how many carry childhood scars because they were made to feel not as good or valuable as a sibling or classmate because they weren’t as good at sport, or academics, or looked or sounded different to other children.
Our vision is to be a welcoming and inclusive community, open to all who seek to encounter the love of Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether you are good at sport or academics or climbing the corporate ladder or fat or tall or short or thin or black or white or male or female or basically, anything. I believe that when our community is truly welcoming one, we can help people heal those wounds and overcome those feelings of shame and unworthiness.
I think it is worth reflecting on how it is we can help people experience the true face of the God who loves us so much that he would send his Son to suffer and die for us. I can preach it all I like from the pulpit but unless we as a community put flesh to those words the wounded will not be healed, those who feel unloved will never feel affirmed.
Words of judgement are some of the most painful, damaging and corrosive words that exist, and I think go against our purpose, or to be more exact, against the purpose of the means of communication God has given us. In Moral Theology there is a concept called “Natural Law”, that things were created for a purpose and to go against that purpose is unnatural. Most people misconstrue and misuse it around sexual ethics, but we can use those that principle to ask ourselves what the lips are made for… to speak words that heal, build up, confirm, bring into a new relationship with God. Anything else is unnatural, a wrong use of the faculty of communication that God has given. Isn’t theology amazing ☺
So, on this second Sunday where we are focusing on the vision we are creating in our parish, what kinds of questions are we left with? Maybe questions like how can we make love and kindness, compassion and friendship, resonate through all we do? How can we feed the faith our brothers and sisters in our common worship and our acts of service?
If these are the kinds of questions you have asked yourself as you have sat in our pews, then you have been asking yourself vision related questions. What vision do you have for our parish and is this something that excites you and makes you want to be part of it?
