I have had several conversations this week about disillusionment. As a general rule the statement that has been made has had a fairly negative connotation attached to it, as in “I’m disillusioned with the church.” Meaning of course that the church isn’t what they thought it would be and generally speaking that it is messier, more complicated, or not nearly as fun. I made that statement once to a professor in the seminary and he said, “Thank God you are finally disillusioned. How do you think we can get more people to be disillusioned?”
As you can imagine that was not the response I was expecting but as the conversation continued I began to understand. We need more people who have no false illusions about what the church is or isn’t. We need more people who know full well that a church made up of people will certainly be messy and that a gathering full of diverse people will be inherently complicated. And we need far more people that recognize that being the church is not about entertainment but about a deliberate living towards God’s dream, which is sometimes fun but often a lot of work.
I have become disillusioned with the process of claiming and forming my identity in Christ. I used to have the illusion that when someone became a follower of Christ that they were supernaturally transformed into a person who was kind and generous, patient and hopeful, able to easily put others first and fluent in the scriptures. However, I have been disillusioned and now have no (or not as many) false illusions about the ease of this process. I now understand that if I want to become a follower of Christ that it will require a lifetime of deliberate decisions and simply put…a whole lot of work.
However, let me encourage you that the hard work does pay off and along the way we do see results. In fact just last week, after years of work trying to be a Christian when I get behind the wheel of a car, when someone pulled out in front of me I yelled at the top of my lungs, “You scared me!” I couldn’t believe I said it…it was a miracle. My spontaneous response included no cursing and did not attack the other drivers’ character. For the first time after years of work deliberately choosing to say words that were different than the ones in my head, it appears at least on this occasion that the words in my head had changed.
As we seek to form our identity in Christ, let’s become disillusioned about its ease and let’s begin the difficult work together. Let’s choose kindness, decide to be generous, work on our patience, keep hope in full view, opt to put others first, and take the scriptures off the shelf and read them together.
This morning at 10:30 we gather for Chapel to hear from Reverend Alise Barrymore, former campus pastor of North Park University and current Lead Pastor at The Emmaus Community in Chicago Heights www.theemmauscommunity.org/. She is a friend of North Park, an eloquent communicator of God’s word and most importantly a follower of Jesus Christ who has committed herself to this difficult and deliberate work.
Shalom Aleichem.
