a thought on grace

I remember feeling like I had reached an unreconcilable divide when my home church painted the cross white (to match the trim) and installed an overhead projector with a screen that covered half of it. I had been injured too many times in this place, regardless of the reality that it was in this same place that I had learned about and grew to love Jesus all those years ago. There was change in leadership, change in structure, change in me. I was becoming hard and bitter, too, because of the ways many people were hurting from church politics. I was growing less enchanted with the modern day trappings of many evangelical churches, and became increasingly disheartened with the gendered roles, unengaged questions, patriotic leanings and political discourse that honored country in the name of Jesus. And now the cross was partially covered. All one could see from the pew was its shadow. The partial view felt symbolic. I was devastated.

Like many teenagers, I allowed my angst to dictate much of my thinking--I grew dismissive and annoyed, judgmental and proud. I became weak and anxious, afraid that maybe faith wasn’t worth it, Jesus wasn’t who I thought, everyone who made me think otherwise was wrong and would disappoint me forever. But for a few saints who stayed grounded while I unraveled (thank you), I felt alone and had some dark days.

Somewhere between the tears and the wanting, I discovered new breathing space, small places of hope and possibility nestled in summers at Spruce Lake, in conversations with others who accepted me and “the mess”, in the quiet when, at the end of the day, Jesus was enough. It felt like what happens when the first crocus pushes through the frozen ground on the first warm day, indicating that Spring and new growth and new life is arriving.

I laugh now, on Easter Sunday, as I look at the cross, sing the familiar hymns and songs of celebration, and encounter the amazing grace of the Resurrected Christ. Death has been defeated, the cross is bare, the tomb is empty, we celebrate redemption and have reason to believe in perfect Love. I feel grateful. People I have taken for granted--ones that were there when I first stepped into church and offered arms to hold me in the nursery, ones that encouraged me in Sunday school class and quiz team practice, ones that helped me make decisions and coached me, that supported me, that celebrated my baptism, that remembered my birthday, that faithfully offered bulletins and Sunday greetings--are all around me. Several years later, I am able to see in them what was once clouded by anger and frustration: the same Jesus who refuses to let us stay where we are, always calling us into deeper relationship, always redeeming, always saving, always ushering us into seasons of closeness and intimacy, always holding us in times of darkness and silence, always forgiving, always defeating death and giving birth to the things of hope. I see in them, too, the same pride and ability to hurt and mangle and mess things up in me. We are a mess--but for the grace of God. And this amazing grace didn’t leave us unchanged. "Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks." (Anne Lamott.) It saved this wretch and saves this wretch and saves and saves and saves. So much to celebrate!

I feel softer this year, a little less annoyed, a little more healed, a little more able to take the lemons of my past and use them to produce in me dreams for a new world, to work for justice, to seek peace and pursue it, to love relentlessly, to live radically, to forgive, to hope, to give thanks. The cross is still covered in my church, but the point is that the cross is still bare. I will take up mine and believe that God can write straight with crooked lines, and does.