I had the opportunity to attend a rally yesterday afternoon
at Batesville First United Methodist Church.
It was a “challenge” rally to hopefully inspire clergy and laity to
begin to examine how to reignite the fire in our lives, churches and
communities. Being a United Methodist
gathering, there was a rather large emphasis on connectional relationship. (“One church with 1100 locations,” as our resident Bishop, James E.Swanson puts it.) As I heard Andy Ray,
Blair Jernigan, Cheryl Denley and John Garrot share wonderful words of encouragement
about the exciting possible future, and the potent promise of God in the UMC’s
current context, I began to think…
True and sincere connection of soul to soul is a seeming
impossibility because there is always some barrier between me and my
neighbors. I can never know their hearts
completely. I can only share in their
joys or pains to the extent that they will allow me access to them, and they in
mine for the same reasons. I can’t
achieve a pure connection even in my most intimate of relationships… those with
my wife and children. However frank and
open, however sincere and purposeful I try to be I cannot penetrate the walls
between myself and others to the point of vanishing into one another.
So how do we who were designed for connection and
relationship deal with a reality that stares back at us saying that true and
honest connection on that level is unattainable? What if the answer is in seeking the only
relationship that can reach that level? A relationship with God in Christ. Christ became the mediator, I think, not only
between humans and God, but between humans and humans. He stands in between a people who are
disconnected and becomes a conduit through which we connect in more powerful
and meaningful ways. Seeing through His
eyes opens our own to the truth of our neighbors’ beauty and importance. Reaching with His hands, we are able to be
agents of healing and comfort. Speaking
with His voice, we are able to tell the truth of God’s enormous and
unconditional love. Hearing with His
ears, we hear the cries of pain and the shouts of jubilation singing from the
very souls of those around us. Conversely,
others seeking relationship with the same Christ experience the same things
through Him from us. Beyond that, He even stands between us and
those who can’t believe, or won’t admit that He is there… facilitating those
relationships as well, if we are willing.
Andy closed the rally with a call to prayer, saying (in
essence), “We can’t do any of this if we don’t begin with prayer.” Connection with one another begins with
prayer. This is why our prayers of
intersession are so vitally important.
It may also be why Jesus, even as He advised us to “pray in our closet”
so that we didn’t confuse good prayer technique and false piety with honest
conversation with the Maker; also encouraged and lead corporate prayer. Sincere prayer, offered in the name of
Christ, may be the purest form of fellowship available to us. Christ stands between us, and we can only
reach one another through Him.
If we want to ignite a fire… if we want to start a
relationship… if we want to build the kingdom… if we want to grow the Church,
then we have to start by strengthening our own relationship with the
mediator. We need to live and be in that relationship, and let Jesus lead us
to the rest.
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