Dinner with Friends
Revelation 5:9-10
They sing a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth."
People who know me well also know that I enjoy wearing my hairshirt. In another age, I would probably be dragging my decrepit carcass from one little German burg to another, lashing myself and crying out "Unworthy!". This kind of tortured humility contains an even more refined arrogance, like a black core inside the pearl inside the oyster. As with all psychological games, anyone who plays loses. The tortured soul wants to own and control the torture apparatus. I'll hurt myself before anyone else gets a shot at it. I win even when I lose. Like the previous post, it is my suffering, all mine, it belongs to me.
Last night I had dinner with friends. Our church participates in a program for helping people who have lost their home or apartment and need a place to live until they can get their act together again. Since this was our week in the barrel, we have been providing meals and a place to live. I met the families last night at a restaurant buffet and had a wonderful conversation with them, but I received more than I gave.
Having dinner with complete strangers does not come easily for me, but have you ever noticed how easily we engage in very profound conversations with people we do not know. Is it because we think we have nothing to gain or lose? Is it because we will probably never see the person again?
There were three moms and seven kids plus moi. I was sitting across from a young woman, perhaps in her mid to late twenties. She had a beautiful daughter, probably five years old, and as I always do, I wondered how they had fallen into this kind of financial jam. In spite of my desire to just enjoy the evening, a part of me was rising above it, watching and analyzing, passing judgement, creating artificiality where there should be sincerity.
As she spoke, I could tell that she was an unabashed and unreserved Christian. We talked about our faith journeys, since both of us had been atheists and now believed in Christ. I kept reminding myself that all of us at the table were children of the same God, even though our circumstances were apparently so different. It was not long after thinking this that she said to me, "You know, you are a child of God." I mentally noted a coincidence, but I listened more carefully now. A few minutes later, with equal intensity, she told me, "You are a king. You need to remember that." I was still watching myself from afar, playing along, listening to this zealot in suppressed embarrassment. She continued to quote Scripture, and I continued to nod and assent.
At the end of the meal, we were opening fortune cookies. One of the women read her cookie, "Things are not always as they seem." Then she gave us all a faked look of suspicion and we all laughed. I wondered to myself, "What is really going on here?" Then it was time to go home. They were all so grateful for the meal and the company, and it was an emotional goodbye. They would be moving on to the next church and another week of struggle.
As I drove home, the message I had received from God really hit hard. I am a child of God, I am a king, but by no merit of my own. Why did I need to hear this? I went to minister, and I was ministered. I went to help those less fortunate than I, and I wondered if this was really true? Do I walk in faith, or do I depend on my own resources? How did a single mom with hardly a penny to her name zero in on the wound in my soul? How did she know, or did she know? Am I that obvious?
The simple answer is the one rejected by the world. God always finds the weak spot in the armor around our hearts. I am proud of my melancholy, and proud of the intellectual agony of my own unworthiness. Amazing Grace is my favorite hymn, and Romans 7 is my favorite chapter. Woe is me and woe is the world gone to Hell. Thanks be to God for yanking me from the slime, but please Lord, let me slither in it a while longer so that I can be even more unworthy.
Then an angel comes to tell me, "You are a king." I don't want to be a king. I want to be pitiful and unworthy. "You are a child of God." And so, I am an inheritor of His Kingdom, and part of the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ.
The angel gave me another message, although when I heard it I did not realize that it was part of the whole. "I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." We die each day, but the zombie in which I reside still hangs on my new self like a suit of armor. If I am a king, then I take my royal robe reluctantly, not because I am ungrateful or unworthy, but because I prefer my own rags. After all, they are mine, all mine.
They sing a new song: "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth."
People who know me well also know that I enjoy wearing my hairshirt. In another age, I would probably be dragging my decrepit carcass from one little German burg to another, lashing myself and crying out "Unworthy!". This kind of tortured humility contains an even more refined arrogance, like a black core inside the pearl inside the oyster. As with all psychological games, anyone who plays loses. The tortured soul wants to own and control the torture apparatus. I'll hurt myself before anyone else gets a shot at it. I win even when I lose. Like the previous post, it is my suffering, all mine, it belongs to me.
Last night I had dinner with friends. Our church participates in a program for helping people who have lost their home or apartment and need a place to live until they can get their act together again. Since this was our week in the barrel, we have been providing meals and a place to live. I met the families last night at a restaurant buffet and had a wonderful conversation with them, but I received more than I gave.
Having dinner with complete strangers does not come easily for me, but have you ever noticed how easily we engage in very profound conversations with people we do not know. Is it because we think we have nothing to gain or lose? Is it because we will probably never see the person again?
There were three moms and seven kids plus moi. I was sitting across from a young woman, perhaps in her mid to late twenties. She had a beautiful daughter, probably five years old, and as I always do, I wondered how they had fallen into this kind of financial jam. In spite of my desire to just enjoy the evening, a part of me was rising above it, watching and analyzing, passing judgement, creating artificiality where there should be sincerity.
As she spoke, I could tell that she was an unabashed and unreserved Christian. We talked about our faith journeys, since both of us had been atheists and now believed in Christ. I kept reminding myself that all of us at the table were children of the same God, even though our circumstances were apparently so different. It was not long after thinking this that she said to me, "You know, you are a child of God." I mentally noted a coincidence, but I listened more carefully now. A few minutes later, with equal intensity, she told me, "You are a king. You need to remember that." I was still watching myself from afar, playing along, listening to this zealot in suppressed embarrassment. She continued to quote Scripture, and I continued to nod and assent.
At the end of the meal, we were opening fortune cookies. One of the women read her cookie, "Things are not always as they seem." Then she gave us all a faked look of suspicion and we all laughed. I wondered to myself, "What is really going on here?" Then it was time to go home. They were all so grateful for the meal and the company, and it was an emotional goodbye. They would be moving on to the next church and another week of struggle.
As I drove home, the message I had received from God really hit hard. I am a child of God, I am a king, but by no merit of my own. Why did I need to hear this? I went to minister, and I was ministered. I went to help those less fortunate than I, and I wondered if this was really true? Do I walk in faith, or do I depend on my own resources? How did a single mom with hardly a penny to her name zero in on the wound in my soul? How did she know, or did she know? Am I that obvious?
The simple answer is the one rejected by the world. God always finds the weak spot in the armor around our hearts. I am proud of my melancholy, and proud of the intellectual agony of my own unworthiness. Amazing Grace is my favorite hymn, and Romans 7 is my favorite chapter. Woe is me and woe is the world gone to Hell. Thanks be to God for yanking me from the slime, but please Lord, let me slither in it a while longer so that I can be even more unworthy.
Then an angel comes to tell me, "You are a king." I don't want to be a king. I want to be pitiful and unworthy. "You are a child of God." And so, I am an inheritor of His Kingdom, and part of the royal priesthood of Jesus Christ.
The angel gave me another message, although when I heard it I did not realize that it was part of the whole. "I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." We die each day, but the zombie in which I reside still hangs on my new self like a suit of armor. If I am a king, then I take my royal robe reluctantly, not because I am ungrateful or unworthy, but because I prefer my own rags. After all, they are mine, all mine.
posted by moleses | 4:44 AM
1 Comments:
Please don't feel that with your decrepit carcuss you are more unworthy than I.
I know that with God's Grace(Jesus Christ) I am saved. That still doesn't keep me from beating myself up with the WHY question?
Possibly sometime in a future blog you could concoct a chart or matrix to rate degrees of unworthy feelings. Would you allow deviation for menstral pains and the signs of the zodiac ?
You know who this is...and I love you my brother in Christ.
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