Loving Our Frailties

by Rev. Laura Barclay

This weekend, I attended a new members class at Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. The 100 year old sanctuary is gorgeous, decorated in an English Country Gothic style. In the 1970s, stained glass windows were installed with pictures of apostles and saints throughout history. One panel in particular struck me. Each of the apostles had two symbols representative of their lives in each hand. 

Peter in the middle, top panel, holds a key in his left hand. This is indicative of the passage from Matthew 16:18-19 where Jesus says, 

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock. I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

On this passage is the basis for the Catholic tradition that Peter was the first pope--the first head--of the one global church on which Jesus laid the foundation through his ministry.  Whether or not you interpret the passage this way, it is inarguable that Peter had a profound impact on the shape and spread of Christianity after the death of Jesus.

Yet, notice what Peter has in the other hand. He is holding a rooster, which is the symbol of his betrayal that Jesus predicts in Matthew 26:34: "Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." This becomes true later when Peter pretends that he does not know Jesus after his arrest. So how is it that the man with the keys to the kingdom also betrays Jesus? 

The apostles are portrayed almost as comic relief in the gospels. They don't understand Jesus' message or miss the point, allowing Jesus to clarify. In the famous "Feeding of the 5,000" story in Matthew 14, the apostles want to send the crowds away rather than feed them. Jesus says to them in what I can almost imagine as an exhausted eye-roll of a tone in verse 6, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."

While the apostles keep screwing up during Jesus' life, they are forced to organize after his death. They realize what Jesus' teachings meant to them and that it's up to them to spread the message. Jesus is entrusting it to them, for all their bumbling imperfections. In Matthew 28, they are asked to go throughout the nations and spread the teachings. 

If we believe that Jesus was both fully human and divine, then we must understand that he knows the horror of human fear. In the garden before his arrest he was sweating blood (Luke 22). This is a very real condition called hematidrosis, which is brought on by extreme fear and anxiety. Imagine Jesus in the garden in the dead of night alone, sweating blood, crying, in the midst of a panic attack, pleading with God to "take this cup from me." Most of us would have a similar reaction to the possibility of being crucified. 

I think Jesus would absolutely understand Peter's betrayal in the face of death. This is why Peter's commitment to Jesus' message after the crucifixion is even more profound. The theologian Origen would later go on to confirm Peter's upside down crucifixion in Rome, showing both Rome's continued cruelty to perceived insurrectionists and his willingness to die for his beliefs. 

Each of us is a bundle of courage and fear, loyalty and betrayal. We must come to terms with this and love ourselves, as God does, not in spite of our frailty, but because of them. Humans are beautiful, messy creatures that are far from perfect, but we are made in God's image. And if we believe that God understands humanity even more intimately through Christ's experience, then we have to trust that God is there when we are paralyzed with fear or, God help us, when we betray one another. If anything, we must learn to forgive ourselves as God forgives us so that we can begin to see ourselves as children of God. The next time you fall short of your expectations, don't dwell on it. Know that God is there, cringing with you in sympathy, and ready to remind you that you are loved. You just have to accept that unconditional love, which may be the hardest lesson for humans to learn.

No Magic in the Moving Van

Dr. Guy Sayles

Have you ever tried a geographical cure for your problems? Just move to a new city and leave your problems in the old one.  The difficulties you’ve had and the challenges you’ve faced in the past are the fault of the clueless employers and insensitive coworkers you’ve been cooped-up with for all these years. 

So, get a new job in a new place with new co-workers and everything will be different; you will be different. You’ll shed your pattern of procrastination. You’ll become a morning person who finds it easy to get to work on time—no more tying your tie or applying your makeup at stoplights. You’ll be proactive and positive.  

A geographical cure: a new place and a new you.  A few years ago, I read this tongue-in-cheek story in The Onion:

ATLANTA—All of area resident Brian Shepard's problems, including his fear of commitment, lack of personal direction, and inability to learn from past failures, will be instantly solved this week when the 29-year-old packs up his belongings and moves to a new city. "Moving to Portland is going to make all the difference in the world," said Shepard, who, just by putting 2,500 miles distance between himself and years of destructive behavior, will suddenly turn his life around. "It won't be anything like Chicago, or Boston, or San Francisco. This is exactly what I need right now." Shepard also plans to completely eliminate his dependence on self-denial by ignoring his dependence on self-denial.  (The Onion, December 5, 2008)

Speaking from my own experience, I can tell you that the promises of geographical cure are an illusion.  As I heard myself telling a friend: “Mike, here’s something I’ve learned: Hell is portable.  You take it with you wherever you go.”    

There might be good reasons for taking a new job or going to a new school or moving to a new town, but a new office, a new classroom, and new address don’t automatically make us new people.  There’s no magic in a moving van.  

We can’t, after all, move away from ourselves.  What we need is not a geographical cure, but transformation—a deep healing of the wounds and brokenness which drive the patterns which hurt us and other people; an infusion of confidence that God loves us fully and joyfully, no matter what and forever, and a  thoroughgoing renewal of our gifts and talents.  Geography doesn’t cure us, but God can change us.  

Guy Sayles is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Asheville. This article originally appeared on his blog, From the Intersection.

Denying Our Denial

By Dr. Guy Sayles

We’ve all heard, “Denial is not just a river in Egypt.” As worn-out as that cliché’ surely is, it still serves to remind us of one of the most common dances we use to two-step around the truth about ourselves and the world—the denial dance.

You can pretend not to know that eating ice cream every night and donuts most mornings will eventually make you heavier. The suit comes back from the dry cleaner, you try to fasten the pants, discover that you can’t and then complain that whatever new process they’re using these days shrinks your clothes. The bathroom scales must be going bad; there’s no way we’ve packed on five pounds in a month. Avoid mirrors. Refuse to look at any pictures of yourself. It’s a kind of denial.

Denial happens when you refuse to acknowledge the increasing distance between you and someone you love. Deafen your ears to the weary strain in his voice and the yearning for tenderness in his words. Turn your eyes away from the lines of worry on her face and the dull sadness and dim resignation in her eyes. Tell yourself you’ve done nothing wrong. Fail to notice how your life orbits, more and more, around your own ego. Force yourself to forget how your harsh words have shoved him away or how your unrealistic and unrelenting expectations have pushed her into isolation.

Overlook his earlier and extra drinks.

Never make the appointment to follow-up on the tests the doctor ordered.

Tell yourself that it doesn’t mean anything that your daughter spends a lot of time in the bathroom after each meal and that she’s lost a lot of weight in the last year.

Denial is what you do when you fold up the progress report and stuff it in the bottom of your book bag without looking at it, don’t mention it to your parents, and are grateful the school doesn’t email grades directly to mom or dad. Denial is the dance you do when you discount the memo from your boss which mentions how she hopes you can pick up the pace on that project she assigned you, since you missed the deadline for the first review. “No big deal,” you tell yourself, “when we talked about it, she understood how complicated is and how busy I’ve been. She was nice. If she was really upset, she wouldn’t have been so nice.” Denial is what you do when you don’t open the letter from the IRS and don’t return phone calls from the bank which holds your mortgage.

Denial is something we all do, and it hurts us all. It short-circuits growth, robs us of joy, and interferes with freedom. One of the great uses of Lent could be for us to deny our denial and come to terms with the truth. What would happen to us and in us if we considered giving up some of our illusions about ourselves and the pride which keeps those illusions in place. What if we stopped the charade, took off the mask, and put down our pretensions?

Jesus said: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” What if we let ourselves experience the rush of freedom which comes to us when we risk seeing, hearing and feeling the truth? What if we slowed down enough to listen, really listen, to what life, the Spirit, and our hearts are saying to us? What if we asked people we trust to hold up a mirror to our lives and help us see who we are, here and now, in all our possibility and pain, with all our potential and problems? What if we resolved that, whatever the cost, we’re going to hear the truth spoken to us in love and allow it to liberate us for life as it was meant to be?

Guy Sayles is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Asheville, NC. This article was originally posted on his blog, From the Intersection.