Dirty Dishes

I'm in a messy office today! Some students stopped by for the weekly Multi-Faith Centre tea-time I've been hosting through the summer, and so I stacked the coffee table with cookies, kettles, tea-pots, mugs, lemonade, all sort of social, summery goodies. The conversation was relaxed and enjoyable; the result was a pleasant few hours and some dirty dishes.

Some dish-washing is a pretty small price to pay for the chance to build relationships. In fact, dish-washing is often a hugely beneficial thing for community building. After a meal and conversation, the menial task of washing up can become the place where a common task becomes a common source of friendship, openness, sharing, and love. This is so crucially important for what it means to be a community, to develop love over common objects, common tasks, a common vision for our community and our world. For the Church, the common object, task, and vision are all summed up in Jesus Christ, in his life and person. We look to the one who brought healing and comfort, love and justice. He is the one whom we love (the object), he shows us the tasks to act out in love (the task), and he reveals to us a future for a world held in the love of the Father (the vision).

Of course, dirty dishes are not the only common task the community of the church is called to. We are summoned to a common task of confession to and forgiveness of each other. The church is filled with much more than dirty dishes; we all carry personal problems, we all find ourselves frustrated with difficult personalities, we struggle with negotiating the different goals we each hold for the direction of our Christian community. “Doing the dishes” might not be such an easy thing; we need to bring to the surface the dirty, difficult, uncomfortable, and challenging things that we would rather avoid.

Can the church dare to be a place where that sort of honesty and vulnerability takes place? Can we bring all the problems we would rather keep hidden out into the open air of confession, of mourning, of lament, trusting and hoping that doing so guides us towards a common object of love? It is difficult, it is hard, it may be unsettling.

But the presence of the Holy Spirit urging us on in our communal imitation and love of Christ will aid and comfort us in the task. And our hope in Christ is that all of the churches tasks, from the pursuit of justice, to the confession of sin, to the washing of dishes, may be occasions for God’s presence to break into our world in fresh, new, and sparklingly clean ways.