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.
Hi Ethan. Nice to unexpectedly meet up with you last Friday at Quatro's. Just want to wish you well in your ministry at Kwantlen. Really excited for you! Wanted to check out your blog much earlier but I kept throwing the bulletins away. And keep doing those dishes!!! PS: All the best in your studies, too.
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