Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

sometimes we are closer to the truth in our vulnerability than in our safe certainties,

Jesus has this odd habit of allowing ordinary, screwed-up people to introduce him, and so it was ordinary, screwed-up people who first told me I was a beloved child of God, who first called me a Christian.

Where God calls the baptized beloved, demons call her addict, slut, sinner, failure, fat, worthless, faker, screwup. Where God calls her child, the demons beckon with rich, powerful, pretty, important, religious, esteemed, accomplished, right.

The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God’s name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough.

Death and resurrection. It’s the impossibility around which every other impossibility of the Christian faith orbits.

what the church needs most is to recover some of its weird.

Perhaps we’re afraid that if we move, God might use people and methods we don’t approve of, that rules will be broken and theologies questioned. Perhaps we’re afraid that if we get out of the way, this grace thing might get out of hand. Well, guess what? It already has.

We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith. You’re on your own for that.

“I’m a Christian,” I said, “because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition—that we’re not okay.”

Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable.

Jesus hung out with sinners because there were only sinners to hang out with.

the gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, “Welcome! There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.” This isn’t a kingdom for the worthy; it’s a kingdom for the hungry.

On a given Sunday morning I might spot six or seven people who have wronged or hurt me, people whose politics, theology, or personalities drive me crazy. The church is positively crawling with people who don’t deserve to be here . . . starting with me.

The church is God saying: “I’m throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.”

Christians like to claim divine protection when a long line at Starbucks miraculously saves them from the fourteen-car pileup on the interstate, or when a wildfire just misses their home to take out a dozen others, but I’m always left wondering about the victims, those whose supposed lack of faith or luck or significance puts them in the path of the tornado instead. What kind of God pulls storm clouds away from a church and pushes them toward a mobile home park? And what kind of Mother would only shield a few if her arms were wide enough to cover all?

No step taken in faith is wasted, not by a God who makes all things new.

I will. I will. With God’s help, I will.

We tend to speak disparagingly of the Pharisees, lumping them together in a single group we’ve made synonymous with hypocrisy, and yet a Pharisee risked his reputation to speak up for his friend, a Pharisee stuck with Jesus after most of the disciples had run away, a Pharisee personally cared for Jesus’ body when it had been all but abandoned by the world. Even a Pharisee, it seems, can be visited by the Spirit. Even a Pharisee can see.

Christians scour their inventory for a cure. But there is a difference between curing and healing, and I believe the church is called to the slow and difficult work of healing.

The thing about healing, as opposed to curing, is that it is relational. It takes time. It is inefficient, like a meandering river. Rarely does healing follow a straight or well-lit path. Rarely does it conform to our expectations or resolve in a timely manner. Walking with someone through grief, or through the process of reconciliation, requires patience, presence, and a willingness to wander, to take the scenic route.

But the modern-day church doesn’t like to wander or wait. The modern-day church likes results. Convinced the gospel is a product we’ve got to sell to an increasingly shrinking market, we like our people to function as walking advertisements: happy, put-together, finished—proof that this Jesus stuff WORKS!

Cynicism is a powerful anesthetic we use to numb ourselves to pain, but which also, by its nature, numbs us to truth and joy. Grief is healthy. Even anger can be healthy. But numbing ourselves with cynicism in an effort to avoid feeling those things is not.

We have to allow ourselves to feel the pain and joy and heartache of being in relationship with other human beings. In the end, it’s the only way to really live, even if it means staying invested, even if it means taking a risk and losing it all.

lately I’ve been wondering if a little death and resurrection might be just what church needs right now, if maybe all this talk of waning numbers and shrinking influence means our empire-building days are over, and if maybe that’s a good thing.

Death is something empires worry about, not something gardeners worry about. It’s certainly not something resurrection people worry about.

If Christianity must die, may it die to the old way of dominance and control and be resurrected to the Way of Jesus, the Way of the cross.

Jesus made a point of telling Peter—you know, the guy who convinced himself he could walk on water and then sank, who tried to talk Jesus out of his Passion and was rebuked for channeling Satan, who took a sword to the ear of a Roman soldier even after Jesus had been preaching peace for three years, who pretended he didn’t even know Jesus when things went south, and who denied Jesus not only once but three times, you know, that Peter—he was just the sort of person Jesus wanted us to start his church

the kingdom remains a mystery just beyond our grasp. It is here, and not yet, present and still to come. Consummation, whatever that means, awaits us. Until then, all we have are metaphors. All we have are almosts and not quites and wayside shrines. All we have are imperfect people in an imperfect world doing their best to produce outward signs of inward grace and stumbling all along the way.

Church isn’t some community you join or some place you arrive. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground; God is here.

Even here, in the dark, God is busy making all things new.