feel when the testimony is about a golden handshake - "all glory to God"? How do you feel when the woman says she made 7 million in one day for her real estate company, "all glory to Jesus"?
How do you feel when she tells of her daughter's straight A passing of exams, "all Glory to God", of course?
Are these the successes that are testified to in the name of giving glory to God?
It's not impressive. It's embarrassing. Becoming a Christian is not an invitation into middle class, first world, good health and education.
Is this what we are to glory in? Is this what the church is to testify to?
Pity me as a Christ-follower if that is the case. I don't want to live a Faith that breathes out "Glory to God" in such painful tones.
Painful it must feel to the man who just lost the job he has loved and poured himself into for many years. "Where is the testimony of the blessing of God in my life?" this man may ask, after hearing these gold-leaf testimonies of financial gains and career-ladder climbs breeze out over the church.
Painful it must feel to the woman whose son with dyslexia is really struggling through certain subjects in school. Would she be welcome to give testimony and glory to God for her son?
Communion time comes and the man tells us Jesus died to defeat failure and sickness. If we have any of these things in our life we can get rid of them now as we partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Painful it must feel for the man with MS who can feel his muscles failing him more and more, week by week, prayer by prayer.
Painful it must feel for the man who buried his wife three months ago after a ten year battle fought joyfully and painfully with the disease that ate up her energy but not her beauty in Christ. Can he stand up the front also, his face lit up by the theatrical lights, and give Glory to God?
Becoming a Christian is not drinking an elixir to guard from all sickness and death. There is none of this sickly sweet success-juice in the recipe for resurrection. In the narrative I know, there is a cross and a death before a resurrection.
Pain can be beautiful.
She was the most beautiful I had seen her two weeks before she died. She knew she was dying. She was radiant, her face was glowing. The doctors thought she was in denial because she didn't show signs of fear or sorrow at the cancer overtaking her body. "I am getting a new body", she reassured them.
They thought she needed counselling. She knew resurrection.
Pain is grotesque and messy.
His body was bloated and dried blood congealed around the dialysis lines in his neck. The tube feeding him air was sticking to his lips, causing bruising and sores. His eyes were wide open but not seeing. Standing at his bedside, reminded me of Mary and Martha at their brother's tomb saying "Jesus, you are too late".
Thankfully, I knew what happened after their disgruntled greeting of Jesus.
There is no resurrection without death.
Thankfully, I could draw on that evidence to fan flickers of hope in the face of pain and fear.
I believed in God's power to heal.
But that is not the only cause for testimony.
He will die some other way, some day. I will weep then like Jesus wept at the graveside of Lazarus.
Yet then too, there will be testimony of God's goodness and glory.
He miraculously lives now, yet lives with pain and trauma.
The church is sick to think all is well.
I watched her coffin being lowered into a grave the day after my wedding.
I got the call to tell me she had died while I was decorating the church, using lace she gave me from material used in making her wedding dress.
We followers of Christ are glorious, believe it or not. We are the radiant Bride of Jesus Christ as described in Revelation, but we are not there yet. We hold the invitation to the Feast but we have not arrived at the wedding just yet. We are and we are not yet.
Can we hold this tension?
Can we glory in achievements, skills, financial gain but even more so in God's presence and love found in the midst of pain and failure?
This sublime beauty in the midst of a thousand stabbing knives of pain tells us things are not as they ought to be. We ought not to be standing at this graveside. This doesn't feel right. And in that there is hope for something that ought to be different. Jesus was right to cry. Jesus knew there was something wrong.
But why did he weep if he knew he was about to conquer death?
Why did he not just call forth Lazarus and, as the man walked out of the tomb, give a flashy testimony about his followers overcoming all sickness and death (and making lots of money in the process)?
Jesus knew that there is no resurrection without death yet he called himself the resurrection.
"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die."
God in flesh calling forth his own death. God of the Universe breathing life into us dust creatures.
Dust to dust... and Life!
This glorious paradox; read at Christian funerals as the coffin is carried in, shoulders born down with grief and sorrow literally bearing the weight of death and loss. It's the disbelieving look on faces as the coffin is born down into the ground. We are haunted by the image of eternity imprinted upon us by our Maker.
This is not how we wanted it to end... not now, not yet...
I believe this is the Kingdom of God now on earth...
Now, and not yet.
The church can and needs to be an antiseptic in a world full of puss and grimy infection. The church does not need to be a sickly sweet antidote to pain and failure but a genuine anticipation of healing to come and a reflection of the healing that has come in Christ.
It has come, and it is still to come
It is now, but it's not yet
It is a beautiful mess
I am a follower of Christ in this Kingdom come...
