Love/Hate #4: Discovering Home...Elsewhere...

So, a slight diversion from my other posts...but really, the same thing.

So around 5 years ago -- just around the same time the friends I had described a couple posts ago, the post about the hurt 30 or 40 of us had experienced together -- I visited my brother and sister-in-law's church.

It was amazing.  It was magic.  Precisely because...it wasn't magic.

I should explain. 

Like you reading this, I've attended many churches over the course of my life (I'm 46 for the record).  I've attended big churches where no one was affected in any meaningful way by anything occurring in the service, and I've attended services with 50 or 60 people that felt electric - you know that feeling, right?  It's the same feeling you get when you attend a U2 concert and caught up in the moment, you look around and realize you're part of a group of people experiencing a moment, one of THOSE moments, the kind that only happen maybe once or twice a year if you're lucky.

I digress. 

So I'm at this church and my family is in the middle of this crisis when the tension between us has been terrible, when everyone is exhausted and angry and hurting.  And then, it happens.  A sermon is given that isn't just a sermon.  It's the kind of message that you, as a group, make you think, "that message was straight from the mind of God...and was meant for us."  And I'm sure there were a few thousand other people in the sanctuary that felt the same way.

It was a sermon from Second Kings, Chapter 2 (I can still remember it pretty vividly, 5 years later!) and it was about Elisha.  The people have come to him because the water source for the city they're in is bad -- making the land 'unproductive'...so Elisha instructs them to bring a new bowl and put salt in it...and Elisha takes the salt to the spring, throws it in, and the water is purified.  Amazing.  But in the context of the sermon it became something much more than a story about a miracle involving a water source.  It became the story WE were going through at that very moment...and the message was essentially this:  the problem you're experiencing seems like something you couldn't possibly overcome.  It seems like no solution is in sight.  Yet Elisha says to the people, bring me a NEW bowl and salt...a fresh start.

And a miracle.

It's hard to describe the experience of being moved in the way we all were.  The last portion of the sermon involved an invitation.  Anyone who felt they were at a similar point in their lives in some way could come forward, grab some salt from one of several bowls at the front of the room, and throw it into a vat of water.

Here's the thing.  I'm not the type of person who's repeatedly experienced miracles in my life.  There have been moments I couldn't explain, to be sure, things that left me with the hair on the back of my neck standing up.  But this sermon was something I'd rarely experienced before.

I say rarely because...well, here's the thing.  The times when I've experienced the same type of thing HAVE ALL BEEN AT THAT CHURCH.

What do I make of this?  It is absolutely undeniable to me that there is a God.  There is meaning to this life, to this World, and you'll never convince me otherwise.  But I'm the sort of person who rarely experiences what most people would think of as something "beyond the norm" - do you know what I mean?  Don't get me wrong.  I believe in the miraculous, the unexplainable.  I believe in God, and God can and will do what God will do.  But for me to have this experience multiple times, in different ways, but at the same church...

I can't describe it.

I mention all of this because if you were to ask me what I would like to see in my own church it's this:  I would ask for the experience I'm describing above for people attending our church.

But here's the rub:  multiple people in my own congregation would say that's invalid.  That isn't what we should be wishing for.  Why?  Because God isn't about experience...God is about Truth.

It seems odd, doesn't it?  That someone would feel they have the right to label the experience another person has as "invalid"...yet this is the kind of thing I can't share with others in my own congregation because they would give that experience a label.

And so...here I am...12 years down the road, wondering just exactly how long I can continue to experience -- or NOT experience -- what I long for so much, but that is so offensive to others I attend church with.

More to come...