It’s been one week since…

It’s been one week since I turned forty. A true statement but likely not the way anyone finished that sentence, including myself. 

It’s been one week since someone bearing the image of God murdered another. 

Even that doesn’t narrow it down but I’m sure in the minds of many the way you finished the first sentence and interpreted the last one are the same. It is all anyone seems to be talking about, and everyone is talking, sending letter, emails, tweeting, or posting about. 

To invoke the famous line from The Green Mile, “I’m tired boss.” 

A friend messaged me. “I’ve read through Romans 12 several times this week. It feels very dissident to all sides of Christianity in the past week.” He’s not wrong and that’s partially why I’m tired. 

As a pastor you know you have to meet your people where they are at. I serve a congregation that is mixed politically but united in Christ nonetheless. It has yet to really boil over—even during the last election cycle people were respectful and cordial and communed at the same rail after they cast different ballots. The congregation I serve is not the norm, I know, and yet I’m still tired.

I’m tired because I know that the faces I see on a regular basis are shaped by so many competing narratives that lionize or demonize the same people. I’m tired because I feel like whatever I say, however I try to speak, someone will assume they know where I stand and take offense. Perhaps offense needs to be given at times, but I’d rather choose that intentionally than step into it unintentionally.

Take, for example, whether or not to use the term “martyr.” I once gave a speech in undergrad for my speech class on what it meant to be a martyr. My professor said I delivered it fine but there was a major issue she had with it, I didn’t define the term. A martyr is a witness, fair enough, but one can witness to any number of things. My professor was right, I was using it but not defining it. I was using it exclusively to refer to those who had died because a refusal to deny Christ as Lord. I was using it to refer to people like Polycarp and not people like Martin Luther King Jr., who, though he died as a result of the way he saw his faith shape his life in the world, was not shot because of a refusal to “swear by the fortune Caesar” (as was the case with Polycarp). I will be clear, and risk offending everyone for different reasons, I see Kirk as I see King and not as I see Polycarp. 

But, it doesn’t really matter how I see it, what matters is that everyone sees it differently and in our cultural moment hears whatever everyone else has to say about it too. This is why I’m tired most of all, because there are so many competing voices, including my own, and the results are more than devastating, they are confirming the enmity that exists between brothers and sisters since Cain slew Abel. 

My prayers this week can be reduced to one of the bids from this Litany of Labor:

From contempt for others; Good Lord, deliver us. 

I’m tired, and this is my prayer, not just for people, but for me. Because I am tempted to the same thing everyone else is, especially in this moment. 

From contempt for others; Good Lord, deliver us. 

Good lord, deliver me.

And yet, I know he has. I know that Christ has died for all. I know that he has risen in victory for the redemption of the world. I know that Christ has defeated all enemies in his resurrection. I don’t simply mean the enemies out there, the ones who actively oppose his merciful, meek, just, and loving rule and reign in word or deed — I mean the enemy of the kingdom I see in the mirror. I know that he has delivered  even me from the power of self-righteousness and disdain and contempt even as a part of me runs back to to those things like a dog to its vomit. I’m just tired, I’m tired of waiting for that victory to be the only reality as opposed to one I see in faith and not by sight. 

I’m tired. 

Good Lord, deliver me.