CAN WE WEEP WITH THEM IN THE DARKNESS?
God writes his salvation
story over shattered hearts and fractured communities, transforming pain and brokenness into beauty and wholeness. None are beyond the grasp of a
grace that covers Pharisee, tax collector, and prostitute alike.
We love a happy ending
and rejoice when healing is vivid and love wins, but what about the story
that's in progress?
Have we loved the
sinned-against as well as we love the sinner? Those wounded by cruel words,
violence, or humanity-denying oppression? Can we weep with them in the
darkness?
Is there grace for the
sexual abuse survivor whose wounds are raw? Will her story turn our
listening ear?
Have we grace for the
student tormented by bullies? Can we love him in his hurt?
We trust fervently in a
grace that transforms lives and long to speak words of healing, so we plead
righteousness from the rooftops, issuing calls to grace, forgiveness, and unity.
Our desire may be pure,
and it all sounds so beautiful. What could possibly be wrong with us
unabashedly championing grace?
Here's the
harm: the way in which Christians talk about grace often preferences the powerful,
privileges the sinner, and expects the sinned-against to get over it,
already.
We rarely put it in those words exactly, but
what about these?
God wants you to forgive.
You just need to let go of your anger.
You're reacting emotionally.
You just need to let go of your anger.
You're reacting emotionally.
Everyone is making too big a deal out of this.
Talking about this issue only perpetuates disunity.
We should save our energy for something that really matters.
These conversation
killers look less like grace than legalism, dictating to hurting and
marginalized people the "proper" way to react to a pain that we
ourselves have not tried to understand.
MAKING ALL THINGS NEW
We worship a God who
makes all things new and raises the dead even now.
The love of Christ is no
fuzzy sentiment. It encompasses the humility of the cross and the power of resurrection,
and it resembles neither cheap grace nor false unity.
Grace comes alongside to
listen. She sits with the stories of the wounded, offering presence and prayer
over easy answers and presumptuous advice.
Without forcing deadlines, grace welcomes the
difficult work of reconciliation. Jesus
went to the cross and back for ours, and we'll wrestle together before we see
it birthed among us. Grace is not the gospel of "Play nice!" but a light that
guides us through conflict, together.
Privileged and powerful,
weak and wounded. To transform one is to change us all, and grace looks
like accountability and boundaries as much as forgiveness and reconciliation.
What might happen if we
expected grace to change us first?
My heart. Not hers.
My sin. Not his.
My reaction. Not theirs.
Healing begins with us,
in repentance and listening. In carrying one another’s burdens and laying
down power and privilege on the altar of grace.
Your attitude should be the
same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death —
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)
Love serves and sacrifices.
Grace surrenders advantage, levels hierarchy, and lifts the humble, not striving to fix or police pain from a comfortable distance but sitting together in its midst.
It is for freedom that
Christ sets us free. Love resurrects the abused and abuser without favoring the
wounder over the wounded.
Love always protects, and it binds up broken hearts first.
- Do you think that privilege plays a role in who receives grace?
- The Outrage Machine gets ugly fast. How can we navigate a way between opting out and throwing mud? How do you discern when to dig in and when to let it go?
- Finish this sentence: "Grace looks like..." When have you experienced it?
