Get Saved! Feel Good! Go Home?

I read the following in an article in the New York times recently:

Most clergy don’t sign up to be soothsayers or entertainers. Pastors believe they’re called to shape lives for the better, and that involves helping people learn to do what’s right in life, even when what’s right is also difficult. When they’re being true to their calling, pastors urge Christians to do the hard work of reconciliation with one another before receiving communion. They lead people to share in the suffering of others, including people they would rather ignore, by experiencing tough circumstances — say, in a shelter, a prison or a nursing home — and seeking relief together with those in need. At their courageous best, clergy lead where people aren’t asking to go, because that’s how the range of issues that concern them expands, and how a holy community gets formed. (G. JEFFREY MacDONALD, The New York Times, “Congregations Gone Wild,” Published: August 7, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/opinion/08macdonald.html?_r=1&th&emc=th# )

It really struck a chord with me. Sometimes ministry is way too much about entertaining – I know I can fall into that trap. Sometimes it is too much about minutia and smoothing ruffled feathers. Odd, isn’t it, when the New York Times reminds me of my calling?

Wait a minute! It’s our calling:
• Doing what’s right in life, even when what’s right is also difficult
• Reconciling with one another before receiving communion
• Sharing in the suffering of others, including people they would rather ignore
• Leading where people aren’t asking to go

It’s not a perfect list. It leaves out Jesus Christ – It is a main-stream newspaper after all – but it’s also right, and it’s challenging. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in “church” that we forget why we are really here. We get so wrapped up in our traditions, our meetings, our services, our music, our property, that we forget why we are really here.

Jesus wasn’t a “get saved, feel good, go home” kind of guy! He wanted to free us from our sin . . . so that we could be his disciples. He made salvation easy for us. He made discipleship a tough road: Righteousness; reconciliation, suffering, leading where people aren’t asking to go.

Matthew 7:24-25 (NRSV)
24 "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.