Our Calling
The Glory of God: A Human Being Fully Alive
St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Historically, Christianity has always focused on the person of Jesus Christ, on the fact that the life of God and the life of the spirit can be understood in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. This means that the life of God and the life of humanity are inexorably intertwined; and that our calling as humans is to be human.
We are called to live fully, richly, through all of our human experiences, both happy and painful.
We can not live richly and deny the truth of who we are. We are called to be ourselves, in the trust that God made us and loves us and declares that we are good.
Our world is always encouraging us to try to create ourselves. We get so much advice about how to be successful, friendly, happy, wealthy. We are encouraged to become the smiling woman in the shampoo commercial, or the unseen man behind the wheel in the SUV commercial. We are given images of who we are supposed to be, and told to lose ourselves in these so-called ideals.
Christianity tells us to cut this out!
We are called to be still, and know God, and do our best with what is really here.
If our God, our creator, is here, in us already, if the truth of who we are is really found in being who we are, then all of this striving after self-improvement is a waste of time. There is no way for a human to become an image (not even a lovely image of some woman in an anti-aging cream commercial), because humans are already so much more.
We are called to be grateful.
Not to pretend to be grateful, not to be upset with ourselves for being less than 100% grateful all the time, but to seek and treasure any drop of gratefulness that is in us.
We are called to learn to love whoever shows up, especially ourselves, as we learn to love the God who created us.
The task of our community is not to pretend-love by acting like we already know how to do this. (That would be like a Christian version of the lady in the shampoo commercial!) Rather, we must do our best, and trust God enough to admit it when we fall short.
This is scary stuff! In many ways, such a community ideal is impossibly demanding. On the other hand, we seek life in Jesus, who seems to be especially fond of people who mess up and fall short. Jesus gathered a community of imperfect people around himself, people who came to love him and each other enough to go out and proclaim his continuing life, even after he was brutally executed by the state.
We are Called to Trust
We do not have to explain or understand the rational or factual basis behind Jesus’ life and resurrection to live a Christian life of faith. In fact, there are many things about Jesus that we can never “know” in any concrete way – because none of us were there. Many religious conversations degenerate into arguments about “what really happened” – as if any of us could go back in time with a video camera and find out for sure!
What we can do is trust that God in Christ loves us and lives in us so completely that even death can not separate us from the love of God. We can look to the witness of Christians in the past and Christians in the present, and see this love operating in extraordinary acts of courage and generosity.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.