Permission

I preached a sermon where someone walked out. Well, I’ve preached a number of sermons where people walked out. In fact, there was one sermon where people left in groups… threes, sixes… as well as individually. I believe this happened because I was trying to give permission to people to talk about difficult things in church. I believe that church is where difficult issues and perspectives need to be brought up, hashed out and sorted. There are two main reasons I feel this way. I don’t think God is surprised by the topics and I think God gives us the ability to love each other. Both God’s omniscience and his compassionate companionship, exampled by Jesus and empowered in us by the Spirit, provide us with the ability, insight and strength to sort through difficult issues and to do it well.      The sermon I mentioned above was about how hate had been given permission to come out of the shadows in our society. The man who walked out thought I was talking about a political candidate. (That’s an interesting conclusion, don’t you think?) I was talking about hate and using examples of experiences friends had told me of happening just that week, friends from different parts of the country. The man who walked out assumed that I was connecting the permission for these things to happen with the prominence of his candidate. Rather than thinking through, with me, the issue that we were living in a community where hate that had been hiding in people’s hearts was discovering that it was allowed to roam about, he grew angry and left.      People prefer drawing conclusions rather than moving into discussions because that’s easier, not as messy as digging in with others. And along that line, it may be assumed, as one reads my words here that I’m preparing to give controversial sermons soon. I’m not. Yet, while I’m not promising I won’t say challenging things in my upcoming sermons, what I’m looking toward is the future we need to create as a church community. We need to create a future where people in our community can admit what is going on inside them, so we, as a community of faith and following, can come alongside them and bring these concerns together to the feet of our Lord. That’s a route into a life-giving future. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.2 Timothy 1:7 Blessings, Geoff