(From The Interpreter : Copyright 1997,
United Methodist Communications Inc. Vol. 42, No. 3.)
Have Mercy!
The older I get the more I get
like that "church lady" on the old Saturday Night Live sketch. I'm
there when the
doors open, teach Sunday school, bring a dish for every potluck, sing
in the choir, and I give the sweetest, most
Christian-sounding but truly uncharitable tongue lashings you ever
heard when someone or something offends my
settled notions of what's appropriate for church.
Let a child crack chewing gum and
my head snaps around, my eyes radiating waves of disapproval. Let a
teen's
skirt be too short and I have to fight back a sigh. A man wearing a hat
indoors is enough to send me into fits. And
people who don't believe as I believe? Well, try as I might, I'm prone
toward the same love-it-or-leave-it
self-righteousness about my church that I find so offensive in
socio-economic and political arenas.
Congregations that grow, though,
are those where the people never forget that grace alone has brought
them this
far. Where "church ladies" - and gentlemen - are reminded that it is
God's boundless love - and not their
award-winning tuna casseroles - that sustains the community of faith.
Where a crying baby gets a smile, not a
frown, where people are not shut out because of race, class, sexual
orientation or clothing, but embraced. Where the
folks remember that the Christian church is not any power group's own
fiefdom. It is simply a place where guilty
ones celebrate with other guilty ones the only One who can wash all our
guilt away. Where we never forget the joy
of shouting "Lord, have mercy on me!" and having God answer tenderly
and earnestly.
Growing churches are those places
where all God's children have a seat at the welcome table.
Take risks!
M. Garlinda Burton, Editor,
INTERPRETER
