This week we are hosting a blood drive with Red Cross. It reminds me of the danger patient faces when getting an organ transplant: your body rejecting the organ. In simple terms, your body does not register the new organ as a part of you and instead labels it as a threat to destroy. Imagine needing a new heart only to have your body turn on your heart and kill it. This is why doctors go through strict measures to try to match your body's physiology to a donor to reduce the threat of rejection.
I think we can find an interesting parallel to the church here. If you have been in a church for any length of time you can probably list an example of someone with a bad experience. This shouldn't surprise us; our churches should be places where hurt people are welcomed. Instead this should inspire us to be the body we believe we can be. God will transplant people who need God's healing into our body. Our job is to bring blood, or life, to these people and help them find their place. The last thing we should be doing is turning on each other.
It sounds nice doesn't it? The reality is, this is messy and hard. Conflicts are almost always complex and difficult to navigate. We are called to love people, people who are not perfect. This makes our mission extremely challenging. Let's remind ourselves that we are not perfect either. We will succeed and fail at this mission. So how do we navigate all of this mess in our mission?
Be persistent and authentic. We must continue to stay committed to loving one another. God has asked us to make a covenant of love with another, loving each other as God loves us. We must continue to do the hard work, even when we fail. We must also be authentic. When we fail, own it. Admit our faults and move forward. Did you know that admitting your faults won't be new information to those who know you? Confession is not to inform others, it's to acknowledge it to ourselves.
Do better and assume the best. We must also do better. We can't claim that we are not perfect so you better accept who I am and get over it. God calls us to transformation. We must do better. By God's grace, we can do better. And we need to assume the best. I think we have all had others who wrongly assumed our behavior or our intentions. That is, people thought we did something we didn't do or thought something we didn't think. God calls us to assume the best about each other.
Sometimes the problem is ours and sometimes the problem is with those who God has transplanted. Perhaps that's a different blog post. Let's focus on our mission. Let's remind ourselves how important unity and support is to the Body of Christ.
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