High Wire of Faith

Friday night I, like so many others, watched Nik Wallenda cross directly over Niagara Falls on a tightrope. It was an awe-inspiring sight: suspended directly over the falls, buffeted by the winds and mist, he took one unswerving step at a time. I have to say, even though he was (reluctantly) wearing a safety-harness, it was a very tense viewing experience that ended with a wave of exhilaration.

I didn’t know very much about Nik Wallenda when I decided to tune in to this event. I knew that he came from a family of daredevils and that he was an accomplished tightrope walker, but that was about it. I didn’t know that he was a fervent Christian, or that he would be praising the Lord all the way across the rope.

I certainly didn’t know I’d wake up the next day, and in the days following, thinking of his high wire walk as a metaphor for faith.

Authentic faith really is like this. You step out on a flimsy-looking platform and cross over perilous waters. There are always forces trying to knock you off. You strive to remain fully present in the moment. You trust in the Lord to carry you through.

It is a striving after dreams, a longing to reach the other side and, sometimes, the fulfillment of things you’ve hoped for over many long years. It’s possible you’ll fall. It’s possible you won’t succeed. But in the end, if you try and strive and believe, and you trust in God, you will make it across. Like Nik Wallenda, you are also not alone: God is not jealous or angry or resentful if you have a safety-line of people other than Him upholding you in your journey. We should not be ashamed because there are those alongside us willing to catch us if we fall.

Before making the crossing, Nik Wallenda was asked what gave him the confidence to attempt such a feat. He replied simply, “The righteousness of God in Christ.” So, too, we can have confidence on our faith journeys – and in all aspects of our lives – in the One Who loves and saves us.

To Put Asunder

I’ve been feeling the kind of dull panic in my belly that comes with making a big decision – the doubt, the fear, the unknowing. All very normal, I know. But that doesn’t make it any easier. Leaving my church parish: whoa.

It’s been harder because this wasn’t a decision I was expecting to have to make. Well, at least not any time soon. In some ways, I feel like I’d just gotten there, was still a new arrival (I think I actually showed up in 2009). This is all very sudden, and for those of you who know me you understand that I’m not really prone to making quick decisions. I’m more the kind of person who mulls things over obsessively until I’ve given myself indigestion and the deadline is pretty much upon me. But there is no slow and easy way to do this, so I just pulled off the Band-Aid.

I’m not going to lie: I feel sorrowful that I have to give up the things I’ve been doing. No more reading from the Bible, no more leading prayers; goodbye fellowship, so long occasional opportunities to preach. I’ll probably never have a chance to do some of those things again. Not to mention not seeing the friends I’ve made.

To be honest, I would rather have had the time to discern this carefully, preferably with some guidance. Alas, such things were not meant to be.

I struggle with doubt, with uncertainty. I can’t help but feeling that this is a knee-jerk reaction. That I’m overreacting, or choosing this for the wrong reasons – for selfish reasons, for flimsy reasons, for the kind of reasons that a normal person would just brush aside. I can’t claim with any certainty that I’m acting rationally. I go over and over it in my head.

I am afraid I might be making a mistake. Even so, I would rather make a mistake than do nothing. Mistakes can be good things, and we shouldn’t be afraid to make them. After all, “though [I] fall, [I] shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD is the stay of [my] hand” (Psalm 37: 24).

Still, it’s difficult. I feel a peculiar wrenching. I am afraid that I am doing something wrong, deeply hurtful, simply to make things easier for myself. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a better way to handle this, and that someone wiser than me might see it.

In the end, I doubt they’ll miss me: I haven’t been doing anything that important. I’m sure individual people will be sad to see me go, and some of them undoubtedly put out that I didn’t say goodbye, but ultimately I will miss my place in this community more than it will miss me – and maybe that’s the part that stings the most.

I still don’t quite know how to respond when people ask why I will not be fulfilling the tasks I signed up for, as one person already has. I don’t have an easy answer, or at any rate an answer I want to give publicly to the church. My answer is personal and petty, and I don’t think it would build up the community. I have no interest in divisiveness or vindictiveness. Is it acceptable to reply simply that I have decided to leave the community, and leave the rest in silence?

Sanctuary

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of church as sanctuary. The obvious way that church is sanctuary is the traditional way: church is sanctuary because it is holy. It is sanctified by what happens there, by the mysteries of Word and Sacrament, by our prayers and worship, and sometimes by relics or by building on hallowed ground. As places where we gather to worship, churches become sanctified – are made sanctuaries – by being carved out as sacred spaces in the midst of what we (by default) consider the profane world.

This is also part of the reason why serious infighting, or profound political and theological differences, can affect some peoples’ views of how ‘holy’ their congregations are: it’s a difficult reminder that our holy spaces are filled at times with ‘worldly’ things like strife and bickering and pettiness. We must struggle to see that holiness resides in these places at a deeper level than what we could call simple agreement or surface unity. A church does not become less sanctified because the people in it don’t happen to agree, or are having an outright feud.

Though the word “sanctuary” was originally defined wholly by this kind of religious significance, church-as-sanctuary has a more immediate, and less ‘spiritual,’ meaning for many of the people who come through the doors and into a congregation. Many people come to a church seeking the kind of sanctuary understood as safety, refuge, calm in the midst of the storm, freedom from harm. In my own quest for church, I was one of those people searching for a space where I felt safe to explore my relationship with God in a secure and supportive environment.

Many of us come to church carrying profound sorrow and brokenness with us. Seeking the courage to heal demands that we place our trust in a group of other broken people. Yearning to grow in faith depends on our openness to those who can sometimes be wrong. None of this is easy, and we rely on the idea that church is sanctuary to help us get through our own fear. We demand certain things of our clergy and our church leadership when we put our trust in them – things like confidentiality and boundaries and compassion and willingness to grow – that help create sanctuaries where we can be broken, where we can seek peace and rest and God (Who can sometimes be anything but peaceful or restful!). I believe that broken people have the right to be in church while they are still broken, that they have a right to safety, that as church it is our responsibility to provide haven while they seek healing and forgiveness within our walls. Church is sanctuary because it supports us in our seeking and in our pain as well as in our joys.

Church can also become a source of friendship and community which is another sort of sanctuary. We all have a desire to put down roots, to make friends, to help others and to accept their help in return. Some of us have other desires within these communities as well: we desire to lead, to teach, to take on responsibility, to do outreach, to be involved in something greater than ourselves. Church can allow us to accomplish things, to grow as people, to give back to community. These are precious gifts that church offers us: love and fellowship, friendship, trust and responsibility. Sanctuary is not merely a building in which we can be safe from harm but a community that allows us a place in it.

There is not, and will never be, the kind of false-utopian church that is free from disagreement. Sometimes, people will find themselves in congregations where others from their churches – perhaps the laity, perhaps the leadership – have vastly different views than their own. In the church I have attended for the last several years, I have listened to sermons that I find offensive. I have worshiped with liturgy that sometimes wildly departs from the forms accepted by the larger Church. I once had a Bible slapped down on the table in front of me to basically point out that I was an abomination – in public (that was a relatively awkward moment at a church lunch).

I do believe that disagreement within a church does not make it less of a sanctuary. Sanctuary, while safe and upholding at its core, is not always comfortable. We have a responsibility to hold our ground when we find ourselves in the midst of disagreement, of controversy, and sometimes of anger. If we begin to link sanctuary to the idea of a community where everyone agrees with us about everything, our congregations will ultimately become ossified and isolated. A church that agrees about everything is a church on its way to stagnation and death.

Having said that, there are times when church can, for some, cease being a sanctuary. Sometimes this is hard to recognize. Sometimes, especially when we have put down roots in a community, we don’t want to recognize it. There is a certain amount of comfort to be drawn from being in familiar surroundings even when that community is profoundly uncomfortable. It may be that we do not want to give up the privileges that we have gained, the positions that we have attained. It may be that we do not want to abandon the effort we have put into becoming a member of the community. The idea of leaving our friends behind can be difficult. When I left the Roman Catholic Church, it was a very painful decision which took me a long time to make. But I also knew that it was more important to follow Jesus, to seek where I felt I was being called, to be able to grow in my spiritual life, than it was to hold on to the things I had known and the certainties I had proclaimed and even the people whom I love.

It isn’t fair, in a way, that people should ever have to leave their churches, their congregations. It isn’t fair that they should have to put aside the things they have accomplished, the friendships they have made, and the responsibilities they have attained. But sometimes, people are called to do so. Regardless of what can be considered ‘fair’ or ‘right,’ if we – if I – am serious about following Jesus and discerning his plan for my life, I need the courage to recognize if a church is no longer a place of sanctuary where I am upheld in my seeking, in my journey, in my brokenness.