An observer comes into the lunchroom of a campus noted for it’s stand against racism and observes the races clustered in racially segregated groups around the lunchroom. The visitor says “Can we not do better than this?” The answer comes back, “All of the students insist on their constitutional right to eat in a “safe space.” And so it is now in the church that many of us insist on our rights to live in our well marked “safe spaces.”
Not only do we pull into safe-dead space we work very hard to control conversations; shaping them into superficial pleasantries. We suffer from a failure -to –dig- deep -superficiality. We have been living in safe superficiality so long that when we are compelled to go deeper and it is conflictual we think the world has exploded in our faces. We have lived in little echo chambers of superficial conformity for so long that this moment in America and the church scares and angers us. We are divided.
Do we have open ended conversations with others in which we share how it is as disciples of Jesus we arrive at our moral or spiritual conclusions? Or do we simply remain silent about our deepest struggles, our most heart felt convictions, fearing disagreement? Most of us grind on in superficiality. Some of us who claim to be really close to certain friends cannot and have never talked about why we voted for Trump or why we voted for Clinton. The votes are probably not as important as talking through and questioning how we got there as disciples of Jesus. What was our moral-spiritual journey?
Is not Paul’s letter to Rome a long in depth conflictual conversation with a divided church in which he explains to his divided readers “how they got there?” In chapter 12, after a long discussion of how they got there, he declares, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you.” The letter does not echo either side of the dispute over Jewish food laws but goes deep into their kinship-the indestructible kinship that must be evidenced by their mutual fellowship. This letter frees them up to talk, to disagree, to respect the conscience of “the other” –to be Christ’s body.
The fact is In Christ there is no “safe space. “ Because of the peace making work of Christ “we are members one of another.” We do not control the koinonia-the sharing – of the church. The Spirit does. Paul rebuked Peter for pulling away from his Gentile brothers at the table of fellowship because of the censoring Judaizers there in that church. See Galatians 2. Peter was looking for a “safe space” and Paul rebuked him. Think and pray about that. What is real church and real friendship?
Do not our children sometimes drift away from the church in part because we did not provide a friendly place for searching questions, respectful disagreements, and for dissent within the parameters of faith? When conversations do not happen about the big stuff within our homes or churches our children decide Jesus is just not that important or they decide open ended conversations are not safe in our houses or our churches . So they drift out our doors and the doors of the church. And we are shocked?
When we are shocked that our children at age 20 or 30 no longer build their lives on the words, work and person of Christ and do not want to talk anymore about Jesus and his church might it be that we lost our kids at age 15 when we stopped having conversations about everything-conversations that gave children permission to disagree and explore? Do we think discipleship envisions holding their mouths open and pouring the living water down their throats? Or might discipleship in Christ envision helping a child understand their thirst for living water which leads them to ask Christ to pour the living water down their throats?
This is not a time for the world to change. This is a time for us to change. We are in trouble!