Vulnerability Part 3

 

As we continue to dwell and discern our own vulnerability, here is another quote from Maggie Smith, “We’ll confess how we deny our intrinsic vulnerabilities, how instead of approaching God from need ~ we try to earn our own salvation.  We’ll confess our efforts to dominate emotions, to manipulate God through prayer, to tame Scripture, to control church culture, to force leaders into our mold (or we will vote them out of office).  We’ll confess how we desire to be superhumanly productive and successful, to determine the development of others.  We will confront our overcompensation for powerlessness we feel when we can’t fix everything, we can’t understand everything, we can’t hold back the post-Christian tide.”

 

I know that is a lot.  It makes my eyes glaze over, my mind start spinning (because I see myself in those words), it awakens my inner defense attorney.  “Your honor, I am but a humble servant of the Lord.  I beseech thee to please remind Maggie Smith to please not say the quiet part out loud!  To please quit reading my journal.  To please stop holding up a mirror to reflect to me the thoughts I’d prefer to remember that I have thought.”

 

I invite you to re-read the words above, not with blame or shame, not with guilt or anger, not with defensiveness or deflection or denial, but with openness.  God doesn’t ask us to be Superman or Wonder woman (Jesus wasn’t ~ remember how on the cross people mocked him saying, “He saved others, let him save himself” …oh we as humans can be so cruel).  Read the words with the vulnerability of a human-size person, created in God’s image with bruises and brokenness of life, with the lumps and bumps of a winter squash…with the reality that there are gospels all around us that want to tell us what salvation/the good life/success looks like.  Hold these words close to your heart that is like a glass ~ fragile and vulnerable to be shattered into a thousand sharp shards.  Hold Maggie’s beautiful words with love as if whispered by the Holy One who longs for us to see the ways we try to outlast, outwit, outrun our own finite fragility.  May God, who comes to us in vulnerable human form, meet you this day and in the days to come with a grace and love that makes us whole.  Amen.