There Is a Place…

There is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go, because in that place, the Christian minister is precisely the person against whom the boundary has been set.

I believe that the image of Christ is found not exclusively in the person of Christ but in the Way which was revealed through him. I believe that Jesus was the Way and the Truth and the Life in a way that transcends a 33-year blip in an infinite timeline. Revealed in Jesus is a God who is love and whose love predates anything called Christianity and anything called Judaism and anything called humanity, and it will outlast even the universe itself. And so, it cannot be contained in, or restricted to, any momentary time and place, and yet, it can be experienced momentarily, glimpsed, touched, not because it has been found or crystalized or captured but because it has washed over a place, but because we have wandered into its depths, but because we have sat in its presence, but because we have slept in its house, but because it has passed through and over and around and before and behind and above and below our bodies and we were able, therefore, partially and momentarily to embody but a small piece of it.

There is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go, because to go there would be to do violence. To go there would be to ravage. To go there would be to decenter, to marginalize, those who are already dwelling there.

Too often, the good intentions of Christian ministers rationalize the centering of a Christianity that has barely outlived the blip of human existence that we call the Christ and overshadow and obscure the Way and the Truth and the Life. We have keys to the kingdom but do not go in ourselves, and we do not let others go in.

It took me being driven to this place for me to understand. Victims cannot be healed by their abusers.

There is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go. It is a place of refuge for those whose existence is too fragile and whose pain is too great precisely because of the Christian minister.

It is a place where the work is being done not by the Levite or the priest but by the Samaritan. It is a place where the work is being done not by those who have heard and obeyed but by those whose hearts are already circumcised. It is a place where, if a Christian minister ever could go, the Holy Spirit would be found at work already, but it is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go.

I grew up in spaces that were big enough to contain God. Rather, I grew up in spaces where God was small enough to be contained. In a word, in a sermon, in a book, in a tradition or a doctrine or a dogma or a creed or a name or a label or a church. As I grew, so, too, did the revelation of God. I laid my hands on a small piece of God and blindly felt for its edges, but the more I felt, the larger it seemed to grow. It’s edges eluded me. It outgrew my doctrines and my dogmas. It outgrew the church buildings and the denominations. It outgrew even Christianity itself. Decades later, I am finally learning that the one I have called the God of all creation, the one I have called the God of the universe, the one I have called infinite and infinitely mysterious may well stretch beyond the Earth and beyond the galaxy and beyond and beyond and beyond.

There is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go, because that box is too small to reach and too heavy to carry.

Yet, God is already there. The work of revelation is already being done. The binding of wounds is already being done. The healing of trauma is already being done. It speaks to the self-centeredness of much of Christianity that we believe we must inform people about the work in which they have already been participating. It speaks to the lingering scars of colonization that we believe we must rename that which already exists. It speaks to the internalization of our long history of elitism and supremacy that we journey into spaces where God already exists with the expectation that people do not know it until we declare it to them.

There is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go, because our egos are too big to fit through the doors.

How many times has the work of God, the movement of the Holy Spirit, the embodiment of the Way been thwarted, stifled, dismissed, snuffed out, or even undone because it carried the wrong name or because those who were doing it refused to name it at all? The irony of having been driven from the spaces I once thought contained the truth of God is that I now believe God was always calling me from outside.

There is a place to which the Christian minister cannot go, and it is none of the places we traditionally expect.

It is not a stronghold of Satan or a dominion of demons or a bastion of sin and darkness. Rather, it is a place of deep hope set apart by God for the healing work of the Spirit for those whose trauma runs too deep to bear taking a backseat, yet again, to a title or a dogma or a doctrine or a creed. It is a place where people must know you by your love or not at all.

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