First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
For Scaredy Cats...
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall that you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you will have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
they will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such a light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging for forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop. (Wendell Berry)
Maybe you know the story of Ananias and Sapphira from the Book of Acts. It's a short little story, but Elizabeth O'Connor's analysis of it is fascinating. She sees it as a story of two people who were literally destroyed by feelings that they did not understand.
Ananias and Sapphira were members of the early church, which meant that they were people who were willing to take some risk, to walk a controversial path. If they hadn't been willing to do that, they could never have joined the church at all.
But they were also fearful people-despite the fact that they wanted very much to be a part of this amazing community that was springing up around them. The problem was that it had been catapulted into a style of life for which neither of them was quite ready. They wanted it, but they were afraid of it. They couldn't stand to leave it, but neither could they totally commit themselves.
Things were spinning pretty fast. This little group of Jesus' followers was creating a shared lifestyle together. They were taking radical steps to make this happen, and they started with their possessions. They sold all their individual property so that everything was shared.
It made Ananias and Sapphira nervous. For the part of them for whom those possessions represented safety and a known future, this community was starting to push things pretty hard. This part of them asked the obvious questions that we all ask when it comes to parting with our possessions: "Can you really trust them?" "When you are sick and can't work anymore, who will take care of you?"
We can't really know--but we can certainly empathize. Like most of us, they were people who loved the their community, but they were also afraid of giving themselves totally to it. For whatever reasons, they couldn't just confess what they were feeling or saying out loud or directly.
And so they hit on a plan, a compromise. For the part of them that wanted to share in the community, they decided to go ahead and sell the property. But for the part of them that was afraid, they decided to not turn over all the money--just part of it. They would be duplicitous. It would look like they'd turned all the money over, but in fact, they'd hidden some of it away.
Now the way the story goes, Peter confronted each of them separately with the knowledge that they hadn't fooled the community. Their lie was exposed. And so, the belonging, the security, the opportunity to be part of this community that was so wonderful and that they needed so much, seemed, in that moment of confrontation to be totally lost. Their brothers and sisters in the church knew that they had lied, that they had sacrificed their integrity. And this disclosure of this shameful part of themselves to people that mattered so much to them was, literally, more than they could bear. They fell over dead. Jesus had told us, "A house divided against itself will stand"; and Hosea the prophet put it this way, "Their heart is divided, now they will die."
A divided heart is a heart that will eventually die. Division, splitting, is the path to non-existence, to non-being. It's how you take a something and turn it into a nothing. You chop it up, divided it, separate it.
It's an important piece of the story to appreciate that the community itself had never demanded the property. Other people in the church were just doing that--turning over everything they owned. But it wasn't a rule; it hadn't been formally asked of them.
And so what had happened was that Ananias and Sapphira had put this pressure on themselves, sadly. What they didn't believe is that they would be fully accepted, even if it was known that the Spirit that was touching other people hadn't touched them. They worried that if they admitted that they couldn't take this step of giving all that they owned to the community that they would be judged and found wanting.
And that's the miserable irony of the whole story. That the reason they needed that community was that they longed for acceptance, and belonging, and love. And yet, by hiding parts of themselves, they really never let the community love them, just as they were.
They were divided people who couldn't accept the splitness of themselves--and the shame of it killed them. They had parts of themselves that were withholding and afraid to share, but they had another part of themselves that wanted to be part of this new community, this new creation, this new witness that was being tried. The fearful, resisting self within them needed to be named, acknowledged, brought forth so that God's spirit could touch it--but they were afraid to even let other people know that it existed. And so, finally, their fear of exposure killed them.
Many of us are "scaredy cats" when it comes to the church. We anticipate criticism. We are afraid of what people will think. We've been wounded in other communities. We carry shame within ourselves. It sneaks up on us at odd moments, this feeling, those memories. Of not fitting in. Of being the kid that nobody wanted. Of being the one asked to leave. Of being the one with something to hide, something to cover.
What does it take to find that "inward clarity, unashamed" that your accusers--out in the world, or within your own soul--cannot reach? What does it take to have the ability to stand up and say, "I am not ashamed"? Where do you go to get that?
Finally, and maybe especially, if the church was the problem--the church is also the solution. Finding a new way, an undivided way to accept yourself, to trust who you are is a great act of spiritual courage--the first step to wholeness, to salvation, to at-one-ment.
People at First Congregational aren't perfect. But most of us know what it's like to have to put things together once they've fallen apart. Our spiritual lives are built from that beginning--and we've come to find joy in knowing that there really is resurrection once your old identity has been crucified. That's what Gospel is all about.
Walking Away
Many people at First Congo describe themselves as "recovering fundamentalists". And recovering from religious abuse can be a difficult, painful process.
You have to trust yourself--and fundamentalism has taught you that you are untrustworthy. You have been taught to ignore internal contradictions--to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, for example, even where there are clear contradictions. And to deny your own internal sense that something's not right or that the facts don't stack up. You may have been encouraged to make an idol of the Bible itself, rather than the living, life-giving, creative God it describes.
Spirituality is about trust, not fear. The Gospel is good news--not battering news. Jesus didn't demand that his disciples all agree on how every text of the Bible needed to be interpreted. He healed. He loved. He trusted. Trust that voice inside you that tells you that there's got to be a better way than living by fear. Trust the voice inside you that says that God has to be at least as good, at least as merciful, at least as compassionate as the best human being you know. Trust.