One thing that is much on my mind in my preparation for YMG09 is how much we have to trust each other, to be able to do church government in the manner of Friends. If we believe that we are all necessary, all part of the Body of Christ, then no-one can be dismissed, ignored and ‘othered’, no matter how objectionable we find what they say. We have to pray for our enemies, learn how to love them: not in indulgence, but by speaking the truth that we know and inviting a move out of the comfort zone into our deeper unity in God’s grace.
We are marked by God as a consequence of our faith journey, by tenderness of heart. So many times in scripture it says “and their hearts were hardened” when people are ignoring the needs of the oppressed. I know my heart sometimes gets hardened against someone or other. I know I have to work on getting it tender again, by getting a good drink from the living water of Christ Jesus.
Can we have tender hearts to the cries of those we disagree with? Can we release our suffering into God’s hands when we are feeling oppressed, trusting and proclaiming that God loves us and is already going before us to prepare the way for God’s glory to be made manifest? What do we each need to do in order to be ready to experience the new Life that God will breathe into us and through us into others?
We have to practice this discipline of love for each other, if we are going to seek God’s will together and trust that the Meeting is discerning. The Meeting as a whole is expected to hold back from deciding until we find ourselves together in the unity that the Holy Spirit creates amongst us. I know I find it easier to trust the Meeting if I have heard the explanation of how our understanding and experience of God, the God of the oppressed, compels us to act as we are describing in the minute.
I’ve had the parable of the sheep and goats from the Gospel of Matthew, 25:31-46, on my mind, for a few weeks. The Light of Christ illuminates our hearts: we have to move out from what is wrong, turning toward the Light, in order to live as Children of the Light. Does the Gospel we know impel us to radical peace-making, creative conflict, and ministry focused on the needs of the poorest, the neediest, “the least” that Jesus talks about, those excluded and shamed by corrupted greed-driven human society?
I don’t want to be one of those who ignores people who are in need, whether it’s need of grace, justice, prayer, or goods. It’s more important to me to be compassionate, to hear the cries of those who are hurting, than to be correct. How do we know we are ’sheep’ and not ‘goats’?
I know that keeping my heart tender is necessary to find the liberating, redeeming truth that Jesus shows us. I’m trusting that we can all be sheep together, all tender and attentive to the voice of the Shepherd our Teacher. I believe that truth needs all of us. I believe it sets us free to respond to the urgent needs of the world. I believe it can cause God’s Kingdom to break out amongst us. Even though for some of us that will turn the world we know on its head, if we can trust and pray we will be given the grace to do as God wants us to.