Blog 1/11/15. TO MOTHERLESS CHILDREN: WHERE DO YOU LOOK?

LOG 1/11/15. TO ‘MOTHERLESS CHILDREN’: WHERE DO YOU LOOK?

I was, frankly, quite surprised at the much larger than normal response to my Blog about motherless children last week, and it prompts me to pass along a necessary follow-up to my visitors who identify with them. The question comes: How do you find your heart’s true home? Where do you look for whatever it is that your deep sub-consciousness (or meta-consciousness?) longs for? Let me pass along a story that may be a beginning clue.

Jeannie was a friend of mine some years ago, and a very quiet and gentle person, which belied the fact that she had grown up under very abusive and rigid fundamentalist missionary parents. She had somehow found her way out of the pain of that, and to Jesus, who set her free and began the healing of all of the scars that left. She had become a medical nutritionist in a local hospital, and was a participant with a gang of us, who were followers of Jesus (plus a couple of sojourning inquirers), and provided an incredible support group for one another. All that by way of background.

One morning at the hospital, at the coffee break, another colleague plopped down at her table and began to pour out her despair on Jeannie. It seems she was a Jewish young lady, by the name of Miriam, who had screwed up her life badly, had become somewhat promiscuous, violated all of her Jewish ethics and heritage, and told Jeannie flat-out that she thought she would just commit suicide and end it all. Jeannie quietly asked: “Have you ever considered Jesus?” (How’s that for a non-complicated response?) Her friend replied: “What are you talking about?” To which Jeannie responded: “You aren’t the only person who ever messed up your life, and had no way of escape. There are a lot of us out there, and we have found healing and hope and meaning in Jesus Christ, his life and teachings. Jesus has put it all together for us. Would you like to meet with a gang of us who get together frequently, and as a matter of fact are having supper together tonight?

So at one of our homes that night, around a pot-luck supper, Bibles on hand, we met Miriam and welcomed her, and she was understandably bewildered because we didn’t fit her image of what she knew of Christian folk. There was a lot of obvious affection, honest sharing of the crazy stuff that happened, laughter, mutual challenges and rebukes, discussion, and then some prayer time. These were all formerly motherless children who had found their ‘mother’ (if I can use this designation for God) in Jesus. Then somehow they had found one another and bonded.

Let me stop right here and say: That group was a colony of Christ’s disciples, and a true expression of the church that Jesus calls out to demonstrate his life and teachings to those around. It was the kind of context that a fractured person such as Miriam could look, and find real people who had discovered their center, their hope, their meaning, their heart’s true home, their life’s goal—in Jesus. “Have you ever considered Jesus?” It all begins with Jesus. Ultimately, Miriam found Jesus, embraced him, and was made new because she saw something in us.

Remember, Jesus didn’t come onto the scene hustling a new religion. Rather he came from the margins as a real human being from the neighborhood saying and doing things that spoke to the deep longings of folk who weren’t religious at all. But what Jesus was saying and doing certainly did. So when some guys got curious, when their ‘motherlessness’ was tweaked by Jesus’ words and actions, they listened and looked. And when they asked: “Who are you?” His response was: Come and see. Come, follow me. Come be with me. Check me out.” He gave them a place to look, to ask questions, and to ultimately become his transformed followers. Those folk found Jesus, then they found one another, and they spent time with him until they became those formed and set free by him, …and passionate about him. This is what the church! It is where the motherless around us should be able to look and see Jesus’ teachings in flesh and blood.

About rthenderson

Sixty years a pastor-teacher within the Presbyterian Church. Author of several books, the latest of which are a trilogy on missional ecclesiology: ENCHANTED COMMUNITY: JOURNEY INTO THE MYSTERY OF THE CHURCH, then, REFOUNDING THE CHURCH FROM THE UNDERSIDE, then THE CHURCH AND THE RELENTLESS DARKNESS. Previous to this trilogy was A DOOR OF HOPE: SPIRITUAL CONFLICT IN PASTORAL MINISTRY, and SUBVERSIVE JESUS, RADICAL FAITH. I am a native of West Palm Beach, Florida, a graduate of Davidson College, then of Columbia and Westminster Theological Seminaries.
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