Love On The Road

FROM THE RECTOR

During the last two weeks, I have spent some time away from home. Some friends from Alabama invited us to join them on a couples’ trip to California, and then our family of six took a spring break trip to Chicago and St. Louis to look at some colleges and universities. While on the road, I was reminded that the cultural Christianity I take for granted is not uniformly distributed throughout the country.  

Our hosts in California were incredibly gracious and generous. The friends who invited us on the trip were staying with their aunt and uncle, who welcomed us into their home as if we were their family, too. We sat together every night for dinner. They drove us all around the region. They made sure our glasses were always full and that we got back to the airport safely. Without their kindness, this trip would not have been feasible for Elizabeth and me. At times, though, my identity as an Episcopal priest presented itself as an oddity they seemed eager to explore.

Thinking back at what was said in multiple free-flowing dinner conversations, I struggle to remember how the subject kept coming up, but every night, in one way or another, we talked about Jesus. Trust me when I tell you that I was not the one to bring him up. One night the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth was proffered as a dubious claim worthy of intellectual scrutiny. Another night, we spoke about the unfortunate marriage of evangelical Christianity and conservative politics. At some point, the subject of hell and damnation was flung onto the table like a dead possum—a conversation-halting gesture that demanded a response. Although it was probably a projection of my own insecurity, it always felt like everyone in the room expected some sort of response from me. After all, I was the expert.

In fact, however, when it comes to presenting a version of the Christian faith that is palatable to religious skeptics, I am most definitely not the expert. Once during seminary, I joined a team of classmates who travelled down to suburban London to help facilitate a week-long revival in a dwindling parish church, but, when I gave my heartfelt testimony at an evening event for agnostic community leaders, one of them pointed a finger at me and summarized my evangelistic inadequacies by dismissing my talk as wholly ineffective: “When that fellow spoke, I didn’t feel anything at all.” While I relish the opportunity to tell an eager seeker about Christianity, when it comes to convincing someone who doesn’t want to be convinced, I’m awful at it.

All week long in California, I held my tongue. For starters, I was on vacation, but, more than that, I knew that any objection, qualification, or disputation I offered would be utterly ineffective. My hosts were not interested in being convinced of anything. Instead, anything I said would only confirm their presumptions about Christianity and its leaders. And who can blame them? The Christians who speak the loudest and the most passionately are people I do not want to hear either. It takes very little effort to lump together all of the television evangelists, megachurch pastors, street preachers, and quasi-religious political hacks as nothing but self-serving blowers of hot air. As soon as I opened my mouth and said a word, my voice would become inseparable from the cacophony of religious vitriol that dominates Christian culture.

So I waited. And I prayed. I prayed each night that I would be a gracious guest and a faithful Christian, trusting that those were two sides of the same coin. When something controversial was said, I agreed with whoever said it. When someone criticized Christians for any of the terrible things we have done over the years, I doubled-down by offering other lamentable examples of our damnable behavior. Whenever someone exclaimed that they could not understand why anyone would be a Christian, I confirmed that it made no sense at all. Then, having offered no resistance, when I least expected it, someone asked what I think made our religious tradition worthwhile, and I took that opportunity to tell them about grace.

I am a Christian because Jesus teaches us that God’s love is unreservedly for everyone no matter what. Unlike other religious traditions, we believe in a God who knows us, loves us, and blesses us whether we are good or bad, faithful or not. That belief in God’s grace—God’s unconditional redeeming love—has the power to open us up as individuals and as a community to become our best selves. Accordingly, we belong to a church that seeks to embody that truth in sacramental worship, lifelong formation, and social action.

In the end, I did not say much, and the conversation quickly moved on. Did it make a difference? I do not know, but my job that week was simply to be a grateful recipient of my hosts’ generous hospitality. I did not need to bring God’s love into their home because God’s love is already fully there. All I could do was let them love me and love them back in return. In the end, that was easy.

There are more than enough billboards and bumper stickers on the highway that seek to win people for Jesus. I feel confident that no one ever drove past one of them and spontaneously converted to Christianity. Whether we live in the Bible Belt or on the Left Coast, there is no shortage of religion all around us, but there is a critical shortage of grace. At St. Paul’s, we are part of a community that is dedicated to exploring and sharing God’s infinite grace, acceptance, and love. As such, we have something really important to offer the world. We know the power of unconditional love, which far too many people, including plenty of self-proclaimed Christians, do not know. Our job as followers of Jesus is to love the world in the same way that we have been loved. In the end, as Jesus told us, they will know that we are his disciples by our love.

Yours Faithfully,

Evan D. Garner