Faith-in-Flesh

Evil is well worth our anger, our outrage, our fury, our deep indignation. Violence too is a worthy recipient of our defensiveness, our horror, our disquiet, our fear. To rage against the injustices of the world is an appropriate response of Christian faith.

            And yet…

Carrying all that rage and fear around on our shoulders as if they are the yoke of Jesus is not faithful living. Holding anger tightly within our bodies—in a knot in our backs, in the tension of our hips, in the shallowness of our breath—is not a spiritual practice. Allowing fear to establish a residence in our guts, hunching our shoulders permanently forward to guard our hearts, fatiguing our minds with the obsession of resentment—these are not the disciplines to which Christ calls us.

If we were called to a faith of rage, we would be followers of Peter with his sword swinging wildly in the Garden of Gethsemane.

If we were called to a faith of fear, we would be adherents in the church of Ananias and Sapphira with their hands clenched tightly around security and their hearts racing with anxiety.

If we were called to a faith of self-righteousness, we would be siblings to the sons of Zebedee in our clamor for seats of judgment and control.

And if we were called to a faith of stiff necks and tense backs, we would be known by the sign of a millstone rather than the sign of the cross, weighed down by worry, tripping over our own doubt.

            Instead…

We are called to a faith of radical love and abundant life. We are called to displace the bitter anger from our bodies with a strong backbone of love, the kind of loving backbone that moves easily to make room and holds steady to protect joy. We are called to exhale fear from our guts, to breathe in the expansiveness of hope. We are called to throw off the burden of anxiety from our shoulders, so that we have room to bear the light yoke of Christ.

Anger and fear and heartache have their place in faith—God knows!—but when they sink their roots into our bodies, psyches, and nervous systems, we are hindered from faith. So we choose to love from our physical core, trading fear for community. We love from our hips and our backs, releasing resentment in favor of hope. We love with our whole bodies, because Christ did too. We love, and God is known.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The Rev. Rachel Hackenberg serves as Publisher for The Pilgrim Press.

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