Showing posts with label Hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hope. Show all posts

Monday, December 1, 2025

Advent | Waiting is the Womb in Which We Are Formed Well

 

Tale of 3 Cities Mural in Honor of Spencer Barr outside Custard Factor in Digbeth during Mental Health Awareness Week

I think it’s during the wait in the dark,
more than any other time,
that Christ is being formed in us.
In a sense,
waiting is the womb of the Kingdom
in which we are formed.

+ Marlena Graves,
A Beautiful Disaster


Advent beings with an always needed reflection on waiting with hope in the darkness, whether it's a mental, emotional, spiritual, and/or physically tangible darkness. 

As expressed by Fleming Rutledge
in her instant classic,
Advent: The Once and Future
Coming of Jesus Christ:

Advent begins in the dark
(and involves waiting in the dark)
... our hope lies in ...
the God of Advent
who drew near to us in Jesus
and who will come again
to take away the darkness forever
and be our eternal light.

Waiting. Hoping. Surviving. I think the mural above does a beautiful job of expressing the head space we're often in when we wait. The sun is still shining somewhere. There is a promise illustrated through a rainbow illuminating the layers of light. But there is is also a storm raging as thunder distracts us and lightning strikes too close to home. I also appreciate the poetry to complement the mural and moment:

I'm waiting for sanity,
As I paint my clarity. 
"The world is a charity, 
The poem ends here."

During one of our previous Surge Tables, we looked at the god of consumerism and the generous Christ. The reading provides a vision of a contrast community in a consumer culture, a gracious and generous counter to entitlement and greedy spending of time and money on entertainment and escape, people who are "waiting" with the prayer, "Jesus, You are more than enough." An adaptation to the thoughtful poem above in light of this theme of waiting could be:

I'm praying for sanity,
As Jesus brings mystery. 
"His Story is charity, 
His Kingdom is near."

As Surge often helps me again listen to seeds of wisdom in relation to waiting, I also return to a series of quotes that have benefited me the past 5+ years. These wise words are by Marlena Graves, one of my favorite authors, who penned A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness. And during this season of Advent, the sacred time of learning afresh how to wait in the dark with a spark of hope, I continue to find Marlena's words to be potent.

I think it’s during the wait in the dark, more than any other time, that Christ is being formed in us. In a sense, waiting is the womb of the Kingdom in which we are formed. 
Most of the time, we don’t exactly know how we are being formed. But while we wait and learn to pay attention to the details of life right in front of us, we discover that God’s grace is “always hidden under the strangest appearances,” as the 18th century Jesuit priest, Jean-Pierre de Caussade says. Life all around us is full of nooks and crannies, of delights and wonders – some of which have always been there but we’ve yet to see. The season of waiting slows us down so that we notice … and we don’t want to become so agitated that we leave the womb before it’s time.
If waiting functions as the womb of the Kingdom, then we must be on our guard when our souls become agitated and we lose our peace. ... Waiting can also teach us to joyfully appreciate what we have instead of despising it because of what we don't have. Ah, waiting! It is the gift that keeps on giving but a gift that not even the best of us welcome, at least not initially. Waiting becomes a form of fasting from our need to exert control over our circumstances and others. When we experience delayed gratification, we begin to surrender our need for control. However, relinquishing control can bend us out of shape because we don't know how to function otherwise.   
God uses waiting to enlarge our souls. While we are waiting on God, He is often waiting on us. He is waiting on us to fully surrender ourselves to Him. Once we surrender, we can move forward. In this womb, this wilderness experience, we are being, and also becoming, who we are ... Moreover, the poor in spirit are able to recognize and receive all the riches of God's grace. 
Waiting tempers disordered passions and allows us to deal well with reality. We might come to understand that things aren't as bad as we thought or are far worse than previously imagined; God uses the wait time to develop in us fortitude that keeps us from being destroyed by our circumstances. We realize that we don't need this or that thing or relationship to be whole, whereas before, when we had what we thought we wanted and weren't waiting on anything, we never thought we could live without it. ... In our contentment, we are able to reach the point where we can say to God, "Not my will but yours be done," and mean it.

Other Quotes from A Beautiful Disaster


Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot. But all too often the greedy eyes are only deceived; the fruit that seemed so precious is still green on the inside, and disrespected hands ungratefully toss aside what has so disappointed them.
The blessedness of waiting is lost on those who cannot wait, and the fulfillment of promise is never theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the value of those times of anxious waiting, seeking with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.  
Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting – that is, of hopefully doing without – will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.
Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.


Many blessings of peace and presence for you,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

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Location: Worcester, MA, USA

Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Christ the King | Kind Rebel + Wounded Healer + Hope Dealer


Seeking to Be a Kind Rebel of Jesus' Clothed in Hope for New England

The resurrection of Jesus
is indeed the basis of our hope.
For in the light of this event,
hope is no longer an illusion.

Thanks to Christ
— crucified and risen from the dead —
hope does not disappoint!
'Spes non confundit!' (cf. Rom 5:5).
That hope is not an evasion,
but a challenge;
it does not delude,
but empowers us.

All those who put their hope in God
place their feeble hands
in His strong and mighty hand;
they let themselves be raised up
and set out on a journey.
Together with the risen Jesus,
they become pilgrims of hope,
witnesses of the victory of love
and of the disarmed power of Life.

Christ is risen!
These words capture
the whole meaning of our existence,
for we were not made for death
but for life.

+ Pope Francis,
"Urbi et Orbi"
Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025

"We had hoped ... " are the words uttered to Jesus on the road to Emmaus when He is unrecognized, questioned, doubted, and, in this moment, quiet (Luke 24:21). And as the resurrected King whose love is big enough to give freely, He listens with compassion.

From the moment of His incarnation, to His crucifixion, to His resurrection, ascension, and promise to return, Jesus has been pursuing us as the Lord who is near, the God of hope who can fill us with all joy and peace as we trust in Him so that we might overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (cf Romans 15:13).




In anticipating Christ the King weekend ahead and Advent just around the corner, I'm praying for how I can continue to grow to become more subversive in response to the hostility of the world around us in the Way of King Jesus, the kind rebel, wounded healer, and hope dealer, especially when I am living under water, and those I love are hassled and hurt in an often hateful world ... 

"I had hoped ...
that I would still have my job."

"I had hoped ...
that I wouldn't be stuck
with my abusive partner, angry spouse,
or despairing roommate."

"I had hoped ...
that the government would handle
this situation differently."

"I had hoped ...
that hate would not be
the answer to violence."

"I had hoped ... 
that division would not be
a poor supplement for deliverance."

"I had hoped ...
there wouldn't be another crisis."

"I had hoped ...
I would still have hope."

to Jesus you may ask.
Based on the Emmaus story, 

All the hopes above are thoughts from stories I know exist in our city of Worcester, Massachusetts. 

The "Kitchen Maid" painting below captures in visual form the essence of the potent true stories of "Emmaus" moments (ex. check out one of my favorites featuring Tatiana Goricheva), stories of real people, a wild few who actually may be more than we think, who have encountered the presence of Jesus in surprising ways in the holy wild that help them have a "no quit" perspective when it comes to hope, trusting in the Gardener of hidden moments.

So today, as I try to turn my eyes toward heaven, I also take another look toward Velasquez' "Kitchen Maid with the Supper of Emmaus," knowing I need to hear Jesus' answer to my confession, "I had hoped ... " And I look forward to how He will meet me and I will behold Him and His mercy at the table He sets in the days ahead.

"Kitchen Maid with the Supper of Emmaus" by Diego Velazquez, 1618 C.E.

Story Behind
"Kitchen Maid w/ the Supper of Emmaus"
In 1618 C.E., the Spanish artist Diego Velazquez depicted the Emmaus meal in a painting called "Kitchen Maid with the Supper of Emmaus".  
Jesus and the disciples are portrayed in the top left corner. But the picture focuses all our attention on the maid. The astonished look on her face as she overhears their conversation suggests she's realized that a previously dead man has just eaten her food. The meal is hinted at, but it's all washed and tidied away. The central item is a piece of rag. The new world has collided with the old.   
Sometime after it was finished, the painting was altered by its new owner. The Emmaus scene was covered over entirely, and a few inches were cut from the left-hand margin (so that even in the restored version one of the disciples is missing). The original version was only rediscovered in 1933 A.D., when the painting was cleaned (see A Story as Sharp as a Knife by Robert Bringhurst). In the altered painting, the resurrected Christ had been edited out of the picture. The Bible story was painted over. Today we often remove the transcendent, the divine. But what we're left with then is merely the washing up. We're left with rags. But in our broken world at the sink with rags, Christ's resurrection is the promise of a new world. But we have not yet received our full resurrection and our world has not yet been renewed. We live between the cross and resurrection, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. 
For now Christ is incognito. Paul says: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory" (Colossians 3:3-4). The reign of Christ is now hidden. But one day it will be fully manifest. For now, though, we live as disciples of the cross. We embrace obscurity, hiddenness, weakness, marginality, and smallness.  
The kitchen maid in Velazquez's painting appears to be an African slave. The artist lived in a time when Spain was debating the status of slaves, and Velazquez emphasizes the maid's dignity by portraying her as listening intently to Christ's words. She may be unnoticed by the world around her, but she dominates the painting and therefore our attention. The last shall be first. This is God's way. His Kingdom grows unnoticed by the world. It's the seed that grows unseen.
+ Excerpt above about the story behind Velasquez' painting adapted from A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission Around the Table by Tim Chester, pgs. 129-130 
Jesus' Kingdom is often
Can we rest in a living hope as
kind rebels, 
wounded healers and 
hope dealers
who have met Jesus,
the wounded Healer,
and experienced His presence
meeting us in the mess at His table,
trusting that His light
will break into our current darkness?  


Praying with a Humble Heart
 to Be a Kind Rebel,
Wounded Healer, and
Hope Dealer Today

Jess Ray, 2016 A.D.

I want a humble heart,
Oh how I have so much to learn.

Because pride, it isn’t worth it,
It makes me lonely, leaves me stranded 
When I, I never wanted to be alone.
And it’ll all be alright 
Over bread and wine. 
Would you come and dine with me? 

I want to walk in love, 
Oh how I have so much to learn.

Because pride, it isn’t worth it, 
It makes me lonely, leaves me stranded
 When I, I never wanted to be alone.
 And it’ll all be alright 
Over bread and wine. 
Would you come and dine with me? 

And let’s gather around the table 
And share stories till the sun goes down,
 And secrets till the stars fill the skies,
And we’ll laugh about tomorrow,
And we’ll drown all our sorrows 
In the joy of being side by side.

I want a humble heart,
Oh how I have so much to learn.


Let's ask God to help us see Jesus revealed, powerful and present, giving us hope today. And in receiving such a grace, let's pray to be like the kitchen maid, surprised in the midst of serving, stopped in our tracks to listen and linger, shocked to be in a world where resurrection is possible, and daring to become prisoners of hope.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Meet us and fill us with Your joy to freely receive and freely give. Walk alongside us and those we get to be among today, and help us to walk alongside others on Emmaus roads in Worcester, not as victors, nor as people with all the answers, but as fellow human beings, wounded healers and hope dealers, looking for You, our Savior to be revealed again as the One who brings resurrection power to our lives, even when feel we lost or dead. Amen.

"I am always hopeful. A Christian is a prisoner of hope. What could have looked more hopeless than Good Friday? But then, at Easter, God says, ‘From this moment on, no situation is untransfigurable.’ There is no situation from which God cannot extract good. Evil, death, oppression, injustice—these can never again have the last word, despite all appearances to the contrary."

+ Bishop Desmond Tutu


Bonus Posts on Being a Hope Dealer:



Christ is all,

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan 


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Location: Worcester, MA, USA

Sunday, November 2, 2025

Experiencing Real Joy | Life Is Hard. God Is Good. Let's Dance.


Hallelujah Night at Hanover Theatre on Friday, October 31, 2025

Pain is real.
Suffering is real.
But in Jesus' worldview,
despair is not the deepest reality ...

It's joy that underpins everything.
It's the deepest note that rings
through our lives, even in tragedy.

+ Brant Hansen,
Life Is Hard.
God Is Good.
Let's Dance.
Experiencing Real Joy
in a World Gone Mad

Is it a time to dance?

It might not feel like it right now. But during the dark hours of this past Friday, October 31 on All Hallows' Eve, I saw 2,300 people in the Hanover Theatre in the city of Worcester, across tradition, across culture, across ethnicity, dance to these words together:

" ... Every time I call Your name
Chains break, dry bones wake.
Every time I call Your name
The gates of Hell shake ... "


I say I saw 2,300 people, 
but I was also participating with them. 

I was dancing. 
I was singing.
I was daring to hope that
the gates of Hell could shake,
could quake in a city that often feeds on
cynicism, skepticism, and criticism.
I say this because I'm a citizen
of Worcester and I too often
feed on all these things.
But I want more.

And while hope is often described as "a dangerous thing," somewhere deep inside us, we still dare to believe that "hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."

I'm trying to hope for a lot of things right now, for me, for my family, for Emmaus City Church, for my neighbors, for Worcester (especially when I see what God is doing in Atlanta among 40,000+ people with ACCESS and 2819, or in Jesus' Church in China where humble and holy people say, “No suffering, no glory—that’s the most important spiritual DNA of the Chinese house church movement ... we are willing to pay the price to bear the cost of discipleship.”). Yet, as I seek to be a hope dealer in the beloved city I get to call home, sometimes I find that my joy is lacking, my energy zapped, my heart heavy. And that's why I felt like God was inviting me to listen to words from a fellow misfit again this week.

One of my favorite books I have read during the past decade is Blessed Are the Misfits: Great News for Believers Who Are Introverts, Spiritual Strugglers, or Just Feel Like They're Missing Something by Brant Hansen. I love the title of that book (proving that sometimes lengthy can actually be a good thing). And I love the words written inside this book even more, written by someone who describes himself like this:

I'm not adept socially.
I'm on the autism spectrum.
I'm from a broken family ...
By nature, I'm a bitter pessimist.
A glass-half-empty guy.
A fatalist.
A very anxious person ...
I've always felt like a misfit.

And yet, Brant shares that:

Even as someone prone to 
great skepticism,
I am gaining faith
when so many other people
in our culture seem to be losing it.

These words are featured in Brant's most recent book with another good lengthy title, Life Is Hard. God Is Good. Let's Dance.: Experiencing Real Joy in a World Gone Mad. Publisher's Weekly describes it as "Quirky and inviting essays on what it means to live joyfully in a world full of 'anger and anxiety'... This optimism booster has a light touch and a lasting impact."

The rest of this post below features one of Brant's quirky and inviting essays that has stuck with me. In fact, these stories of girls and boys being healed to run and dance came to mind again when I was worshiping with others during this past hallowed night and saw a little bit of heaven break into Worcester. 

I dare to hope that we will get to see a little more of heaven in our city in the days to come. And when we do, I hope to respond with joy and a little more dancing.

Joyful Sisterhood by Motiontography

A CURE for Joy & Dancing

There are millions of kids around the world who have disabilities that could be fixed with surgery ... but they don't get fixed. So a married couple who are Jesus followers, one a nurse and the other an orthopedic surgeon, thought, Well ... why don't we fix them? Jesus told us to proclaim the Kingdom and heal the sick. Shouldn't that be what we're known for? CURE grew into a network of permanent surgical hospitals serving the poorest of the poor, children who would never get access to surgeries otherwise ... 

A few weeks ago, the sun was setting in Lusaka, Zambia, and I stood with some friends near a playground. There were two little girls giggling and hopping along, their moms watching nearby. We started talking to the moms and eventually playing with the little girls. They were new friends. Both were five years old, and both had severely deformed legs, with their feet turned inward and slightly upside down, from untreated clubfoot.

There's a thing I love to do when visiting CURE hospitals: I love to twirl the kids. They line up for it. I grab their wrists, and we spin and spin until I can't stand up anymore. It's a gigglfest! (Excuse me — Microsoft Word is now giving me the red squiggly line telling me gigglefest isn't a word. How am I supposed to write a serious theological work about global health care and CURE without gigglefest? I'm using it anyway.) Anyway, back to this gigglefest ... Before the sun went down it was Elizabethe who wanted to be twirled over and over. What a sweetheart. 

She struggled to walk
but played so hard.

Twirl a giggling kid a long time, and you learn: (1) it's never enough for them and you'll have to tap out from dizziness, and (2) you'll probably remember the kid. I remember Elizabeth.

CURE gives access to surgeries these kids might never have otherwise. Parents sometimes give up hope that their kids can ever be healed, only to find out about a CURE hospital, sometimes hundreds of miles away, that will do the surgery and charge exactly $0.00. So these hospitals are busy and special places.

I consider them
embassies of
the Kingdom heaven.

When I visit one of these hospitals, I usually sit in to observe a surgery or two. In Zambia, they do ten to fifteen surgeries each day. Later in my weeklong stay, I came in midafternoon and observed Dr. Moyo preparing as the techs readied the now sleeping little patient. I could see only two feet sticking out from beneath the sheet. I asked him the child's name and for a little background. "It's a girl. This is the first of two surgeries for this patient. Her name is ... " He checked. "Elizabeth" ... When Dr. Moyo and the nurses started praying over her, I got emotional. Her life was about to change drastically. 

Dr. Moyo paused before the surgery 
and told me what Elizabeth's life 
would have been like 
if she hadn't been taken to CURE. 

"She would always be pushed aside. 
Her disability would 
forever be her identity. 
She would always be 
considered a curse," he said. 
"She would be everybody's victim."

Everybody's victim?
This little girl?
Not happening.
Not now.

This kid is going to 
be able to run and
play and
dance.

Joyful Sisterhood by Motiontography

I once met a little girl in Kenya named Ellen who got similar treatment. Her mom couldn't stop smiling, because it wasn't long before Ellen was a complete blur on the soccer field, even at age six. I saw her in action, running circles around boys several years older than her. Even they were laughing at the pure speed of the kid. 

No one runs with more 
unbridled, glorious vivacity 
than a little kid 
who's been only sitting and 
watching her whole life.

So much of what we see in the news is about destroying the young: abuse and murders and wars and mass shootings. When horrible things happen, some folks respond with a question for those of us who somehow still believe in a good, all-powerful God: "Where's your God now?" It's a fair question. But I have a fair answer because God is still at work in the world. Where's my God now? Go with me to one of these hospitals. I'll show you.

"This is a place where
God walks the earth,"
one lady said.

She was smiling. It was at the CURE hospital in Ethiopia, and she was saying it because her life was suddenly changing and a burden was lifted, literally, off her back. She was the mom to a boy named Andualem, and while her husband had abandoned her after seeing little Andualem's crooked legs, she wasn't going to give him up. When it came time for him to start his schooling and he couldn't walk with her, she carried him. She put him on her back and walked more than a mile along a dusty road to take him to school.

Every day, there and back, she carried him. She did it for first grade, and then for second grade. Even as he grew bigger and bigger she carried him. He held her around her shoulders and neck. Fourth grade. Fifth grade. Sixth grade. He grew and grew, and she kept carrying him. Moms are forces of nature.

One day, a truck driver who'd seen her on multiple occasions stopped along the road to talk with her. He mentioned a place where he thought she might be able to find healing for her son. He'd heard of CURE in Addis Ababa. When she got to the hospital, Andualem's mom showed the staff the scars on her back from carrying her son for so long. And she cried. 

She found people who cared, and healing for her son. A dream come true. And that's when she said what she said, about it being a place where God walks the earth, and I can tell you she's right about that. It's not that the people working in the hospital aren't highly flawed. Of course they are. But that's just it:

When humans,
such as we all are,
want God's Kingdom on earth
as it is in heaven —
when we really catch a vision for it
 — the reaction from desperate people
is "Surely, God is here!"

They know it.

God can use any of us.

God has an MO, a style,
which He uses all the time:

He uses the humble.

He uses the little things,
the seemingly unimpressive,
overlooked things
to do the marvelous.

He enjoys it.

+ pgs. 15, 44-47, 97
adapted excerpts from
"A Place Where God Walks the Earth" in
Life Is Hard. God Is Good.
Let's Dance.

Joy is not 
a passing sensation of pleasure,
but a pervasive sense 
of well-being.

+ Dallas Willard

Joy is an act of resistance
against all the forces of despair:
violence, war, debt, death ...
all of the things that can cause us
to think life in this world is not worth living.

+ Willie James Jennings

Bonus Posts on Joy:


Next Post:


With anticipation and joy,

Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan


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Location: Worcester, MA, USA

Thursday, May 1, 2025

B + B | Jesus' Church is the Most Corrupt Institution on Earth

 


"If I had known you were
a minister connected with the Church,
I would have been so disgusted,
I wouldn't have sat down next to you.
But now,
after listening to you talk to your friend,
I have to ask you,
'Why do you follow Jesus?'"


+ The Beginning of Listening 
to a Story
at Birch Tree Bread Co.
in Worcester, Mass.


Today, there continue to be many revelations, disciplinary actions, and constructive critiques coming to those who bear the name of Jesus together in the West. It is a good reckoning that reveals God is and always will be the Defender and Liberator who hears the cries of the enslaved and oppressed and sets them free. 

This movement of the God who brings people out of darkness into light, out of oppression into freedom, is because we as His people have not honored His name with integrity and faithfulness. We too often have not sought His Kingdom first as the poor in spirit, nor are we known by many to be the merciful peacemakers He has called us to be as His people. 

We have settled too often for power, entitlement, reputation, rights, and wealth. We have hidden our sins and selfishness while condemned others for theirs. We don't look, sound, or act very much like the One we say teaches us everything we need to know to live abundantly. As one author wrote in the article "Integrity and the Future of the Church" in Plough Magazine:

We see young (people) walking away
not because they do not believe
what Jesus' Church teaches,
but because they believe the Church itself
does not believe what it teaches.
A lot of them will conclude that the Gospel is just one more aspect of political theater or outrage culture or institutional self-perpetuation or worse (due to our false witness) ... Jesus put it, “woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes” (Matthew 18:7).
We are losing too many of a generation
– not because they are secularists,
but because they believe we are.
What this demands is not rebranding,
but repentance – a turnaround.
Stranger things have happened, and that’s good, because we will need stranger things. We need to be the people of Christ and Him crucified, the people of a Word that stands above all earthly powers and ... abides (John 15:4-5). Somewhere out there, there’s at least one fifteen-year-old losing his religion who needs to see if we’re such a people.

While the author cites R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" as a somber song that captures some of the heart musings of those losing faith, my recent soundtrack for this has been Royal Blood's more raucous and defiant "Come On Over" which searingly sings:

So come on over, yeah, 
I went to Church and stopped believing. 
Yeah, so come on over, 
Well, there's no God and I don't really care.  

I'm on a train going nowhere, 
I ran away to make you care. 
This ain't my house and this ain't your home, 
Not when I'm feeling this alone ... 

What's your response
when you read or listen to these words?
Fear? Curiosity? Empathy?

There are many of us who love Jesus, His Church, and our neighbors. And in response to honest cries of hypocrisy, we can be tempted to resort to defensiveness or despair when we hear this song lived out and see its fruit multiply among people who judge Jesus' Church with insight from experience and pain. But if we become petulant, it will breed blame-shifting and bitterness in us that will not lead to the beautifully strange posture of repentance that I believe we need to have in order to be the people of Christ for such a moment as this.

Are we willing to pray, repent,
and patiently listen?
And what should our posture be
when we receive the backlash
of those who in the meantime
are justly angry for various reasons?

While I currently have the humble privilege to serve as a minister among Emmaus City Church, a local Protestant community in Worcester, Massachusetts, I continue to learn much from followers of Jesus throughout history (ex. Our Church Speaks was a wonderful read for my family and Emmaus City to close 2024) as well as across the globe today who are part of traditions different from my own. One who I continue to learn from is Fr. Josh Johnson, a black Catholic priest from Louisiana who provides a beautiful and powerful example of being a person who witnesses to Jesus among those who are angry and hurting. 

Atheist friends, alongside the skeptical and seeking, have helped me return to the story Fr. Josh shares below that provides an example for how to be the poor in spirit in Jesus' Kingdom when someone says, "(Jesus') Church is the most corrupt institution on earth ... " and consider myself broken and blessed that they would be honest enough to speak these words to me.

"One of my most memorable conversations
about God and the Church
actually took place at a bar ... "

One Monday afternoon, I drove to Covington, Louisiana, to meet with my spiritual director, a hermit who resides on the campus of a Benedictine monastery and seminary college. After spiritual direction, I called a good friend of mine, Michael Lane, who is a professor at the seminary. It was his birthday, so I invited him to have a drink with me.

We met at a local restaurant and grabbed two seats at the bar. Within a few minutes of ordering our drinks, an elderly man approached us. "Excuse me," he asked. "Are you a real Catholic priest?" Since I am only thirty, I get this question often. Many assume that I must be a fraternity pledge in costume. I responded, "Yes sir! I am a Catholic priest." The man's strident tone surprised me ...

"I just want you to know," he said,
"that the Catholic Church
is the most corrupt institution
on the face of the earth ...
and priests are the
most corrupt individuals in the world."

After he made his comments, he stood over me, staring at me silently. It was clear from his body language that he was not joking. So I paused for a moment before I responded, praying for the Holy Spirit to inspire me with the words that this man needed to hear. After what seemed like a long pause, I responded,

"Sir, I just want you to know that
I agree with you, one hundred percent.
The Catholic Church is indeed
the most corrupt institution
on the face of the earth, and its
priests are the most corrupt individuals.
I want you to know
that you are looking at
the most corrupt, broken, and imperfect
Catholic priest there is."
The man was visibly shocked by this reply, as was my friend sitting at the bar. I went on to tell him, 
"Sir, although Catholic priests, religious brothers and sisters, and laity are broken, imperfect, and corrupt, Jesus still chooses to dwell with us. In fact, two thousand years ago, He chose twelve very broken, imperfect, and corrupt men to be His apostles. Since Jesus is fully human and fully divine, He knew all the ways His apostles were going to show their brokenness. He knew all of their sins, both those they had committed before He called them and all those they were going to commit in the future. But guess what? He still chose them.

I then shared Jesus' prediction to the apostle Peter at the Last Supper that he would soon deny he even knew Jesus:

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren. And he said to him, "Lord, I am ready to go with You to prison and to death." He said, "I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know Me." (Luke 22:31-32).

Within a few hours, Peter had indeed denied Him three times ... Though Peter denied Jesus, and the rest of the apostles, except St. John, abandoned Jesus during His passion (see Matthew 26:56; Mark 14:50), He still chose them to be the foundation of the Church. After His crucifixion and death, they were all in hiding, for fear of the Jewish and Roman authorities. They surely felt shame and guilt for having left Jesus in His time of need. So when Jesus appeared to them after the Resurrection, His words must have been particularly comforting to them: "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you" (John 20:21).

I told the man at the bar, "The Bible makes one thing clear about the apostles—they were broken and sinful men. But, despite their brokenness, they went on to become saints. Why? Because Jesus chose to remain in communion with them, despite their faults, and they chose to abide in their relationship with Jesus. They became the foundation of the Church as its first leaders, empowered by Jesus Himself to teach in His name. So it follows that members of the Church today have the same potential to become holy by remaining in communion with Jesus despite our brokenness, imperfections, and corruption."

Upon hearing these words, the man's demeanor completely changed. He went from being confrontational to being relaxed. I then asked him,

"May I ask you a favor?"
Seemingly confused, he said, "Sure."
I asked, "Will you pray for me,
asking for Jesus to transform
my corrupt heart into a saintly heart?"
Still somewhat confused,
he looked at me and nodded.
"Yes," he said.

+ pgs. 1-4,

The story above in Fr. Josh's life continues to disciple me in the Way of Jesus as of late. And if you're curious about a similar interaction I had in Worcester at Birch Tree Bread Company one day, email me and let's get some time together, and I'll tell you about the time an older woman said to me,

"If I had known you were
a minister connected with the Church,
I would have been so disgusted,
I wouldn't have sat down next to you.
But now,
after listening to you talk to your friend,
I have to ask you,
'Why do you follow Jesus?'"

P.S. Here's a bonus story about G.K. Chesterton choosing to follow Jesus and be among His Church as a philosopher in his day in England. As Dr. Tom Neal, a professor at Notre Dame Seminary writes:

G.K. Chesterton once said that his umbrella helped reveal to him why he knew the Catholic Church was for him. He said that whenever he went to visit with churches, he would customarily leave his umbrella by the back door during the worship service. In these church buildings, his umbrella would always be there waiting for him when he went out back. But the first time he went into a Catholic Church to hear Mass, his umbrella disappeared from the back of the cathedral. Someone had stolen it. His conclusion? 
If the Catholic Church offered such a generous and open doorway to the rabble, being a home for both sinners and saints, then he had indeed found a home where he could also fumble along into the Kingdom.

+ Conversation and Chesterton excerpts from Introduction: A Hospital for Sinners in Broken + Blessed: An Invitation to My Generation by Fr. Josh Johnson; also look for his recently released On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Restoring God's Vision of Race and Discipleship. 


With presence, peace, and many blessings,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan


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Location: Worcester, MA, USA
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