Is it Possible?

Is it possible that the very act of being together opens a path for the Holy Spirit to connect with us? And, through that connection, transform "two of three gathered" into "two or three gathered in his name"?

–Larry Duggins, Together, p ix. 

Do you know how often one should mop a house inhabited by four children, three adults, and three canines? I once had a schedule wherein I mopped once per week. That is not adequate any longer. I have not discovered the correct number of times, but it is inevitably measured per day. Should it be once, at the end of the day, to maximize efficiency? Perhaps it would be best to mop after meals? What if one were to just strap damp cloths to the feet of all inhabitants. 

The honest answer is that my floors are dirty most of the time.

In his book Together, Larry Duggins writes about community being a conduit (or, in John Wesley’s language, means) by which grace can be poured into the world. The Missional Wisdom Foundation focuses on incubating faith communities to that end. Communities of Grace are wellsprings of grace in a world of parched throats. Put that on a poster.

When I contemplate what a community of grace would look like, it is something analogous to a house with perpetually clean floors. Not tidy—just-been-mopped clean. This vision of mine is probably not surprising. There was a lot of wash-rinse-repeat language in the hymns I grew up singing in the various Methodist churches I frequented. The problem with this thinking is that it negates the concept of communities of grace. If that is what a community of grace looks like, there must not be any. Perhaps communities aren’t doing it right. Or grace isn’t able to clean up the mess it encounters. Or, or, or. If only. When…

Community is hard. Even when it is formed to bring grace into the world. 

If you have read this missive for long, I hope you have picked up on the continual nature of articulating community as a means of grace. The Missional Wisdom Foundation always seems to be in the middle of rewording or re-understanding what it means to be a community of grace. Honestly, sometimes it is very disorienting. What do we do? Teach? What do our experiments reveal? Communities of grace don’t lend themselves to an answer but a process. The grace of community is movement and journey and unfolding and birthing and dying and burying and hoping and learning.

Grace isn’t so much the freshly mopped floor, but the seam in the linoleum that can never be cleaned out. It is a single grain of sand sprinkled on a perfect fried egg. I know! That is awful! Why would I even say that! Grace is what is encountered in the destruction of the crucifixion and the absurdity of the resurrection. Over the next several weeks, the Wisdom for the Way will explore what it means to be a community of grace. 

I once heard an interview (I couldn’t find it again to reference here, but it was good and, if you find it, let me know) with a physicist who said the only places in the universe where time flowed was in the presence of heat. He understood what he was saying (I imagine), but the bit I took away from it was that chaos is inherent to life. 

You can’t get away from the dirty floors unless you remove the life. 

Communities of grace are messy because grace brings deep life. Grace will not let the absence of life, which would be very tidy, be the goal. Grace is disruptive, chaotic, and wild, and grace pursues you with love. 

Jesus stood on the shore of a lake, looking out over its familiar water at a man. A man who was tired and disappointed. The slump of the man’s shoulders murmured, “Life, no, if you want to be honest, grace, is disappointing.” He had taken every risk, and, at the end, at the critical moment, he had been revealed as a coward who had backed the wrong messiah. If only he hadn’t denied his teacher, if only he had not let his head be turned by a boat full of fish, if only he had stayed faithful to the life set before him. But no. He had been swept up by the promise that grace could take him somewhere. That his life might matter. 

He had believed he might be special. 

Jesus looked at those shoulders and smiled. His shoulders had said the same one night in a garden. His bitterness had rusted the soil. His abandonment had echoed off the silent stones. There was still an ache in his side. 

Best to call the man in. 

Grace calls us in. 

Love calls us in.