The Discarded

Okay, now put your two hands together joined by the fingers in an inward position and repeat after me.

You’ll remember this from childhood.

Here’s the church,
Here’s the steeple,
Open the doors
And here’s all the people.

I have read that Billy Graham has only basically four sermons he has used over the course of his life.

In my own life, I have a common theme that dominates my life.

People who are discarded being one of those central themes.

Those who have seen the worst which God’s people have to offer.

Those who have experienced the lack of compassion we each display at times.

I have at times been on each side of the church door. On the inside excluding all others who are not like me, yet who desire to experience God’s love. And on the outside, wanting to be included but knowing that I was now branded by those religious.

The most harsh expressions I have personally ever received were from…you guessed it…Christians.

I will not list them here except one, maybe two. I did have someone express to me once, “I will never speak of you again.” I found that one interesting as I did when a teenage girlfriend was so frustrated by my introverted personality that she called me, “socially retarded”. Actually that one helped me become a better communicator to this day.

There were others but why bring out the real “nastee” stuff in a piece intended to uplift and encourage.

A couple of years ago I adopted my second life passage, the first being Nehemiah 13:31, the second being Luke 18:9-14. It is a beautiful illustration of the included and the excluded in God’s eyes.

Jesus illustrates by parable two men, both present in the temple, (in church), one prays out that he is thankful to not be like…and he lists several types of people he is grateful not to be like. And the second man, who happens to be included in the excluded group, prayed as well, but would not even lift up his eyes toward heaven, beat his chest and said, “Be merciful to me, the sinner.”

Not a sinner or a group of sinners, but, “the” sinner as though he was the only one.

In light of this, I expressed to God recently that I had been going to church all my life, 53 years and 9 months and that I was tired of going to church. I wanted to be the church. And that I wanted to seek out and give hope to those discarded by “the church”.

God has brought them into my life. Would you like a couple of examples?

A fifty one year old single never married professional female says to me, “When will God bring me my Prince Charming?”

A christian husband and father, active in the work of Christ says to me in a moment of vulnerability, “John, I have made some decisions that if my wife and family find out I will lose them. So, do I lie to them and maybe keep my family together? Or, do I tell them the truth and lose them for certain?”

How do I answer that?

A dear friend of mine for thirty years recently expressed to me that he was gay and that he been gay all of his life. This is not just your average man. This man grew up in the church, accepted Christ at an early age, in his twenties helped lead one of the largest youth ministries in America at that time. He discovered in 2002 he had been given a medically challenging situation but was fighting through it.

Here’s the part I want you to know.

As we talked about all of this a few months ago he told me a story that caught me off guard. He said it was a February day in 1996 and not a cloud in the sky. Due to the conflict that was tearing him apart he decided to go to Stone Mountain Park outside of Atlanta and it was there he would end his life.

As he was getting ready to do just that, he said he felt God’s arms wrap around him and God said to him, “Do not do this, I love you just the way you are.”

What do I tell my friend?

That he must has misunderstood God. Maybe that God lied. Surely my friend knew that being gay and being divorced are the two unpardonable sins.

There are other examples but they are almost too heartbreaking to recount as it relates to the unforgiving nature of the followers of Christ. Yes, all of us fit into that category.

So, when I meet these individuals I offer them hope by telling them about a scenario of Jesus at Pedros. (Pedros is a local Mexican restaurant near my home.)

Let’s say Jesus and I are at Pedros and he, He, Jesus is physically sitting there and I begin to tell Him.

“Jesus, I love you and I love your church. I have served you all of my life. But I have failed you and my family. I have made some decisions that have cost me my family. My wife and I are divorcing and it is final. Is there any place in the church I can be used, that I can still serve?’ And then Jesus says to me, “Wow, John, I don’t know, divorce is so final. We may can find a place for you, but we are going to have to brand you as divorced and we are going to have to call you something like, let’s see, a yoke servant if you actually expect to serve closely in the church but even that will have to wait for a time.”

Do you actually believe that the Messiah, the one who extended his arms and died for me is going to say that?

He will not say that.
He cannot say that.
It is impossible for Christ to say that because of his eternal redemptive and restoring work on the cross.

I will sum up this long entry with the words of Psalm 139:8 which sums up the love that Christ has for us and that we should have for one another.

“If I make my bed in hell, there your love will find me.”

That is the love that the discarded need.

A love that includes them, chases them down, devours them.

“If I make my bed in hell, there your love will find me.”

Would Christ offer them any less?

JHH