I will tell you stories and weave you songs that will make you want God so bad, you’ll leave your big job in the big office on the twelfth floor of that big building in the big city and run down all 12 flights of stairs just on the off-chance that today might be the day that God shows up in our home town and that, if he does, we’ll be ready to greet Him.
I will listen your soul back into the land of the living and help you figure out how you’re going to explain to God how you got that ugly brown stain on your pretty new white blouse because the directions for how to get to heaven are obviously not as clear as the preacher told you they would be. And that you might be willing to forgive him, but not before you’ve given him a good piece of your mind.
If you dare to try something that’s well-nigh impossible, I’ll never tell you it can’t be done, but I’ll sit right down beside you until we can figure out together where the secret pathway to the light is hidden. And I’ll hold your hand until we get there, even through that last dark, scary passageway that for some inscrutable reason always blocks our view of God’s face while we take those last few final fateful steps. (Do you suppose it’s because God wants to know if we really want what we ask for enough to let go of it?)
If you think that the Bible justifies homophobia or tells you that you are not a good Christian if you don’t spank your kids, I’ll reach deep down into that old graveyard of improbable myths and scandalous promises that some fool numbered chapter and verse like a god-damned rule book and throw back in your face a hidden treasure of truthful love that will set you back on your ass and maybe down on your knees. Don’t let me catch you using God’s very words to prop up your small-minded, piddly-assed theology. And don’t mess with someone who could recite the names of all 66 books of the Bible backwards and forwards by the time she was 11-years-old.
I will dip you down deep, deep, deep into the baptismal river but promise not to hold you under even one second longer than it takes for your eyes to learn to see past what is little and ugly and snatch a glimpse of the wild unpredictableness that is God’s fire.
I will find the dirty little secret you’ve been hiding for so long, hoping against hope someone would finally love you enough to call you on it and invite you to come back home. We’ll leave the light on for you.
I have seen God in his underwear and lived to tell about it. And I know how to sing Alleluia with a broken heart. Call to action here?
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