Redeemer Devotions - 5 March, 2010

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Adventures... in Hope - Redeemer Devotions
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The week ends as we end a chapter from "Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear" by
Scott Bader-Saye.

"Paul Wadell makes the observation that "it is much easier to take the risk of loving
someone when we know we are loved and cherished by another." In other words, the
presence of a loving community makes it easier to take the risk of extending love
to someone outside the community. Here we come back to the connection of hospitality
and courage.... The brothers of Taize are able to take the risk of loving and welcoming
the stranger, even the potentially dangerous stranger, because they share a common
life in which their common love supports the extension of that love to others.
And though such love can be risky, as Brother Roger's murder powerfully underscored,
the risks of such actions are not borne by one individual alone. There can be no
solution to the problem of fear without the existence of communities capable of
bearing fear together.

We need to remember the part about 'bearing fear together." The fear is there -
in all of us. And yet, when it is shared, the community that shares a love for
one another and the whole world is a community that helps us bear that fear. We
can live with it present and we can begin face it without letting the fear reign.
I find it especially important to bring together hospitality and courage. The
whole image of opening up one's self or for a community to open wide its doors is
a courageous act. And yet, that is where the community is able to demonstrate a
new way to be in our fear-filled world. It is also the way the community brings
in others who long to be wrapped up in a loving welcome when fear is pursuing them
and attempting to own them. So, on Sunday morning and each day the doors of our
church buildings are open and the church is there as the community of Christ-like
hospitality, others are given the opportunity to come and see that strangers have
a place as do all the regulars. We will gather together and shape a people who
bear one another's fears.

Connection: Like a stretch that can only go so far today and then goes a bit farther
or maybe even goes a bit easier - we stretch ourselves whenever we welcome others
in the face of what we fear. Sometimes - it takes time. That is when we need each
other to guide us beyond the places in which we tend to get stuck.

Lord God, you have a history of stretching your people in every age. You move us
to go beyond the limits we so readily set for ourselves. And then, we are caught
up in the miracle that is your Reign - a life that expands to see and hear and
be a part of the holy. We give you thanks. Amen.
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