Slow of (Burning) Heart

My heart beats slowly toward belief.

I remember the question I was asked that started this whole deconstruction journey I’ve been on for more than a quarter century now. I was a volunteer intern at a church, and the pastor asked me, “If you could make a church whatever you wanted it to be, what would it look like?”

At the time, it was a question of aesthetics: what kind of music would I choose? What would a sermon look like? What shape would the service take? I was about 20, and at the turn of the century, the emerging church movement was blossoming. The pastor that asked me this question was curious about what a different kind of church plant could look like. And I, being the youngster in the room, had some ideas.

I didn’t really fit in with the hour-long singalong/sermon combo that was our liturgy. Granted, I conformed because this format was what I had grown up with and into, but it wasn’t what resonated with me. I wasn’t satisfied. My heart burned for more.

When this question of a church’s shape came to me through the pastor’s mouth, it sent me down a road I never would have guessed.

See, for me this because not just a chance to throw some distortion of the guitars and have a more experiential service. This became a theological journey.

If I was going to answer honestly, I needed to strip away all the pretense, the doctrine, the dogma, and get down to the nitty-gritty truth. I wanted to build my idea of what church could be from the ground up, so I needed to get down to the bedrock of what made Christianity Christian.

Over the years, with layer upon layer taken away, I finally hit the core question: what is good news? This was the question. If I was going to evangelize, preach, teach, and build a theology, I wanted to build it on the right thing, and that thing was the gospel, the good news, God’s proclamation of good tidings and rescue to our needy souls.

This is what I landed on: the good news, the gospel, wasn’t a set of beliefs to intellectually assent to. It wasn’t a doctrine to articulate. It wasn’t a creed to confess. The gospel was something more, something deeper, something that changed everything I thought I knew about Christian faith.

The gospel was Jesus.

This was different than a dogma that saved you for heaven. This was a person, a being, a particularity. Jesus was, is, the gospel of God.

Jesus is good news to the poor.

Jesus is sight to the blind.

Jesus is release to the captives.

Jesus is our rescue.

When I first realized this truth, I was still very entrenched in an evangelical framework, so I understood Jesus as the source of our salvation. It was Jesus who saved us from hell, not a doctrine we had to agree with.

While my view on hell—even my belief in hell—has changed over the years, and my theological framework has morphed to this post-Christianity I find myself feeling my way through these days, this underlying bedrock of Jesus being the gospel has remained firm. It’s one of the few truths I can say I hold to.

Jesus is gospel because the very essence of who and what he is shows us that God is a god of self-donating love, of self-emptying for our sake. In the plainest terms I can put it, Jesus shows us that God is love.

God loves you. Period. No qualifications. No “but”. God’s being is oriented towards you, towards us.

And here is the part that my heart beats slow to believe: God’s being is oriented towards me.

I am perfectly fine with believing God is love for you, for them, for him, for her… but for me? This is where my trauma-infused spirit balks, pulls back, refuses to embrace with a wholehearted abandon that would set me free.

In one way or another, this truth has been hammered into my head over and over: God loves you. But what my body has learned is that I might not be worth loving.

This is the wound I carry.

I hide from love because I’m worried I’m not worth loving, and if that reality is ever discovered and confirmed, I will be discarded and left on the outside, unaccepted and alone.

I am slow to believe that Jesus is good news for me.

But Jesus refuses to give me over to my trauma.

Jesus keeps walking beside me, showing me from the scripture of book and cosmos that he is oriented towards me.

Jesus walked with two disciples on their way to a town called Emmaus. It was after the reports of the resurrection had shook the community of Jesus’ disciples. The two walked with sad, confused, disoriented hearts. Jesus fell into step with them and listened to their disoriented hearts, listened to their recounting of the passion, the death, and the report of resurrection.

When Jesus responded, he didn’t mock them, rebuke them, or condemn them for not getting it. Jesus laughed with the gentleness of love.

“Oh, your hearts are slow to believe!”

And as Jesus began to show them that everything that had just happened was supposed to happen to God’s liberator, their hearts burned.

Their slow hearts burned, caught fire, began to warm, to catch up to what their body knew: the resurrection changed everything. Jesus opened their scriptures to them, showing how Moses and all the prophets had been speaking about this death and life again. The two knew what the prophets had said; after all, they were Jews. They knew the Torah. But suddenly, they saw it in a new light.

This is what Jesus does with me. All the scripture around me, in book, neighbor, and cosmos that I know, Jesus begins to make my heart burn with new ways of seeing the world I know so well, ways that highlight God’s love for my body, heart, and soul.

“Oh, your heart is slow to believe,” Jesus gently chuckles at me.

But even then, I don’t see it’s Jesus working this fire in my heart.

The two disciples going to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus through teaching and talking. It was when Jesus took a loaf of bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them… only then did they see that this was Jesus.

Their slow-burning hearts finally saw.

One of the fractals that is sung in the Episcopal church at the breaking of the host for Eucharist says, “Be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.” I’m left wondering what the breaking bread is for me.

Where is it that I can finally see Jesus for who he is? What does he take in his wounded hands, give great, good thanks for, break, and give to me? What is it that reveals him to be?

I don’t have an answer.

All I have is this slow heart that is burning.

I might be foolish and slow of heart to believe, but I’m burning.

I’m craving the bread in my hands, given to me from the nail marked hands that I can finally see for what they are. I’m longing to hear every prophet speak to me the holy words of the love of God. I’m hungry to recognize this burning in my chest that sends me into the night, back to the community, where all I can do is testify to what has just happened.

Be known to me, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.

What’s your bread?

If you would like to have someone practice paying attention to God with you, to help you hear the Spirit and yourself, I offer one on one, queer-affirming, trauma-informed spiritual direction. Message me and we can see where the Spirit is doing her work.

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