Teach Us, Oh Lord, To Live With Tension
Posted on Mar 29, 2015 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
Tension! Life is filled with tension. Now, for most of us, when we think of tension, we immediately think of conflict. But, tension isn’t conflict. Conflict is literally a state of disharmony, or to put it more bluntly it is a state of open fighting. But tension, is literally a condition of being stretched. Conflict, is about fighting so that one side wins. Tension is the internal, or external condition that stretches us so that we might look, feel, or act differently. For the past couple of years at our fall kick-off celebration, we have had a young boy who is a balloon artist. This young boy takes balloons and makes all kinds of things out of them. He makes balloon dogs, swords, hats, and flowers. He takes a little piece of rubber, stretches it, blows air into it so the sides of the balloons are stretched then he shapes them into his creations. He literally creates tension within the balloon, to make it into something new.
Today is Palm Sunday. Did you notice what happened today in our stories? We began with the reading from Mark 11. In this part of the story, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem and as he rode in on his donkey the crowds welcomed him and cheered for him. Mark tells us that people laid down their cloaks and “leafy branches,” for him to ride on. Actions reserved for when the king came to town. As he rode into Jerusalem that day, there was excitement and joy, and the crowds shouted, Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! …” But that celebration was short-lived. As the very next day, when he came back into the city, he entered the temple and created tension. Mark tells us that when he entered the temple that next day that he immediately began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple. The problem wasn’t that that those who ran the temple were trying to provide the people with the appropriate means of offering sacrifices in the temple. No, for Jesus the problem was that these acts that at one time had been created to help God’s people fulfill sacrificial acts had now turned into acts of making money and not spiritual acts.
Jesus created some tension. He intended to stretch those in charge so they might change their ways. After all their shouts of joy upon his arrival, Jesus comes and basically says my arrival means change will come. His arrival meant current authorities would need to step aside. His arrival meant a loss of power to those who had had all the power. His arrival raised the tension in Jerusalem and instead of allowing themselves to be molded into something new and life giving, this tension Jesus created caused fear and as we heard, that fear lead to conflict. and that conflict, lead to death as the very people who just a few days earlier had shouted Hosanna were now shouting “Crucify Him!”
Like the people of Jesus’ day, we don’t like tension. Our goal is often to eliminate tension. I have been trying to read about tension the past couple of weeks and I was fascinated that the majority of the articles and books I found about tension had to do with how to eliminate tension in our lives. But tension, if used as a tool, is really something in our lives that should stretch us and challenge us to look at changing and being made new. Throughout his ministry, Jesus attempted to create tensions, so that people might look at the world differently. In the story of the Good Samaritan, his story created tension. The priests were always thought of as the good people. The Levites were considered the most religious of the tribes. They were the good people. And, yet, in this parable, Jesus makes them out to be those that fail to help and he lifts up a Samaritan, the “bad ones” as the one who is the hero. He raised the tension and hoped people would be stretched to think differently.
Tension is part of life and it can be, and should be, something we learn to deal with in a healthy way so that we might be stretched to live differently. Here at Salem, we are faced with many tensions these days. We are faced with building issues that cause tensions. Should we spend our money on fixing the buildings, or on new ministries? We are faced with financial tensions? We recently passed a welcome statement that proclaims ALL are welcome here and now we will be faced with the tension of what will happen when people who are really different from us walk in our door. We are being stretched to be come new.
Last week we talked about God’s call upon our lives to be willing to die. Wednesday night we talked about what kind of things need to die here for us to grow? What if, instead of spending hundreds of thousands or dollars on the facility, we let it go and we spent the next five years focused completely on ministry? What would happen to us? Now there is tension! But what if we lived in that tension of “what if?” What if we truly did something different, how might we be the church then?
Or, what if we completely changed our worship practices? Oh, I’m not talking just talking about some different music, or a couple of different prayers. No, I mean what ifinstead of worshiping in this old traditional church building, we began to meet in a an old bar, or an abandoned warehouse? What if we invited people to come and instead of singing songs they don’t know, worship consisted of asking questions of each other about how we might be the church in the world? That’s not church you say! Well in Jesus’ day it was. In those days, they would gather, read scripture then talk. Jesus healed people in the midst of worship and then talked about it. I know just bringing up these questions is creating tension, isn’t it?
Brothers and sisters, the tension Jesus created that first Holy Week, lead to his death; a death that was intended to end the tension. But, as we know it did not relieve the world of its tension. Through his death, we have discovered new life and in this new life we are challenged to live with the tension of the Kingdom being near and, yet, not, yet, here. It is time to ask Jesus to teach us to live peacefully with this tension. It is time to allow the tensions laid before us to wash over us and change us, so that we might be the life-giving church that God has created us to be.
It is time to pray, Teach us, O Lord, to live with tension, Amen!