Love That Refuses to Stay Confined
Jesus plus nothing and a plate full of food.
This article was originally written for Griffin Gooch’s newsletter The Remarkable Ordinary.
I was once called into a meeting with a pastor and his deacons to give an answer for a post I made on social media, in which I suggested something to the effect that I don’t consider myself a Baptist, just a person who loves Jesus and wants to follow him. I don’t have the time to find it on The Wayback Machine, but it was almost certainly worded worse than that, and it was almost certainly posted to Tumblr (which is telling) — and considering I was serving as a lay youth pastor at a Baptist church at the time, it might’ve been a little problematic. This regrettable instance of youthful naïvete is the sort of thing you say when you’re young, impulsive, and still figuring out what you believe, which was me to a T in those days. Needless to say, I’m a happy Baptist minister nowadays, and I have a lot more appreciation for what that means, too.
Not too long after that meeting, my wife and I ended up leaving that church. I don’t harbor any animosity toward anyone involved, though, especially since looking at how it all unfolded in the rearview mirror lets me understand it better, as often happens with hindsight. The instinct of those church leaders to lead an inquiry and protect, if need be, the church body that was placed under their charge is one with which I’m very sympathetic now. In other words, while I don’t necessarily think I was wrong about the initial issue, I was definitely young and dumb.
I’m older now and slightly less dumb, but what I’ve become convinced of is that many of the labels and fences we as church leaders erect to safeguard those we love and are called to lead, however well-intentioned, can just as easily become walls that keep more than just doctrinal error out of our homes or auditoriums. They can ostracize people, too, suppressing sympathy and stiff-arming mercy. This isn’t a demeanor I’m at all interested in fostering. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve come to hold a lot of things loosely, save for Jesus Christ. He’s the only thing to which I’ll unapologetically hold fast.
Since I’ve probably sufficiently buried the lede already, I was recently reminded of the profundity of “Jesus plus nothing” during a small, ecumenical effort to serve our community by providing a meal to those who likely hadn’t had a made-from-scratch one in a while. This event wasn’t a flashy affair. There were no streamers or banners or clever marketing campaigns. It was just a couple of dozen people from several different local churches or ministries collaborating to do something rather simple: feed people in need. I couldn’t tell you how many folks we ended up feeding; all I know is that we barely had any ham left. Individuals from all different backgrounds and all walks of life were welcomed and waited on. It wasn’t much, but I know Jesus was there.
I share this story, not because I’m looking for applause or a pat on the back for the grand display of altruism and service I was able to contribute to, but because this is the kind of ministry that ought to be normative within the big “C” Church. The kind where the fences that normally keep us sequestered are gladly vaulted to demonstrate God’s love for the least of these. After all, it’s not every day that a team of Lutherans, Baptists, Southern Baptists, and non-denominationalists set aside their traditions to link arms for the good of their neighbors.
Having grown up in a particular stream of Christian subculture, one that wasn’t too fond of crossing the denominational aisle, I’m aware of the rarity of this phenomenon. At the risk of sounding too much like the Philippians 3 version of the apostle Paul, I was raised as an Independent Baptist in the buckle of the Bible Belt — Greenville, South Carolina — home to an institution that may or may not have founded Christianity in the South. I jest, but only slightly, because depending on whom you interact with, you may be led to believe that that’s true. I won’t bore you with chronicling all the examples of the denominational tribalism that often sprang out of the aforementioned institution, mainly because that’d be well beyond the purview of this post. If you know, then you already know. Also, this is supposed to be an upbeat post.
I’ve often joked with friends and/or acquaintances that the Venn Diagram of my theological persuasions and interests would have lots of circles representing lots of different traditions, each of which would overlap a small yet significant center: Jesus and the story of redemption that culminates in him. The point isn’t that I’m narrow-minded, though some may accuse me of such, especially when it comes to dialogues about Christopher Nolan’s filmography or LeBron James’s G.O.A.T. status or the scourge on coffee that is the K-cup industry. Rather, the point is that I’ve grown to love finding commonality in those and with those who aren’t necessarily within my stream of Christianity. I hold all things loosely, save for Jesus.
This is what I was reminded of during that ministry event, at which there was no such thing as fences keeping us over here and them over there. There were just people who loved Jesus serving a meal to men and women who hadn’t had a hot meal in who knows how long. There were brothers and sisters from other church families sitting with moms, plating food, and laughing with new faces as though they’d known each other forever. I’m not trying to be cliché or schmaltzy. I just know that no one stopped the meal to compare doctrinal statements. No one stayed behind their fence like Tim Taylor’s sage neighbor. We just served and loved, and for a few hours, I was struck by what it means to be the Body of Christ.
I recently pulled a 1910 edition of Brooks by the Traveller’s Way off the shelf, which is a compendium of short messages or devotionals written by John Henry Jowett, a British clergyman whose ministry spanned the latter half of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. In one meditation, Jowett touches on what it looks like when we stay behind those fences — namely, sympathy becomes confined, and life itself becomes crippled:
It is a sure sign of dwarfed and crippled life when religious interests are self-contained and exclusive, when we cannot see the beauties in another mode of worship, nor find a single foothold for kinship and communion. But our sectarian fences are so emphatic and pronounced that it is difficult for our sympathies to get beyond them.1
To be sure, I’m not advocating for a label-less orthodox experience. Fellowshipping, worshiping, and assembling with those with whom you share convictions is a good, right, and blessed thing. But for as beneficial as those labels and fences may be in certain contexts, when taken to their extremes or lionized as cherished commodities, mercy, love, and sympathy become stifled, bordering on absent. And, as Jowett says, “Absence of sympathy means absence of vision, lack of space, life confined to one’s own courtyard.”2 The more we circle the wagons, the more limited our lives become. We become bigger and the world around us smaller, and grace more forced.
The antidote to such crippling self-imprisonment is the gracious mind of God as seen in the person of Jesus, which, among other things, imbues us with a deferential, self-sacrificial love that frees us to get out from behind that fence. “When self is seen in large associations,” Jowett concludes, “then self assumes accurate proportions, and self-conceit subsides into a healthy self-esteem.”3 The “ecumenical spirit,” which is so often regarded as the boogeyman of certain pockets of Christianity, might just be a consequence of the gospel itself. It’s what happens when we earnestly pursue a life where we decrease, and Jesus increases in importance.
Paul’s words at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 3 come to mind. The old yet familiar “I’m of Paul, I’m of Cephas, I’m of Apollos” spirit doesn’t really have anything to do with “the faith once delivered to the saints,” especially when you’re handing a plate full of food to someone who’s hungry. And maybe that’s the point. Not that those labels and fences don’t matter or don’t have a purpose, but that they fall into place beneath the One who draws all men and women to himself through his own willingness to love them to the point of dying for them. It’s in those moments when we’re made to see what we’re here for — namely, sharing in the love that refuses to stay confined.
John Henry Jowett, Brooks by the Traveller’s Way: Twenty-Six Weeknight Addresses (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), 248–49.
Jowett, 250.
Jowett, 250–51.