Time for Honesty

On Wednesday morning I heard brutally honest words.  "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  In a nutshell, as someone placed a cross of ashes on my forehead she told me, “You’re going to die.  Your body will decompose.  You will go back to dirt.”

Not exactly the stuff of Hallmark greeting cards…but an honest assessment of reality.

Nearly every Sunday when I worship I start the service by boldly proclaiming my failures.  Together with the whole community I tell God about my selfishness, my pride, my greed, my anger, and my jealousy.  It’s a no-holds-barred assessment of my life: I have failed God in many ways.

Followers of Jesus Christ have the freedom to express such blunt honesty. 

We live in a world that feels the need to sugar coat everything.   We want to be strong.  We want to be successful.  We want to live happily every after.  These Disney-dreams sometimes creep into our lives of faith.  We can get the impression that if only we believe in Jesus ‘enough’ then everything will go our way.  The pressure is on us to get things right so God can properly bless us.  We need the proper prayers, the proper devotional life, the proper morality.  Do these things and God will shower you with blessings.

It’s a dangerous lie. 

When our faith depends on our good actions, churches become cesspools of hypocrisy.  People dare not show any weakness in faith.  Only stories of God’s amazing power in their lives can be told (and if you don’t have an amazing story, you might try to come up with one to fit in).  Underneath the veneer of a happy smile, however, people hurt.  They doubt.  They struggle.  They don’t want to admit to any problems (other than ones in the past that they have ‘conquered in Jesus’) lest they be looked down upon and judged.  It’s a race to see who can seem the most content in their faith.  “Look at me, God.  I’m awesome.”

It’s a dangerous lie.

We are broken, sinful people living in a broken, sinful world.  That’s the harsh truth.  We have moments when we doubt our faith.  We have times when we wonder if God is even out there anywhere.  We have things that we do which we know full well are wrong, yet we can’t seem to stop ourselves.  We have illnesses that don’t heal.  We have financial problems.  We struggle to raise our children.  The list could go on and on.

Life is difficult…and then you die.  That’s an honest assessment, but it’s not the whole story.  In the midst of this life of pain, Jesus comes for you.  Jesus brings love, hope, forgiveness, and life.  Jesus knows pain, he had nails driven into his wrists.  Jesus knows rejection, his followers deserted him and his people condemned him.  Jesus knows death.  We’re not alone in this journey through life...and even into death.

It’s time for Christ’s church to proclaim the honest reality of the world.  We don’t have to ‘get it all together’ to have faith.  The only way we come before the throne of God is as unworthy people forgiven through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

I am free to hear that I am dust because of a God who redeems the dust.  I am free to confess my failures because of a God who forgives failures.  My role in faith is not to impress God with my faithfulness so I can receive a blessing.  My role is simply to walk with Jesus, in good days and in bad, in hope and in despair, when my faith is strong and when it’s struggling.  In the end, when my body goes back to dust, this is the God who will redeem me.  In the Bible Job proclaims, "After my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh shall I see God."  I will die and God will continue to act.

I am free to be honest.  God knows me too well to do anything else.