What Would Happen If...

Jun 24, 2021

This week we are featuring guest devotionals written by members of our congregation. Today, Petrus Johnson:

What would happen if we all stopped trying to be right, and just started focusing on getting it right?

Now I can’t take credit for the concept, as it is a concept taught by Brene Brown as a strategy to use when one wants to transform from always knowing into always learning.

An always knowing spirit leads one to always have a response, be it a quick comeback, or a long colloquial expression, that essentially says, “Allow me to prove to you why I’m right.”

In contrast, an always learning spirit is one that says, “Could it be possible that I’m incorrect?” This spirit leaves room for consideration. Consideration that perhaps there is information, fact, knowledge, or wisdom that exists, which is counter to that which one always seeks to confirm a biased opinion or belief.

What would happen if… we got comfortable with being uncomfortable? What would happen if… we accepted the truth that we haven’t arrived yet? What would happen if… we measured our causes against Jesus’ callings? What would happen if… we measured our proverbial “lines in the sand” against the neighbor narrative that Jesus defines for us here:

“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”

Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

- Matthew 22:34-40 NLT

In a short film called, Collision Course, which is part of a 6-series discussion, Called to Community, Walter Brueggemann discusses the notion that there are two narratives, saying, “There are two distinctly different narratives, two different stories we can choose to live into.” The first one, which he calls the neighbor narrative, is an “endless challenge” to the second narrative.

In the earliest years of the Church, people were drawn to particular fellowships in which people interacted in a distinctly different way than people on the street usually did. They gathered around tables, where all were fed, interacting as neighbors - instead of a society of haves and have-nots, clean and unclean. Who you ate with defined who you were. Jesus was often challenged on this point since He seemed eager to eat at the tables of even the most foreign of people. Jesus’ neighbor narrative looks at the world through an entirely different lens. As the apostle Paul put it,

“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”

- Galatians 3:27-29

And yet, we live in a world that is deeply divided and tries to force us to choose camps. Are you a liberal or a conservative? An intellectual or a redneck? Are you here legally or illegally? Gay or straight? Pro-life or pro-choice? Pro-Palestine or pro-Israel? Patriot or traitor? The camps go on and on and, for better and for worse, our individual and collective answers to these questions shape the face of our local church communities. (Walter Brueggemann – Collision Course)

What would happen if… we kept it simple? In a seventeen minute video, Phil Visher, the creator of VeggieTales shared his thoughts in a discussion titled, Race in America. What I found most compelling was the question he asked at the end. Visher simply asks his audience to C.A.R.E.

What would happen if… we acted with COMPASSION towards one another? What would happen if… we were ACCEPTING of each other? What would happen if… we treated each other with RESPECT? What would happen if… we developed EMPATHY for our brothers and sisters? What would happen if we allowed ourselves to C.A.R.E.?