A few weeks ago, I posted a controversial question on Facebook. I wrote, “Help me resolve a dispute that my husband doesn't even know we're having. Egg shells: in the disposer or in the trash?”
Dan and I have been married for nineteen years, and for nineteen years, I’ve been annoyed that he puts his egg shells in the sink and not in the trash can. Of course, eighteen years and forty-some-odd-weeks ago, I could have asked him about it. I could have shared how I felt about it. We could have talked about the best place to dispose of egg shells and the reasons why. We could have worked through this minor disagreement, if this was even what it was. But no. I kept it in. Let it fester like a sore. It wasn’t a big deal, after all. It’s just a little thing. Just a small disagreement that we really don’t need to make a big deal about. And if I do bring it up, maybe that will lead the way to bigger disagreements and bigger annoyances that will ultimately convict me. Would I awaken the beast, open the door to all the things about me that drive Dan crazy? I leave my wet towels on the floor and I sleep too much and I’m a terrible housekeeper and I forget to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer about 80% of the time, so then we have to run the load through all over again. I have this knack for adopting problematic pets. What other, scarier, criticisms would he have to launch at me? Is our relationship so fragile that picking at one, tiny, loose thread would unravel the whole darn thing?
Throughout the history of our relationship, we were terrified to get “mad” at each other. We’d get “sad” at each other instead. Turns out, that wasn’t a good plan for our long-term relationship. Turns out, when you stop relating to each other, even over the hard stuff, your relationship suffers. Turns out, nineteen years of just being “nice” and not facing the hard stuff will just lead you to a lot of marriage therapy co-pays. And we’re working on it. We’re trying to show up to each other as our real, broken selves, so that we can have some real, although broken, connection. We’re starting to learn that it’s in the repairs that relationships are built.
All real relationships have conflict. All real relationships have disagreements. All real relationships are a back and forth struggle between understanding and misunderstanding. The important thing is, when something is broken, how do you come back together to repair? And the more you practice repair, the easier it is. The more you practice repair, the stronger it becomes so that you can use it for the big deal things, the big deceptions, the big betrayals, the big misunderstandings that are bound to come in to the relationship eventually.
We need to practice showing up for each other, as our real and authentic selves, and maybe, with practice, we will have compassion and understanding for one another.
“Look,” Jesus says, as he’s moved with compassion, literally, moved in his bowels, in the depths of his insides, “Look at all these people who need compassion. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray to God that God will send out more laborers to help with this harvest.” He tells the disciples to pray that God would send leaders into the land to profess the coming of the kingdom of God. And, lo and behold, in that next verse, the disciples themselves are the answer to that prayer. The answer to their own prayers. God tells us to pray for a need, and then, in the next verse, in the next breath, God says, “Ok, you do it, you, go, fill that need. You be the answer to your own prayer.” “You go, show up, as you are, with what you have, and cure the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead and share the gospel.”
So Jesus sends out the flawed, the broken, the messy, the ridiculous twelve, to share the Gospel to all the neighboring towns and cities. He sends out Peter, who, when he gets it wrong, he gets it really wrong. He sends out Thomas, who will doubt. And he sends out Matthew, the tax collector, who might as well have “corruption” tattooed on his forehead. And he sends out Judas, who will ultimately betray him in the end. Jesus asks them to go out to their neighbors first. Go out to the people they know, people with whom they already have some kind of relationship, and proclaim the good news -- the kingdom of heaven has come near. Go and cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out the demons.
He sends them out with nothing but themselves. They take no gold or copper, no bag full of necessities, no cell phones, no gps, no credit card, no extra shirts or pairs of sandals, not even a walking stick. He just sends them out with themselves, as themselves. He sends them broken and flailing and sinning and confused, but he sends them as they are, he doesn’t fix them first. He doesn’t give them detailed instructions or IKEA construction plans. He doesn’t give them tools or a curriculum or even a detailed objective. He simply gives them his compassion. Go, go with this same compassion that I have for you, and cure the sick, heal the lame, raise the dead, exorcise the demons. Be yourself. Use your stories.
Make connections and relationships with people who will listen to you and hear your words. Stay with them. Let them support you. Rely on them for your food and your shelter.
This is dangerous work, because radical love and incalculable compassion will always be met with hate. People can’t handle that kind of compassion. People don’t know what to do with this radical, reconciling God. They will fear it. They will resist it. But God will meet them with even more radical, reconciling love. Because that’s what God does. When there is brokenness, God strives to repair, to reconcile.
God shows up for us, in real and authentic ways, through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, and shows us how to show up for each other in those real and authentic and compassionate ways.
That’s what gets me in this passage. Jesus tells them that they are going to encounter conflict. People are going to disagree with you. People are going to be threatened by what you say. You’ll be rejected. People will get mad. They might tell you all the things you’ve done wrong, they might name all the ways that you’ve failed, all the ways that you’ve let them down. You might open the door to your own sin and your own mistakes. And maybe the relationship can’t survive such an onslaught. Maybe you can’t survive such an onslaught.
I think that’s what scares me so much in my anti-racism work. I want people to like me. I want them to agree with me, and I want them to understand where I’m coming from. I want to do antiracism “right.” I want to be the “right kind” of antiracist, the perfect “white ally.” But I’m so afraid of saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing, that I just stay quiet, I don’t confront the things that are really bothering me, and, more importantly, I’m so afraid to hear about the litany of things I’ve done wrong that I don’t really listen to the other’s complaints. It’s a failure of repair. I don’t trust enough in the grace of the relationship in order to continue the relationship, with my flailing around and failures and missteps and mistakes.
I just get sad and cower in to myself, afraid that, if I took the risk of showing up, if I took the risk of sharing how I really feel, I’ll be rejected.
But that’s not how real relationship is formed or maintained or grown. Suddenly, you look back and nineteen years have passed, and you’ve missed each other, you’ve grown apart, you haven’t been real, you haven’t shown up, and the relationship has suffered because of it. That’s why it’s so misguided to say that you are “colorblind” or that “all lives matter.” It’s just not helpful, because saying that refuses to take the risk of knowing the other in her hardship, in her hurt, in all those ways that we have failed her.
Jesus sends us out. He sends us out into the mess, out into the hurt, out into the world full of demonic powers and principalities that we’re all a part of. He sends us out and tells us to bring nothing but ourselves. He tells us to just show up. There is healing and there is freedom and there is redemption just in the showing up. Jesus throws the disciples, and he throws us, into the deep end of relationship, and he tells us to figure it out, he tells us to swim, to show up and be real and honest and true, even when it’s hard, even when folks will disagree with you, even when you mess things up, even when it’s all your fault, even when others will point out the log imbedded in your own eye. Because there is no repair without first showing up. There is no repair without being honest. There is no change if you’re not willing to show up and be changed.
I was once in an antiracism conversation sponsored by a church I was attending at the time. It was this really well coordinated time of conversation and listening with our black brothers and sisters, where we confronted hard topics and tried our best to talk about them together. I’ll never forget when I spoke up about some of the economic inequality that exists between the black community and the white. And a black woman spoke up, offended. “You don’t know how much money I make!” She said. She said, “I resent that you’re just going to lump us all together and say that we’re poor. Well, I’m not poor, and I take offense that you’d make those assumptions!”
I was trying to speak up for justice. I was trying to say that the economic system that we’re all trying to function under has been rigged. But instead of clarifying, instead of showing up and entering in and trying to explain myself, I shut up, I shut down, I stayed in my seat, but I essentially “left” the conversation. I curled in on myself and licked my wounds. Well, leaving the conversation is not antiracism work. Leaving the conversation is one more way to show my white privilege. I needed to keep showing up, I needed to be open to learning, I needed to step in to the relationship in order for us to do the work of repair. Instead, I just left. I shook off the dust from my feet and I left.
But wait. Isn’t that what Jesus tells us to do? Doesn’t Jesus explicitly tell us to walk away and let our peace come back to us? Well, yes, and no. You see, it depends on whose house it is. It depends on who needs to change. It depends on what the message is. We’re so used to being “right” that we have a really hard time finding out that we’ve been wrong. Sometimes I think that the prophets, the minorities, the oppressed and the hurt are the ones coming in to our houses, into our villages, sent by Jesus, they’re professing their truth, they’re taking the risk, and we’ve been the ones to reject them, we’ve kicked them out of our houses and our towns. We’ve rejected their message. Wo to us. They need to shake the dust off of their feet, walk out of our homes, and leave.
I don’t blame them for being angry, for self preservation, for giving up on the dialogue. We’ve rejected their message. We’re not listening and they deserve some peace.
But it’s a scary thing, isn’t it? Finding out that we’ve been wrong. Finding out that we’ve messed up. It leads to uncomfortable conversations and convictions and demands for reparations. Someone might have a problem with what we’ve done or what we’ve said or what we believe. We might find out that we’ve screwed up. That’s why we aren’t sent out totally empty handed. Jesus is moved with compassion, and he gives us that compassion, both for the other and for ourselves.
Because if we are truly encountering others with a message of compassion, with a message that the kingdom of God has come near, there’s grace, there’s room to screw up, there’s space to be wrong, there’s room to stick around. Repair doesn’t happen if we ignore it. Repair doesn’t happen if we walk away. Repair doesn’t happen if we refuse to show up with who we are and what little we have. Jesus sends us out to repair. He sends us out as we are, with only who we are, and he gives us the power of compassion, the power to heal and raise and cleanse and cast out and proclaim.
And Jesus also instructs those of us who don’t go out, those of us who stay in our homes. He tells us to let the stranger in, to hear their message, to listen to their words, to accept their gospel. And maybe, just maybe, even accept some healing. Radical love will be met with hate, but God’s response is only more radical love.
When have we refused to show up, refused to take the risk, and met radical love with our own quiet, passive, shutting down, walking away form of hate?
Jesus calls us to take the risk. To be vulnerable. To be real and open and to show up. That’s how hate is knocked down. That’s how relationships are repaired. It takes practice. It takes compromise. I takes vulnerable listening. Let’s try it now.
We got a compost bin. That’s where our eggshells go now.
Thanks be to God.
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