JEEsus... and Nadia Bolz-Weber

“God gathers up all our sin, all our broken-ass junk, into God’s own self and transforms all that deal into life.  Jesus takes our crap and exchanges it for his blessedness.”

--Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints

It’s no secret that I love Nadia Bolz-Weber; I’ve been raving about her for a couple of years now.  I’ve given copies of her books to most of my friends and relatives, I quote her regularly, and I call her my theological super-hero.  The thing I love most about her is not her sarcastic wit, her tattoos, or her foul-mouth (though I do enjoy all of those things).  The thing I love about her is her love for Jesus.  She loves Jesus to an embarrassing degree, and not just Jesus, some Jewish rabbi from the first century who may or may not have been born of a virgin and may or may not have been divine and may or may not have been resurrected, not just some historical, non-mystical, progressive, liberal spiritual teacher, but JEEsus!  She talks about the kind of JEEsus save us, the kind that shows up in our darkest hour to light the way, that knocks us down when we are prideful, that lifts us when we have fallen.  She talks about the kind of JEEsus that came to this world to save the sinners, and continues to save them to this day.  She talks about the kind of JEEsus whose grace envelopes us all.

If a person scratches the surface of the tattoos, the sarcastic delivery, and the swearing, he will find an orthodox Lutheran pastor desperately proclaiming the Gospel of our Lord to the world.  Nadia is not challenging traditional theology, overturning traditional liturgy, or questioning traditional Christian beliefs.  Rather, she is challenging us to return to the REAL gospel, of loving our enemies, even those we hate, like Adam Lanza, the man who murdered innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  She is challenging us to confess our deepest sins, not just the sins of addiction and betrayal, but the every-day sins of pettiness and selfishness, in order to feel the redemptive grace of Jesus Christ.  She is challenging us to work for the Kingdom, not because we are holy and wholesome, but because we are all fallen, forgiven, grace-filled sinners that God has chosen to love.

Take up the challenge and see Nadia Bolz-Weber at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church in Antioch, Illinois on July 16, 2016. Tickets $40 for both morning and afternoon sessions. Buy before Jan. 31 and get a free lunch. http://www.ignatiusantioch.com/calendar-of-events.html

Resolution for 2016: Allow God to Love Me

My only resolution for 2016 is this:  I resolve to stop trying to prove I’m good enough.  I’m encouraged in this by Nadia Bolz-Weber, who posted this on Dec. 31:  My yearly reminder: There is no resolution that, if kept, will make me more worthy to be loved.  Like so many other people, I have a sort of compulsive need to prove I’m good enough.  It doesn’t come from a lack of parental love as a child, or a competitive sibling, or an upbringing that insisted on overachievement.  I have loving parents and a supportive sister, and I clearly knew unconditional love as a child.  

Why is love so difficult for me to accept?  Fr. Tim, my friend and priest once remarked, “It seems like you had loving parents.  I don’t know where this comes from, but you have a hard time allowing yourself to be loved.”  I didn’t know why either, until I read these words in Nadia Bolz-Weber's heartbreaking book, Accidental Saints.  As she tells a story of her failure to love a parishioner as wholly as she wished, Nadia says, “This is why being loved, really loved, can sting a little, reminding us of all the times we have loved poorly or not at all, all the ways in which we have done things that make us feel unworthy of real love.” (Bolz-Weber, 2015, p. 126)

Tears rolled down my face as I read those words.  That was exactly it! I tried so damn hard to prove I was good enough because I couldn’t forgive all the times I was clearly rotten.  I thought if I lived a wholesome life, volunteered for charity, worked for social justice, and gave money to the right causes, it would make up for all the shit I have done.  Like the time in the fifth grade when I bullied a girl on the playground so badly that she punched me in the face. I stood there, shocked  and crying, indignant and victimized (when I was truly the victimizer).  The teacher didn’t even feel bad for me; she said, “I’ve been watching you and you deserved that.”  A person who bullies someone else must not be worthy of love.  Not to mention all the little betrayals, the gossiping, the posturing, the playing the victim, the everyday crap that takes me away from God--the everyday, mediocre sin.  If I keep screwing up, how can I forgive myself?  How can God really, really forgive me?

This is why I need Christ.  You see, no matter what I do, I am just a forgiven sinner, saved by grace, saved to learn to love others as I love myself.  That means that I have to learn to love myself.  I tried to fix myself.  I tried to be a Buddhist.  I tried yoga and martial arts and meditation.  I learned mindfulness and I watched my thoughts and I breathed through my emotions.  But I was still a jerk, many more times than I wished to be.  I figured I must not be good enough, right?  I continued to chase any promise to become “better”, until I exhausted myself.  One morning, falling down on the bathroom floor in anxiety and frustration, I gave up.  I told God, “This is the best I can do.”  God loved me anyway--and it hurts.  It’s been a few years since that bathroom-floor epiphany and I’ve learned a few things, but unconditional love still hurts.

It hurts when the love fills in the cracks in my soul, when the love mends the torn places so they are stronger, like scars.  It hurts when I have to really look at my failings honestly, and learn to love myself in spite of them, just like God does.  It hurts to admit that I’m not going to be a better person, a more enlightened person, a kinder person merely due to my own efforts.  I know the dark, dirty spots in my soul and I can’t fix them by living a better life.  I can’t make myself into the person I long to be.  But it’s OK, because Jesus can; he loves me as I am and he loves me enough not to leave me as I am.  Jesus loves me, this I know, even when I’m really, really hard to love. Only the grace of God in Christ can shine the light in my soul’s dark spaces; if the light burns, I am grateful for the sting.  This year, I resolve to allow myself to be loved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Bolz-Weber, N. (2015).  Accidental saints:  Finding God in all the wrong people.  New York, NY:       Convergent Books.