When Our Plans for Christian Living Meet Life’s Messy Reality

Today’s post is from Bondings 2.0’s Editor, Francis DeBernardo, whose bio can be found here.

Today’s liturgical readings for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity can be found here.

Before working in Catholic LGBTQ+ ministry, I taught writing at a state university. The week before each semester began, all of the instructors would crowd the writing program’s offices to make copies of the syllabi, course policies, and handouts for the first week of classes. It was a quiet time on campus because very few of the school’s 37,000 students were around.

In this “calm before the storm,” the instructors would all joke with one another about how wonderfully quiet the campus atmosphere was without students present. We’d also admire our own and each other’s course outlines, noting how neat, ordered, and perfect they looked. We were always optimistic that this semester was going to be the one where everything ran smoothly and that we would really be able to get through to students, to give them the tools to become good writers.

One semester, during these idyllic pre-semester times, one instructor quipped to a group of colleagues: “Isn’t it perfect right now? Our lesson plans are all pristine. Why do students have to show up and ruin everything all the time?” Everyone roared.

But, of course, students did show up. And our neat and ordered plans for the semester got turned upside-down, inside-out, and every which way by the reality of a classroom full of students, each with a different set of needs, gifts, questions, problems, challenges, and backgrounds. But then again, despite the fact that our plans and outlines were constantly being adjusted, this glorious mess of humanity which is what made teaching so interesting, exciting, and fun.

Today’s second reading, 2 Corinthians 13: 11-13, brought these teaching experiences to mind. It’s short, so I’ll provide it in its entirety here:

Brothers and sisters, rejoice.
Mend your ways, encourage one another,
agree with one another, live in peace,
and the God of love and peace will be with you.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
All the holy ones greet you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

It’s a wonderful set of sentiments. I’d love to be always encouraging to others, to be able to agree with them all the time, and to be able to live in peace, greeting others with a holy kiss. Such a wonderful plan for Christian living! Wonderful, that is, until the other people show up with all their needs, gifts, questions, problems, challenges, and backgrounds. These other people always seem to ruin my plans for living an ideal Christian life!

Unfortunately, that is reality–especially the reality in our current church. Everyone (myself included) seems to have their own vision of what the church is supposed to be and do. For me, LGBTQ+ equality is high on my agenda. And I get to meet lots of other people who share that vision (perhaps just like you). Our plans and visions are wonderfully laid, but then there are all these other people whose own agendas are designed to thwart my own. How annoying!

While St. Paul’s advice is sound, I think better advice for the church today comes from a reminder in today’s gospel. It’s not the ever-popular John 3:16, but the verse right after that one, John 3:17: “For God did not send Jesus into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” When I read this line, I hear an echo of the line with which Pope Francis opened a new chapter in the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in the church: “Who am I to judge?”

For me, I’m trying to turn that line around. Instead of it referring to LGBTQ+ folks, I’m trying to apply it to anti-LGBTQ+ people. (Don’t ask how I’m doing. It’s not always a good day.) The global synod in which our church is currently engaged has made me realize the importance of not just talking, but also listening–and listening without judging other people. Jesus did not come to judge the world, but to save it, today’s gospel tells us. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just give up our penchant for judging people, especially people whom we really don’t even know? Pope Francis’ greatest advice to pastoral ministers is not to judge and condemn LGBTQ+ people. His advice goes even further though because he applies that same standard for all pastoral ministry. [1]

What would a church that didn’t judge or condemn other people be like? Maybe it would be like a community which genuinely strives to live the precepts that St. Paul offered the Corinthians in the passage quoted above.

Our world is messy, our church is messy, our lives are messy. The way to clean up this messiness is not by developing an ideal order that will only work as long as other people don’t show up. Other people are always all around us. Even if we are alone, they exist in our minds. We can’t escape them. We will never clean up the messiness, but perhaps by following the advice from today’s readings, we can learn to deal with it in a way where we learn to live with some of the mess, and perhaps even grow a bit from it.

—Francis DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry, June 4, 2023

---

[1] To be clear, judging is an important part of being human. We make judgments frequently every day–and must do so. We develop our thoughts and opinions because of making judgments, and we must continue to do so. The problem comes, though, when we start judging other people. As one of my favorite spiritual authors, Anne Lamott, has said, “We can be sure that we have created God in our own image when we start to think that God hates all the same people we do.”