Throw Jesus Off the Cliff

Some days
God
I feel like
we are throwing
Jesus
off a cliff


I feel like
we hear the words of prophecy
that say
Make things easier
help those in need

It is amongst the cacophony
of “Masculinity” “Capitalism”
and “Christian Nationalism”


Do you hear it under the cries for
Nazareth First?

Jesus says: I am here for the immigrant widow,
the strangers,
the broken,
the disabled,
the weird,
the LGBTQIA,
and the strange

I feel like
when we hear the echo
of Jesus’s voice
Calling us
to do the hard work
of the gospel

that when Jesus walks with us
and says
you are correct
Christianity
is not
about success

We have to sit down
and say
what is life about then

and many people
throw Christianity
leadership
Jesus
or whatever out

Why do we do this worship
thing
If it isn’t about that anyway?

Sometimes I want to put out posters
Come to church
We do brokenness
really well

Come to worship
We are bad at community

Join us Sunday
We have had to practice
for 2,000 years and are
still getting power dynamics
wrong

Put your faith not in
princes
power
and principalities

But the dandelion
still bloomed
A perfect
Weed
spreading
Wishies
for children
to blow
in the yard

I treasure God
calling me
a dandelion
full of
seeds
and
Wishes

Image: A child, in a red coat, you happily cannot tell their gender, drawing butterfly and heart) out of a giant dandelion (like making a wish). Image sourced from https://img.freepik.com/premium-photo/child-blowing-dandelion-with-heart-star-sketch_587981-17165.jpg


Practice focusing on God
practice community
practice honesty
exercise everyday–not
because you will win any races
But because walking together
is the journey

And some days
I too want to throw Jesus off the cliff
Because it’s clear
I still don’t get it

And then Jesus floats back
and hugs me
Because
it never was about
perfection
in the first place

But the moments of
beauty
community
laughter
still count

Thank God
for that

Amen

Feel free to use/share Adapt with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta aka KatyandtheWord

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Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.

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