Christians are a people of contradiction:

Rejoicing but mourning, 
satisfied but empty, 
strengthened but weak, 
righteous but sinning. 

In faith we hold an impossible tension
between the now and the not yet,
Citizens of a kingdom united, yet fractured,
and so preeminent that it can hold all the pieces. 

We worship beside people who often think and vote differently. Can we still worship because we serve a God great enough to be loved and adored by those with different ideas?

Is our God big enough to be Lord of the different sides?

Remember Jesus called the zealot and the tax collector to “follow me” in close quarters through the countryside of the ancient near east. One of them was vehemently opposed to the Roman occupation of Israel, and the other was on the Emperor’s payroll.

The oppressor and the oppressed on the same team. Jesus called them both. He dined with the religious leader and with the prostitute. He ate with them at the same table, gave the same hospitality and the same commission.

Jesus was not selective of party but of person 

Certainly their perspectives all shifted over the weeks, but let’s not assume there weren’t oceans of misunderstanding, many snide comments and some knock-down, drag-out fights. 

Here’s the thing: Jesus was in their midst. They worked together, learned together, prayed together, served together.

They surely had days they wanted to go home and quit trying to be a disciple along with “that one.” But as one in their company said, when given an open door to leave, “Where else would we go? You have the words of eternal life.” And not many months later, together, they ministered in the Holy Spirit among nations.

So we are caught in the tension between needs, the “other side,” and Jesus himself

Before he suffered, Jesus prayed for us. He prayed that we would know him, and know his Father, and know that our Father is in him and he is in us. We are spiritually one as we bow our knees to Jesus, the one name above all others, the one whose vision is right and just and merciful and complete. 

So we are in a contradiction. The spiritual reality of the cross and redemption and union in Christ is a settled fact. But we are at odds with others who are members of the same life-changing blood.

We are caught between people we love–people who have real needs and real fears, who need care and protection, and who have a future worth fighting for. These may be real acquaintances or theoretical people. 

And people we disagree with, who also love people, and have ideas and expectations that conflict with our own.

And the Person who speaks words of eternal life. Who, as the first and the last, has the capacity to envelop us on all sides. 

Jesus doesn’t invite us into conversation without then exposing and extracting our fears, our sin, the deceptions we’ve held as fact, and with love more powerful than our fear, recalibrating our vision to behold the truth.

He does so with the words of life. He draws us in with loving kindness. His words bring correction with hope.  His words come with healing and redemption and creativity. 

These words call us in obedience and following him addresses the immediate needs and impacts the big picture.  

Tension is a gift 

Without the rope being taught, we would wander too far in one direction, never realizing the danger of running completely unhindered by vision above our own.

We follow Jesus, and he leads us close to people, and we must face our inability to answer the needs that surround us.

If we only run to the needs we will spiral without perspective and look inward for purpose, which will cause us to either dissolve into compassion without strength or harden for a cause without care.

If we throw ourselves into only following Jesus on the page, without engaging others, either in the world or in Christian community, our ability to listen to the Holy Spirit will atrophy, we will become fat on our knowledge, but never exercise the muscle of sacrificial love. 

Tension can be painful but tension is necessary to hold things in place. 

He is the capstone. The rock at the top of the arch that holds the two pillars together. Empathy and strength, grace and truth, humanity and divinity. 

We walk with Jesus, who walks among the lampstands of the churches, refining and constantly calling his church upward. 

We walk among our family and neighbors and coworkers and students and cashiers and internet strangers, who are all hungry for the presence of God, and often don’t recognize our needs as such. 

I want to trust him to be greater than I am, greater than my ideology, and greater than the broken systems, and greater than the needs in and around me, greater than my need to understand and reconcile all the tension myself. He alone is big enough to work in it all at the same time. 

What a great God we serve.