Breaking up with breaking up

The Christ went looking for broken things.

He found them and put them back together again.

It was neither a magic trick nor an “object lesson,” but his passion and purpose in life. Healing got the Christ out of bed in the morning.

In today’s church of Christ, we mostly think of healing as something for persons. That is, the Christ heals the things that break a person.

That is true.

But the ancient church of Christ thought that healing was for peoples.

One early teacher in the church of Christ wrote:

“For [the Christ] is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Letter to the Christians in Ephesus, chapter 2, verse 14).

Here in 2021, we Christians need to spend time with this.

In my branch of the Christian family tree, we are eager to find broken persons to lead to the Christ who can heal them.

Why are we not as eager to lead broken peoples to the same Christ?

These days, it is popular to think that our society is breaking up. That peoples are breaking up with peoples.

Are these breaks between peoples not the openings through which the church of Christ can follow the Way of Christ?

Is the Spirit of our Christ not moving to try to heal the breaks between peoples? What would it mean for the church of Christ to join the Spirit in the work of binding those breaks and healing the peoples?

Where is the church of Christ in the break between conservative and liberal? Democrats and Republicans? Old and young? People of color and white people? Progressive and traditional? Rural and urban?

The Church of Christ raised me to think that we obey our Christ by breaking ourselves off from others.

Look at where that got the world that God so loves. Look at where it got us.

What if being faithful to our Christ is not about breaking ourselves off, but binding ourselves to others in brave acts of grace and mercy?

Christian, ask yourself: What is more powerful testimony to the world?

A church of Christ that rejoices in breaking apart?

Or a church that follows the Spirit of the Christ into the breach, giving itself to be the glue that heals and holds people and peoples together?

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Gospel of Matthew 5:9).

Grace and peace.