It's Not About You - Christianity Today

I don't remember when I first heard the phrase It's not about you, but I like it. A lot. I've yet to find a pastoral situation in which this phrase is not relevant. When someone comes to see me for the fiftieth time to talk about all the hurt caused by mean parents, after all the reflective listening and responsible counsel I can muster, I eventually have to lean forward in my chair and say, "You know, it was not about you. They were too hurt themselves. And you just happened to be in the way." "It's not about you" also fits at weddings. The bride and groom are standing in front of everyone, looking better than they are ever going to look again, getting so much attention and affirmation. Everybody even stands when they walk in. So it's easy to think this marriage, at least, is about them. It's not. Just look at the worn-out parents sitting in the first pew—they understand this. The only reason these parents are still married is because long ago they learned how to handle the hurt they caused each other. They know that the last thing you ever want to do with hurt is to let it define you. And on those terrible nights when I get stuck in a committee meeting that's going south in a hurry, it's usually because some hurt soul is working out anger or a personal agenda. It doesn't do much to keep talking about the issue on the table, because that's not what's driving the debate anymore. It's more helpful to look at the complainer and gently say, "You know, this really isn't about you. Why don't you and I talk later about what's on your mind?" Everyone else around the table murmurs, "Good idea." Even when I am sitting beside the hospital bed of those who are dying, it is useful to remind them tenderly that this most personal of all events in life is not really about them. It is about the God who created them, sustained life every day they had it, and who is now choosing to bring them home. Whatever the setting, ultimately, it's not about you. It's always about God, which means he alone can define us.

Leaving the tomb

As a pastor I deal with hurt people every single day of my ministry. They are hurt not only by their parents and spouses, but also by their kids who don't appreciate them. Or by the church that has disappointed them. Or by their dreams that haven't worked out. Or by the boss who they've discovered is the Antichrist. Like most pastors, I sit and listen empathetically. It's an incredible honor to be invited into the deepest and most disillusioning hurts of my parishioners. More important, I love these people. And that is precisely why I want them to stop being paralyzed by their hurts. When I discover the hurts are deep seated, I gently make a referral to a therapist I respect. But after years and years of doing this, I have started to wonder if maybe we pastors haven't abdicated our God-given responsibility to the hurting. We have been given words that no therapist will ever surpass. We can say, "In Jesus Christ, you are a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, all things have become new." And we can bring them to the table of the Lord where their identity in a new family is proclaimed in ways that go far beyond the limitations of words. This doesn't negate the need for the careful work of a therapist who can help the hurting expose the roots of their hurt. However, neither does therapy negate the need for a pastor to call people to their new identity in Christ. Every Sunday before the sermon, as the choir sings the anthem, I take a moment to gaze into the congregation. I see many people who have invited me into the thickest and darkest moments of their lives. In the second row is the young widow whose husband died five years ago, but still she tells me, "I hate the empty seat next to me on the pew." Behind her is a family that is coming apart at the seams. The teenagers are angry at their parents, and the parents are too angry at each other to notice. Last year the husband moved them to Washington for a better job and underestimated the losses this would cause his family. Four rows behind them is a man who is embroiled in a lawsuit with a corporation that fired him "without any cause at all." Near him is someone who hasn't recovered from a divorce, and someone else who lost an election, and someone else who discovered she can never have children. When the choir is finished, I walk to the pulpit to say, "Hear the Word of the Lord." What can I say to all of these people, but the same Easter message I preach every Sunday? In the risen Christ, they, too, are risen to a new life. For so many years, the church has tried to recover from its mistakes in cloaking the gospel in a triumphalism. So we have stressed a "theology of the Cross," and the call to be "wounded healers," and the "God who finds us in our godforsakenness." But I wonder if this latest trend has resulted only in making people comfortable with life in a tomb. They are not going to find Jesus there. He left it a long time ago and invites them to share in his risen life. Being a follower of Christ doesn't prevent us bearing the wounds of others, for Christ himself knows more about being hurt than we ever will. But we can't just follow him to the cross. We also have to follow him out of the tomb on Easter morning. I am dismayed that so many Christians are stuck somewhere between Good Friday and Easter. Once Jesus has left the tomb, our souls are in peril if we insist on staying there. In the words of Ann LaMott, we pastors have to help people "give up hope of having a better past." Only in Christ is this possible, for in him they discover a new identity that frees them from being defined by the hurts of the past. The only way out of the tomb of past hurts is abandoning the effort to walk out on our own. Rather, we must attend to the ministry of the Holy Spirit who engrafts us into the identity of the risen Christ. It is all grace, of course. We do not get our lives cleaned up and healed in order to share in the Son's relationship to the Father. The Spirit simply adopts us into this sacred, holy, triune family. But once we find ourselves in this new family, all sorts of changes become inevitable. We'll have to start acting like the joint heir of Christ. In him, Paul said, we have received every spiritual blessing of heaven. That's what defines us. Not our hurts.

Adopted into a new family

One day when I was a child, my father, who was a minister, brought home a 12-year-old boy named Roger. His parents had both been killed by a drug overdose. As the family's pastor, my dad did all he could to intervene, but to no avail. When it was clear to my parents that there was no one else who cared about this boy, they decided to raise him as if he were one of their own sons. From the day he walked into the door, Roger became my joint heir in the family. He stayed with us until he was grown. Then he joined the army. My parents did a wonderful thing in making Roger part of our family. But it created a lot of work for him. You can imagine that growing up in the home of heroin addicts was a different experience than what Roger discovered in the home of my pietist parents. So many times I heard my parents say, "No, no, Roger, that's not how we act here. You don't have to fight or scream or hurt others to get what you want. No, no. We expect you to act differently here." With his parents constantly stoned, Roger spent the first 12 years of his life hurt, frightened, and, by necessity, completely self-absorbed. He used to worry if there would be enough food for him. But now, in his new home he had to learn about sharing, manners, and family chores. Was any of Roger's hard work in changing his behavior necessary to be part of the family? No, by the grace of my father, he was made my brother from the day he arrived. But he still had a lot of changes to make. It was only because he was so overwhelmed by my parents' love for him that he could make those changes. Do we have a lot of work to do once the Holy Spirit grafts us into Christ's relationship to the Father? Are there major changes we have to make in life? Oh, yes. Not in order to be a son or daughter. But because, by the grace of the Father, we now are. And when we revert to our old addiction to hurt and the sin that rises out of that hurt, the Spirit will say to us, "No, no. That's not how we act in this family." We will never get life right on our own. Only the love of God is powerful enough to change our lives. He has so much love for us that we've been given every blessing in heaven. If we determine to pull the blessings of heaven down by our own efforts, we will find ourselves stressed, fatigued, and complaining. We will never be satisfied, because we can't earn a blessing. But once we have come to see what the triune God has done for us, well, then change happens. When the telegram came announcing that Roger was killed in an act of heroism in Vietnam, it was a terrible day. I remember my mother's tears most of all. She wept because of the grief, but also because she was so proud of him. He had given his life to save others. Where could he have learned how to do that but from the sacrificial love of my parents?

The Lord's table manners

Most of the hard lessons Roger learned at our home happened at the family table. Over and over I heard my parents teach him how to pass food, how to eat slowly, how to speak politely, and how to clean up afterwards. Through it all, they were teaching him how to live out his identity as a cherished son. If we pay attention, we can learn the same things when we come to the Table of the Lord for Communion. One thing that continues to divide the churches is their understanding of what happens in Communion. Some refer to it as a sacrament, which means it is one of the ways that we experience God's grace. Others prefer to call it a memorial or symbol. Some emphasize the presence of Christ in the elements, and others insist that Christ was crucified but once for the sins of the people and is now at the right hand of the Father. But just about all churches believe that the followers of Christ are encouraged to come to this table, and all believe that something important is happening in the process. John Calvin claimed that what happens at the table is a "wonderful exchange." Christ takes our sin and exchanges it for his righteousness. As we feed on his broken body and his poured-out blood, we take in his life before the Father. It is for this reason that the Reformers always insisted that the miracle of conversion at the table is not that the elements change, but that the communicants do (which is a much tougher miracle to pull off!). By the Spirit who meets us at the table we are lifted up to enjoy the great communion shared among the Trinity. We are given a place at this holy table. No one can experience such communion without changing. For this reason, it is high time that our churches stop celebrating the Lord's Supper as a funeral. Often the elders are all dressed in black and in somber faces. The musicians play dirges. The elements are hidden under a large white sheet that certainly looks as if there's a dead body under it. Before the elements are passed out, the preacher will say, "Christ died for your sins, so sit there and remember all the sins you committed that put Jesus on the cross." So we think, "That's right. It's all my fault." Are any of us really confused about that? I don't think so. What confuses us is how to find grace, and we don't find it by dwelling on our sins and hurts. That reduces the great gospel story to being about you. It's not about you! It is about what the triune God has done, is doing, and will continue to do. By the Spirit, you are lifted up to participate in the Son's own relationship with the Father. All you do is receive and live gratefully.

The prisoner set free

I have decided that gratitude is about the best measure of spirituality. It is not possible to have truly heard God's Word proclaiming that we are new creations, or to have communed with God as beloved sons and daughters, and not be overwhelmed with gratitude. This doesn't erase the hurts accumulated in life, but it does prevent us from allowing those hurts to take over our identity. That's because the closer we draw to a gracious God, the less interest we have in staying hurt. As the Holy Spirit transforms us into the very image of Christ, we receive his passion for forgiving, which is the best way to stop hurting. In the words of Lewis Smedes, "When we forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner was us." The disciples once asked Jesus whose sin was responsible for a man being born blind. It's the kind of question we ponder as well. Who is responsible for my problems? Whom should I blame? Or sue? But those questions will never help us find salvation. Even if we find someone to blame, we still haven't done anything about the problem. In fact, we've probably made it worse. Unless it leads to forgiveness, assigning blame only turns the blamer into a victim. The real question, Jesus said, is not "Who is responsible for the man's blindness?" but "Who can heal him?" Then, restoring the man's vision, Jesus said, "He was born blind so that God's works may be revealed in him." If we pray for vision, we can always see God at work in the broken places of life even if the wound, disease, or heartache remains. Seeing that God is with us, we discover how to find healing for our broken, angry souls. We can also offer a little of God's healing grace to the people who were so hurt that they hurt us. Why would you settle for being a victim, knowing whom to blame, when you can be healed, knowing whom to praise? The only way to make it to grateful living is to realize that it's just not about you. That isn't meant to demean you, but to free you. It frees you from allowing life's disappointments and hurts to determine your identity. Best of all, it frees you to receive the creativity of God's grace that can be found even in the hurt. It isn't about you. It is always about God.

M. Craig Barnes is pastor of National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

cbarnes@natpresch.org