This little essay first appeared as the 2nd place essay in the 2016 Gritsch Writing Contest: http://www.ericwgritsch.org/archives/archive_2016_essay_2nd_place
In a sense, crisis consumes every moment in the life of those who belong to the Christian church. Between Jesus Christ’s resurrection and His coming again in glory, our Lord continually calls us and we must respond. But, we also live within the World and within history, and so, different moments in history present unique opportunities for us as church people to respond to the call of Jesus Christ. As church demographics dance and politics continue to divide, we who reside in the United States find ourselves at a crisis point. And while many potential points lie before us, all of the paths involve the same basic decision: will we take ourselves seriously or will we live with humor?
The path of taking ourselves seriously and of getting down to the hard work of living out the gospel is a well-trod path. It is a path that church people in the United States have trod for much of our history. On this path, we must hear the words of the Gospel and renounce! We must discard our possessions, work for our neighbor and bring about the kingdom of God. When we take ourselves seriously, we work for our neighbor to “help and befriend him in every bodily need”1 and to “help him improve and protect his property and business.”2 This well-trod path of the American church is a path of great results. It is the path of Martin Luther King, Jr. marching on Washington, Desmond Tutu resisting Apartheid. However, it is also a dangerous path. It is a dangerous path because taking ourselves seriously can quickly become taking ourselves too seriously. If we walk the well-trod path without a keen knowledge of our pride and sin, we will walk straight past the narrow gate. Distracted by our burdens, we may forget why we walk and for whom we walk.
Path number two, on the other hand, is a path that few in the United States have dared to wander down, because it is not a serious, hard-working path. Path number two is the path of humor and irony. It is a path that grabs hold of “the biblical sense of life as a mean meantime before the Last Day.”3 Even more, it Is a path that realizes that “a Christian man is righteous and a sinner at the same time, holy and profane, an enemy of God and a child of God.”4 If we church people wander down this path, we will, perhaps for the first time, be able to look at the works of our hands and laugh. We will laugh because we realize that all of our hard work, all of our striving has been at cross-purposes both with God and with ourselves. We will laugh because we will realize how ridiculous it is that Jesus Christ saved us miserable sinners. We will laugh because we will realize that when we thought we were striding triumphantly forward, we were hopping the wrong way with our shoes tied together. The humorous path is the path of the church people who understand the irony that when the church thinks it is doing its best work, it often forgets its Lord.
The humorous path is a path of humility, of joy, but it’s also a frightening path. It’s a frightening path because when you walk on it, you look at yourself and realize that your life and work does not look holy. You realize that your life and your work looks comical and normal, and you worry that God will not accept it.
However, as faithful Christians on this path, we can “smile about adversaries”And “laugh at them because the anticipated joy of a future without sin, evil, and Death outweighs all earthly anxiety.”5 In short, the paths that stand before the Churches are the paths that stand before each individual Christian. As church people wandering in the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ, we live our days in tension. It is the tension of walking in the light of the cross and in the humor of the human condition. Above all, it is the freedom of walking as a redeemed child of God.5
Trout and Cast Iron 