Thought for the week: Kate McNally makes (im)perfect sense
‘Our ministry is where our great joy meets the world’s needs.’
In the church I grew up in we memorised a creed, a statement of the beliefs we held in common. The life of Jesus was described this way: he was ‘Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried…’
This creed ignores the fact that between ‘born of the virgin Mary’ and ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate’ lies the whole story. That’s where we find the love of God shown in the life of this man who left his family to tell us how much God loves us as we are, to minister to the oppressed, to bring God to the godforsaken.
He said to us, ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me… Whatever you do for the least of these you do for me.’
I do not find God in steeplehouses or Meeting houses or even in Meeting for Worship very often. I find God in the actions that let my life speak. I believe that Jesus isn’t present in the ones who feed the hungry or in the hungry who are fed. Rather, he is present in the action of feeding them – the action that binds them together in a connection that is godly.
The message from my childhood church was that I was not (and would never be) good enough. That I was born tainted by sin, that nothing I could do short of confessing my imperfections and following directions of men who had no idea about my life would make me acceptable to the God who created me. I learned that I had to be perfect to live a godly life. Or at least try to be.
However, I once visited a church whose pastor said that God loves us just as we are. I was in my forties and this was something I had never heard in church before. It was absolutely life changing for me. I broke down in tears.
We all struggle to be perfect, to live up to the perceived perfection of Jesus, to earn the love of God. But what if God loves us just as we are? What if we can learn to accept or even embrace our imperfection? That might mean also accepting the imperfection of others, understanding that they too are doing their best to struggle with their imperfectness. What if we could love others unconditionally, just as they are? As God does.
As a Quaker I believe that it is not necessary to be perfect or cleansed or absolved to have a connection with God. It is not necessary to feel love for all of our fellow humans or to be always calm in our spirit. It is only necessary to do the work and the connection with God will manifest itself.
I have heard that our ministry, our ‘right work’, is where our great joy meets the world’s needs. We are all imperfect. But we are perfectly suited to the work we are called to do. We can all bring the message of Jesus – that we can and should love one another, that we can and should feed the hungry, tend the sick, bring the kingdom of God to this imperfect world. We are the hands that God has to do this work.
This, then, is the measure of our perfect imperfection.
Kate is from Quaker House Brussels.
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