November 4th, 2013 Commentary to Henri Nouwen's Daily Meditation

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Daily-Meditation--The-Poverty-of-Our-Leaders.html?soid=1011221485028&aid=ziXfz1mwvwY

In case the above link to Henri Nouwen’s Daily Meditation doesn’t work:

Monday November 4, 2013 

The Poverty of Our Leaders

There is a tendency to think about poverty, suffering, and pain as realities that happen primarily or even exclusively at the bottom of our Church.  We seldom think of our leaders as poor.  Still, there is great poverty, deep loneliness, painful isolation, real depression, and much emotional suffering at the top of our Church.

We need the courage to acknowledge the suffering of the leaders of our Church - its ministers, priests, bishops, and popes - and include them in this fellowship of the weak.  When we are not distracted by the power, wealth, and success of those who offer leadership, we will soon discover their powerlessness, poverty, and failures and feel free to reach out to them with the same compassion we want to give to those at the bottom.  In God's eyes there is no distance between bottom and top.  There shouldn't be in our eyes either.

My Commentary:

We should pray for all leaders in the church these days since we are now in an age of Christians persecuting other Christians…  What do I mean by that?  Just like exampled in the secular society around the world of the church, we are polarizing one another with politics and divisive indifference!

When I first started seminary in the fall of 2008, I never thought in a million years that I would be more or less training to be a “politician of sorts…”  Instead simply being a devoted disciple of Christ training in formation to serve his Holy church; I was labeled a “conservative.”  Apparently Orthodox Lutheran persons who disagree with antinomianism, Gnosticism, revisionist-universalism or heresy have a giant bull’s eye target invisibly painted upon them. 

Since when did believing, with a profound faith, in the Trinity, the creeds and the TRUTH as revealed within scripture… being Christ Jesus is the Lord of our lives… become a point of condemnation and ridicule by the all-too vocal “liberal” Protestant world?

In speaking of the “gospel” of Christians persecuting other Christians; these words—liberal and or vs. conservative have been planted by sin and are bearing their evil fruit in the collective Body of disciples… who SHOULD be centered in Christ… not self-consumed “works-righteousness!”  The urgency and agency of the Gospel of Jesus has been lost through our unwillingness to grow faith through the light of GRACE.  Instead there are those “serving the church” of Christ out of a growing cynicism, a nihilism that grows as the TRUE pillars/ norms of faith formed by GRACE are beginning to crumble away.

We must pray for each other to get out of the dark clouds of a worldly endeavor Satan has planted to turn our hearts away from God.  We must revolt against Christians persecuting other Christians and—Re-form the church TRUTHFULLY, with abundant GRACE—together. As it says on the back of my cursillo cross: “Christ is counting on you,” yes he is counting upon all of us to become humble, accountable and obedient to HIS mission, NOT OUR mission! If we choose to grow away from the mirror into the depths of spiritual poverty… our life together for the love Christ and neighbor will slowly die.

God Bless Your Mondays!

Nicole Collins