Does it hurt?

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful."
- The Velveteen Rabbit

If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own. But because you do not belong to the world and I have chosen you out of it, the world will hate you...If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you as well...I am telling you this now so that your faith in me may not be shaken. They will excommunicate you from their synagogues. Yes, the time is coming when a man who kills you will think he is thereby serving God! - Jesus
John 15-16 (Phillips)

Boast and Swagger Christianity (BaSC) has a hard time admitting that sometimes...it hurts. This seems to find expression in one of two ways: 1) either it hurts but I'm going to act like it doesn't (denial) or 2) there is a way to avoid the hurt, so if I find that it hurts, then I don't have enough faith, didn't pray adequately over it, or I've stepped outside the anointing or something (some twisted form of sado-triumphalism). Take your pick and you have the same result - someone smiling and swaggering through life, while dying inside.

Jesus, and the Skin Horse, both of whom are always truthful, remind us that sometimes...it's going to hurt. Skin Horse says it in a velveteeny kind of way; Jesus, however, comes right out in his Messiah-self and says, "They're gonna hate you." And not only are they going to hate you, they'll persecute you, excommunicate you, and they might even try and kill you. Not that it's surprising or anything, but the THEY in John's verses refers to...well, who else would throw you out of the synagogue? Yep, you got it - religious, church-going, tithing, moral majority, synagogue-key-holding, fully-devoted-followers BaSC.

We act sometimes like THE WORLD is this big, scary, adulterous booger-bear we've got to watch out for. My friends, I don't think the world cares. The one's who'll hurt you are those with all the trappings of the faith..but alas, they've gotten the course before the heart. Sometimes...following Jesus...hurts. And I mean really hurts. Why can't we accept that? BaSC holds that if I can just keep all my relationships a-tip-toe, follow God's plan for my finances, raise my kids like spiritual champions, keep the needs of my wife in the front of my mind, be in my place on Sunday, give toward the new building or the new charity-for-the-year, and volunteer to bake the communion bread, then surely goodness and mercy, I ought to be able to avoid the pain of life. The rub comes when I've done all those things, kept the letter of the law, if you will, and I still get hurt...or my wife does, or my kids do, or my friend gets cancer or loses his job or loses her marriage or loses his church. Then what do you do? That's right - either "praise the blues away" or ask that million dollar question: Who sinned here, this man or his parents?

Sometimes...following Jesus...HURTS. Instead of Christ calling for the bride one of these days and finding her spotless and varicose-vein free and everything where it should be (like that pomegranated-gal in Song of Songs), I believe that the bride will come dragging down the aisle, breathless, limping, bloodied, bruised, and beaten. She'll (we'll) barely have the strength to stand on our own, but the Father will be waiting at the entry way to let us take his strong, right arm and escort us toward the Son. The bride will have persevered to the end, the bride will have long-suffered, she'll (we'll) have been persecuted because they persecuted him...the bride may look more like those folks walking around after the Battle of Agincourt than the lovely Julia Roberts.

Sometimes...following Jesus...HURTS. Sometimes, you parents will disown you; father will turn against son and mother against daughter. Sometimes, your best friend will betray you. Sometimes, you'll train up your child in the way he or she should go, and when they're old, they won't give a rat's rear about the faith of their fathers or mothers. Sometimes, your pastor will start wondering about your theology and the books you've been reading and he'll tell two friends, who'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on. Sometimes, you'll ask, seek, knock, and then ask, seek, and knock again, only to hear the chirping of crickets, see the blessing on others' lives, and get the door slammed in your face. Sometimes...following Jesus...HURTS. But these are not signs of faithlessness, or fickleness, or a willingness to have your ears tickled, or incorrect prayer-form, or any of the common BaSC responses to pain in our lives. No, these just may be signs of our belovededness...and the reality that we're becoming more and more REAL with each passing day. Why can't we just say it hurts sometimes? What can't we cry with one another and say, "Dammit - this doesn't make a lick of sense"? Why do we prefer porcelain or sterling-silver-plated crosses...to the old rugged one?