This post is a re-post! It first appeared on Circle of Hope’s blog here.
Maybe the point of every spiritual life is like transforming a funeral home into a place of worship. My adventurous congregation has had an eventful month. We bought an infamous funeral home on Broad Street, and it’s been more challenging and also more amazing than I imagined. Here’s what happened, and some spiritual truths that might apply to all of us:
1. Only let hope define you
When we closed on the building, we discovered that the previous owners left it full of trash for us: two giant truckloads of waste. It was mess-with-your-head kind of trash: human remains in the embalming room, coffin boxes, rifles, dog feces, liquor, a tombstone. It smelled like death. There was a freshly drawn pentagram with satanic messages and symbols on the front wall of the meeting room. It seemed like a message meant to scare us.
We cleared it out that same day. I stayed up late with my church-planting partner Jimmy Weitzel until it was done. Our next site team leader, Ian Holland, and I took a crowbar to the graffiti since we want to put a big window there anyway. Nothing need define us but hope. This building may have seen a lot of violence and betrayal and abuse, but the love of God is even greater. The love of God as revealed in Jesus is greater than all the sadness and rebellion in the world. Just as Jesus rose from death, his Spirit breathes life and hope into every threat we face, now and forevermore. We can claim our rightful place with the Life-giver. Like Jesus, we have come from God and are returning to God. That’s where we really belong.
2. Don’t move into a new place alone—you’re part of a living body.
The next two days were full of cleaning and moving in. A friend came all the way from North Philly to do the bathrooms, even though she was sick. The men of the church slept over in the building. They filled the place with prayer and laughter. My husband washed away the blood in the embalming room. Ian slept in my office to reclaim it. Five people were able to remove the tombstone that the two trash guys couldn’t lift. So many others lifted boxes, prayed, brought flowers, and began to unpack. Together we started inhabiting this place and then it started to feel like home.
When we approach the interior rooms of our hearts and try to “move” into to a new place spiritually, we need each other too. The “dirtiest” jobs are best done together; otherwise we get scared off from finishing them. We are part of a worldwide community of faith that Jesus calls a “body.” We need the help and strength of the other parts of our local body. Otherwise, we’re like an eyelash or a fingernail trying to make sense of our purpose alone. It doesn’t make sense. People of faith are intrinsically connected to each other.
We are so force-fed the religions of individualism and scientific rationalism that it’s easy to miss the necessity of being part of a church body these days. For your healing and wholeness and for the healing of the whole world, don’t miss it! Find a Jesus-centered faith community to work out your transformation before rigormortis sets in.
3. Share your home before it’s finished
Two days after we moved in we had a Sunday meeting. Our projector screen was a bed sheet, some stuff didn’t work, some things were still in boxes, the lighting was still bad, the carpet is still… interesting. The perfectionist home-maker/artist in me wants to transform all of that yesterday. But the spiritual truth is that none of that is as important as the people we are meeting and befriending and inviting to be partners in the work of transformation. My time is better spent with them than at lamps.com. We’re making progress on the building, and really, it’s already beautiful. Believers are worshiping all around the world in caves, on roads, in buildings without walls and roofs, under threat of death and the elements. The important stuff with us is already done.
There’s a similar thing happening in the spiritual building of your heart, mind, and soul. You might be tempted to keep your emotional doors closed until you have all your stuff worked out. I recommend opening them anyway. Be part of a cell, go to the Sunday meeting, call up a faithful friend, drop in on a neighbor. You have a lot to offer even though you’re not finished yet. None of us are, but God is doing beautiful things through us anyway.
S
ometimes I think we are getting back to a better version of the funeral home concept. In modern times, birth and death have been farmed out to the “professionals.” People used to have babies at home and lay out their dead loved ones in the parlor, for neighbors and friends to come hold their hand one last time. Now we give up this sacred work to strangers, and while it has its benefits, I’m afraid it creates a weird disconnect too. We are removed from the mess of it, the highs and lows that help us move to a newly empowered place. The truth is that we need to grieve and rejoice and accept the beautiful mess that we are! I pray that 2214 South Broad continues to be that kind of place. A place where you can be on the edge of sanity and be restored. A place where you don’t have to put on a certain kind of face or have a certain kind of experience. A place where God meets us as we are, not as some sanitized version of some idealized future self. The truth is that we are loved beyond belief, RIGHT NOW. Come hang out with us sometime soon.
-Rachel Sensenig
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