Shattering Religious Duty

It’s Easter. I find myself driving out into the open. All alone. Four inch patent leathers pushing the gas petal, leading me far from home…

Where I can grow small in light of His wide open spaces….

I had told them, “I don’t think I can do Easter this Sunday; eggs, large performances, wildly lavished stages….instead of humble reminders…He holds our every breathe in His hands.”

Could it have been the extended imprisonment for Pastor Saeed, or the young people praying recently massacred in Kenya, or maybe it was the children in Syria who refused to renounce their God and got beheaded, twelve-year-olds taken as child brides, nobody noticing while we play religion?

I don’t know what it was.  I just knew I couldn’t stomach our Americanized religion, while others were truly suffering for His gospel.

I just couldn’t do another Easter spent all dressing up, posing as if church alone is going to sanctify us; thousands pretending, as if saved by our own resources, just to live like the world again, come Monday.

The cross hangs low. And I wonder if we are like those once carrying palms as He entered Jerusalem so long ago.  Praising Him one day, then crucifying Him the next.

And does one Easter day in the presence of other church-goers really clear our consciousness?  Making us worthy, or pure?  Really wash away our sins?  Do performances really do anything for a humble God who came in a manger, died on a cross, and spent his life in a desert, under open skies, preaching to the wildly unlikely, giving His life for this love that captures the broken?

I had been wondering this, and more.  So I drove.

Images of my childhood patent leathers, come to my mind. Scuffed, too large, feet flopping in something I never would grow into. Trying to pretend the size of my soul was the size of what I had on…on the outside.

Forgetting grace shatters mirrors, and I had spent a lifetime on a hunt for it…

And that our worth is always found wanting when we look to a building, system, people, or organization for our identity.

And though today my black shoes were new and spotless, and I have learned to wear them; head up, poises and well practices…

I am undone, overwhelmed, and sick of standing tall in the face of a God where scripture tells us, people bowed low against, humbled, our identity swallowed up into who He is, instead of proudly decorating themselves to impress other people so they can see us, instead of a God who spans the Universe and more….

And I wonder if our churches can become the most dangerous mirrors of all when we see our denominations, our social structure, people, or our own individual representations of Christ as primary importance…instead of making Christ alone our First Love, our only hope…our everything we have worth living for?

And yet, who misses church on Easter?  I mean, I hadn’t.  Never. Neither had my kids.

Still, I chided, “Let’s instead climb high, making the world low, getting closer to the God I know and love by heading to the mountains”.

But the lies kept riddling me, “How could you not go to church on Easter?  How could you not put on your high heals and fancy dress?  How could you not parade in there like the best of them, playing “good Christian” instead of sinner saved by grace?

Yet, as I drive, I find the open space, shrinking, finding the God of perfect freedom gripping me, like never before.

The faces of other good church-goers pass me in their tin cases costing thousands.  Decked out in dressed and ties and suits, their faces stoic, their countenance cold…as if driving to a funeral.

And then, others, the dressed down ones, laughing, working in their yards with happy smiles, and friendly chatter. Going some place with a freedom I had lost since worrying about my patent leathers.

And I long for a day relationship with Jesus surpasses our own personal brand of worship, the cross reminding us there was suffering before the resurrection, a time when we stop looking for the best seat in the house, shining ourselves up on the outside….content without any long-term transformation on the inside.

I park now. Sit in my driveway lost, torn, stuck between running and keeping on my fancy heels, performing like I had for years…

Using the church like a mirror, telling me who I was…or wasn’t…telling me how Christ-like my devotion was by what I was acting like, or worn, or had done….

And yet, I hated that person I was who always wanted to fit in.  I hated people caring more about what they looked like than what’s in their hearts of sinner’s needing grace.

I was sick of watching large performances, thinking that was somehow the way we celebrate a silent tomb, angels saying, “He has risen”, the humility of a people risen, resurrected, bought into relationship not because of our works but because of what He has done.

And so I wait.  And I wait.  And let religion, and works, and the frustration of being not able to perform this year leak out my face, down past my cheeks, onto my patent leathers…

And I sense Him there with me. In the quiet.  Away from the gatherings, reminding me how the Son of Man wasn’t confined to large temples or presentations, but accompanied the Samaritan, like me; the blind, the needy, finding His followers up in a tree, preaching out in open fields, making boat hollows and storming waters, His most teachable platform…

Looking for the one, hunting outside the temple walls for those who needed Him.  

And maybe I had gotten it wrong.  Maybe the mountains were a perfect place to seek the God of all creation?  Maybe some building had been my form of religion in my mind’s eyes.  Maybe I was more like a Pharisee than a set free sinner…from the lie that, “we have to fit into some church” to find Jesus.

Maybe we can be nothing, empty.  Coming to him undecorated, wherever we are at, trusting He will meet us…

Not letting a church, or building, or group of people, or organization becomes our mirror…but letting grace show us, it’s not other people…but the King of King’s we are called to reflect.

And just before I step out of my car, there is a still, His voice echos in my soul. “I have come for relationship.  Today I want to fully free you from the mirror of man’s representation of me.  I want you to have full freedom from the power of religion.  I want to shatter you from using the church as your mirror so you can live free like never before. It is Easter, the day I paid the price for duty.”

The weigh lifts. I walk in the house, kicking off  my patent-leathers joyously.  Stepping lightly, as if on air, like I have always preferred it; wall-less, transparent, barefoot. 

The house is empty.  Husband texts saying he left with our children to worship The One resurrected.  And I am grateful instead of bitter.  Happy that He sees the need to bring them to corporate worship…taking them to a pastor I admire, who bravely preaches grace, repentance, and relationship with Jesus…

And I am thankful I have told my little ones each Sunday, “Wear what you want.  Jesus doesn’t care what our clothes look like”.

Because I want them to know a God like that. Jesus being the only one they are reflecting. Living free from a bunch of rules, abandoned to the lavished grace He has gives us.

I want their world to be made up of Jesus only…not Jesus plus; a building, some outfit, some social protocol, some conforming dictations, some unspoken rules about how to act or be someone else’s brand of Jesus…

I step into the kitchen, look out upon the open fields and give thanks for all He has given me; my house, my husband, my children…praying diligently for my pastor who is dispensing grace at that very moment….

And I find myself filling with the same joy I had seen out in those open fields, shattering mirrors of religion, spending Easter meditating on what He has done for me…freeing me from myself. Standing captured in His works-less devotion, relishing where His love for me can’t be manipulated or defined by other people’s perceptions….

A place where we can thank God for a building, a church service, a group of people, or an experience….

Without looking to it all, and making it God….  

Like I’d done…too often in the past.

**It’s time for a call to action. Go ahead and slip out a paper and pen. Now, draw a line down the middle and start separating the performance actions of your heart between those things you do out of love for Him.  Then, start committing your every work to Him.  Ask Him to change your heart where you have let people or some system be your mirror.  Plead with Him to free you from religious bondage and walk you into a life lives solely from grace.