This is God...

So far, I've been asked to do two weddings. One of them didn't happen; the other did, although it was certainly interesting.

However, neither couple had ever had much to do with church. They didn't know anything about Jesus or baptism or communion. They had no idea how a wedding with pastor would be different from a wedding with a judge. Yet, neither struggled to answer my question, "So if you've never been part of a church or considered yourself a Christian before, why do you want a minister to perform the wedding?"

"Because this person is a gift from God." Almost verbatim, all four said just that, with and apart from the other.

Yes, there was a hint of hope of a little mystical help for their future as a couple. More than that, though, it was their deep, deep recognition that the goodness of their relationships had to come from outside them. None of them had anything so good or healing before.

And in that experience of goodness, they came looking for God. They came looking for the place and the people who say, "We know God."

I wonder what they found.

I know what welcome I gave them. Somehow, though, I don't think our churches know what to do with testimony of God that comes from outside Christian faith, or maybe any faith at all. I know the church I serve now doesn't. We still believe that God is present in only the ways God has been made known to us before. We forget that God calls to all sorts of people, even in ways we never expect. We forget that God gives good gifts to all sorts of people.

I had a professor once who said that studying church history was just a means of naming your own heresies. I have to say I've found that endlessly true. Probably the most heretical point of my life was when I owned up to believing that God could become known to humanity in another way, a fourth hypostasis for you theology nerds. Why not?

Truthfully, I don't think any of the folks coming to me, having experienced God, have experienced God in a new way.

Yet, if I believe that God called to Abraham in the desert, why not in small-town Missouri? If I believe that Moses stood before a bush that burned but was not consumed, in the middle of a desert, far away from anyone else, why do good gifts seem so difficult to accept? Jesus called to fisherman, at least one of whom had a non-Israelite name. The man from Ethiopia was reading something he didn't understand. The list goes on and on.

Still, when the young couple comes to the church, saying God brought them together, the first impulse of folks to say, "Oh, you need us!"

I think it should be more like, "Oh, we need you!"