About a year ago I read a book with the title “Struggling to be Holy”. The author’s name is Judy Hirst – and
reading that book is one of the first significant steps I took on the road of
considering how to engage with the United Reformed Church’s move into promoting
more intentional missional discipleship under the banner headline of ‘walking
the way’ and with the sub-title ‘living the life of Jesus today’.
Christian discipleship is nothing new. It started when Jesus said to
four fishermen on the shore of Lake Galilee ‘come and follow me’. Because that
is all Christian discipleship is – following Jesus. We have all engaged in
discipleship in different ways, and continue to do so. But sometimes it is
worth just thinking about what we are doing. Sometimes it is worth challenging
ourselves – and I find the notion of holy habits very helpful in that.
However, I also need to admit, and I suspect you may need to also, that
I frequently struggle to be holy – and that is why I identify with the title of
Judy Hirst’s book, ‘Struggling to be Holy’ – but, more than that, as I read the
book, I found a lot of what she said really helpful. I have come across plenty
of books where I have liked the title, and felt it said something to me, but
then discovered that the content, in my opinion at least, didn’t live up to the
promise I saw in the title. But that was not the case here – and so I would
like to explore a little of what she says with you.
First, a comment on holiness itself - “Holiness is about God being present and
our being present to God. The more we can be in honest relationship with God,
the holier we will become. Some Christians behave as if the task is to persuade
God to be with them, but the delightful truth is that he is already present in
the relationship. The problem is to be present ourselves. God is there but
where are we?”
I think it is really helpful to remember that holiness is not about our
trying to do it – because we won’t. We can’t. It’s about our connection with
God. It is a bit like the now fairly well-known saying that, I think, came from
Rowan Williams – ‘Mission is a matter of finding what God is doing and joining
in.’ Now, of course, it is important that we respond to God’s call. That is
what discipleship is. But it is important to remember that God was there first,
if I can put it that way. I can’t do stuff that will make me holy, no matter
how hard I try. I can do all sorts of good things. I can create or enter a
context which is helpful to a holy approach. But in the end, my connection with
holiness comes because of what God does. It is God who is holy. And God is
there for us. And God wants to relate to us. That is why we are called. But it
is also important to remember that God takes us just as we are. Of course,
there are times when it would be good if we did things in a better way. But
there is no exam to pass. There is no grade to reach. And sometimes it is worth
remembering that God loves and values us, and that is us as we are. Hirst
reminds us of the important that can be played by the things in us that can be
difficult. She writes: “if I could jettison the parts of me I found
troublesome I would also lose parts of myself which I valued. We are complex
realities and we need to learn to love what we are, both delightful and
damaged, and put it all into the hands of the master potter to form into
something unique and beautiful.” Or, rather more simply, she also puts it
like this, talking about the times when she has come to God and simply said, “Here
I am, what a mess.”
I don’t know about you, but I find it really reassuring to be reminded
that I can come to God with that kind of approach. I like to get things right.
We all do. But I certainly don’t always manage it. And I find it helpful to be
reminded of the conversation that the risen Jesus had with Peter just after
they had shared breakfast beside the lake, the ‘do you love me?’ conversation,
significant not least because of the question being asked three times,
mirroring the threefold denial that Peter had uttered just before the
crucifixion.
Let me read a slightly longer passage from Judy Hirst’s book, which
expands on this thinking: “So very often people in a mess (and that’s most
of us most of the time) feel they can’t pray because they can’t say the words
that they think God wants to hear. We fear that we can only pray by giving God
the right answers. In fact, the biggest danger is simply not to pray, to fail
to be in conversation with the God who loves us. Far better to say to God, if
it is your truth, that for example, …. you really want to forgive this person
for what they have done, but you also want to hate them forever! Trust God with
the mess and inconsistency! The response God wants is the response we can make
even if the stuff of our response is sometimes contradiction, confusion and
irrationality. Invite him to be part of the resolution, to help you to begin to
grow into the person whom he yearns for you to become. I am always helped in
this by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed as he felt. He longed that
God would take the cup from him. He asked God for what he wanted, inviting him
into the mess, but none the less was able to say ‘Yet not my will but yours be
done.’ He was able, in these hugely terrifying circumstances, to trust himself
absolutely to the God whom he knew loved him. God doesn’t want us to pretend.
We don’t need to protect him from the truth.”
As she also says, rather more briefly: “God can live with the
reality that we are still sinners even if we find it hard to do so!”
You might not expect me to say this, but sometimes our problem is that
we try too hard. It’s not that it’s wrong to try. But it is wrong to not trust
God. And sometimes we need to learn to leave things in God’s capable hands.
Let me offer just one more quote from Judy Hirst which reminds us of
how challenging it is to be holy, and yet, at the same time, how easy it is, if
only we will let God do God’s bit - I am reminded of a Peanuts cartoon ….. Charlie
Brown comes to visit Lucy at her 5 cent psychiatrist booth. Lucy says to
Charlie Brown that life is like a cruise liner. Some people put their
deckchairs up at the back of the liner and like to look back to where they have
come from. Others like to pitch their deckchair at the front and look ahead to
where they are going. What about you, Charlie Brown? Where do you put your deck
chair on the cruise liner of life? There is a long, sad, bemused pause. ‘Heck,’
Charlie Brown says, ‘I don’t even know how to put my deck chair up!’” Hirst
adds: “Believe you me, having listened in depth to the lives of many people;
it seems to me this is the reality for most of us! The challenge is to learn to
pray as we are and this is closely linked to our ability to accept ourselves as
we are and not as the idealised people we might imagine ourselves to be.”
[Part of an address
given to the Colchester & Tendring Area Partnership within the Eastern
Synod of the United Reformed Church at Plume Avenue URC, Colchester on 1st
November 2018.]
