No Longer Passive

Based on John 9

I listened to the familiar sounds from my usual roadside spot, close enough to gain what little I could from passersby without inviting their anger. The Sabbath was always markedly quieter than other days, without the usual bustle of kids playing and the market humming. Families were together in their homes, resting, worshipping, and eating. I often imagined myself being invited to their table.

Of the few people who noticed me, most considered me a nuisance. I hated it, but I didn’t know what else to do. I survived mostly on bread and leftover scraps of food from compassionate passersby. With a full household to clothe and feed, my parents had little to spare for a grown son who should have been helping to support them. I lived embarrassed, aware of my imposition on the world.

A group of men approached. Though I didn’t recognize their voices, the question was all too familiar. People seem to assume that broken sight means broken hearing as well. “Rabbi, did the man or his parents sin to cause this blindness?”

It was quiet. Many years ago, I had built defenses against such moments. My skin toughened by the hate and judgment and condemnation. I coexisted with the poisonous words I regularly heard. I’d made my home in them. Something had to be true about what they said. I surely deserved this.

The rabbi knelt down. I could feel His breath and words close. “No one sinned. This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

I was confused. I knew it was the Sabbath, but I heard Him kneading something together, and then His cool hands wiped the mixture on my eyes. He told me to go down to the water and wash my eyes.

I sat with mud on my eyes, torn. The walk down to the water was long, and this was ridiculous. As a child I used to pray to God to heal me, but as an adult such a hope seemed unrealistic and naive.

I had no faith. I had no hope. I’d grown comfortable in my misery, just as I’d numbed myself against the poison of hurtful words.

But this rabbi, He had taken a risk for me. I knew the Law. If anyone saw Him kneading the mixture, they would condemn Him. No one had ever risked something for me before. Few would even speak to me.

I got up, if only out of respect for the man they called Jesus, who defended me and risked His career for me.

Step by cautious step I made my way to the water and washed my eyes. As I lifted my head, color, light, and objects flooded my mind. My senses were overwhelmed by the brilliance and beauty. Even the rusty color of the dirt felt startlingly intense.

I wept. I screamed.

Many people didn’t believe me when I returned to my neighborhood and told the tale. They didn’t even recognize me despite the decades I’d sat at their feet. Only a few of those who had shown me compassion through the years, they knew it was me.

The Pharisees asked to see me. They demanded to know what had happened, and I told them the truth. I didn’t want Jesus to be in trouble, but I did want everyone to know about His power.

The Pharisees summoned Jesus, and for hours I listened as He defended His decision to heal me, a decision condemned by those who cared more about the possibility of a broken rule than the certainty that I had been healed from a life of misery.

I wondered if His ministry was over. Would anyone follow Him now?

The Stream of Risk

One of my heroes in life and in faith is a friend named Kim Patton. I met Kim and her husband, Sherwynn, over six years ago and instantly fell in love because she’s a passionate leader and she’s a woman who takes risks for the good of others.

Kim and Sherwynn go into prisons and lead something called Restorative Circles, which brings together law enforcement and men and women who have been charged with family violence. Now, Kim is strong and feisty, but she is a little thing. Even so, she sits convicted Black criminals down across from white police officers and walks them through a reconciliation process in which individuals are given the support they need to overcome their life-controlling issues. This process has had a measureable impact on the crime rate in Austin. She believes the racial divide in the justice system can be bridged with relationships and conversations and Jesus. She marches right into the center of some of the deepest, most complicated conflicts in our society. She punches darkness in the face and she makes it look like it’s just no big deal.

At my invitation, Kim came to the first IF:Gathering. She knows that I have a heart to see racial unity and diversity happen in our generation. Soon after the event she called me. “Jennie, do you want to go to lunch and talk about how that diversity thing is going at IF?”

A few days later, I showed up at a lunch that I thought would be Kim and me. Instead, four Black women were waiting for me. They all had been at IF:Gathering. It’s one thing to sit down to lunch with a table full of Black friends with no agenda, but it’s another thing to come to hear how you are doing with diversity in your organization.

I was nervous about what I was about to learn, but I was eager to hear from them. That day over tacos these women began to describe what it feels like to walk into a room of women who look nothing like them and to stare at a stage that represents very few people who look like them. They shared candidly and kindly, and at times it was uncomfortable for them to do so. These women didn’t have to come, but not only did they come that day, they leaned in and wanted to stay and help IF mature and grow. After listening, I shared with them my heart for diversity and reconciliation.

Kim, at the end of our meal, said, “I don’t think we need to leave this here. I think we need to start our own reconciliation circle.”

To which I said, “Like the ones you lead with people who have committed a crime and policemen? You want to lead that with some women from the suburbs?”

“Yep.”

“Okay! Let’s do it.”

A few weeks later we awkwardly set down our hodgepodge of snacks at a local community center. Then we gathered in a circle, several Black women, an Asian woman, a Hispanic woman, and a few white women, not one of us knowing what to expect.

Allison naively talked about being color blind, and then Regina pushed back with the truth of why white people pretending the world is color blind does not help solve problems. She went on to tell the story of her siblings saving money to buy their mother perfume for her birthday. They saved and rode the bus together to the mall (a mall I know well). When they arrived, they were stared at as if they were stealing and they were suspected of shoplifting.

In that moment, every white person in the room stopped talking, stopped assuming. We started to start to change.

We learned to shut up. We learned to listen. Our courageous, gracious new friends of color taught us with great humility and kindness a smidgen of what we didn’t understand about the world of privilege. We talked about things that I never knew it was okay to talk about. Each of these women had more to lose than to gain.

Kim fearlessly gathered her friends and risked that we might be insensitive, that we white girls might make things worse. We might not care, we might not come, and we might inflict more hurt on her friends, who had taken a risk in coming.

One of Zac’s and my mentors, Rick Taylor, has always taught us that leadership is the willingness to take initiative for the good of others. Kim led for all of our good and for the good of many people we would influence later, though she never could have imagined how God would use us to serve in the future. Instead of apathy and comfort and the easier path, Kim initiated for the benefit of many people and led the way for us to grow and change together.

And because Kim took that risk to initiate, in the coming year we all watched God pull back the curtain to reveal what He is like and give us a fuller picture of what heaven will be. Personally I saw parts of Him and parts of life I didn’t even know I was missing. It was the beauty and the creativity and the glorious nature of uniquely crafted individuals, learning to appreciate and love what is different instead of fearing it. I had built a world that looked just like me. In moving outside the box I had erected, I saw more of God. I saw how diverse and good His kingdom is.

Moving into unknowns and uncomfortable places stretches us and gives us more of God.

In various ways we all have been like the Pharisees of Jesus’s day, creating a world where we avoid those who aren’t like us. Maybe we fear we won’t be welcomed by others, so we build boxes with high walls to keep ourselves from getting hurt. Or maybe in our striving to be in the “right” crowd, we build boxes to keep others out. Some of us have defined our box by our life stage or age group or social standing or marital status or denomination or political party. We surround ourselves with people just like us, and the flowing, gorgeous moving ocean full of God’s creative awe-invoking diversity becomes a stagnant, unhealthy, gunky pond of goldfish.

Each of us, as we gathered together around that circle, had to set aside any inclination to be defensive or prove to the others that somehow we had all the answers. We had to be willing to face the reality of our own limited perspectives and trust that Jesus was enough to…

…break down the hurtful walls we had accidentally constructed.

…build bridges of sincere friendship and trust as we faced the truth, no matter how difficult.

…bond us together despite our differences.

He was enough and then some.

We lived in this world where we were “getting along,” but the currents of tension were right under the surface, keeping us from truly experiencing deep friendship with one another. We risked being vulnerable enough to dive into the tensions and awkwardness. We risked exploring the problems we didn’t want to admit were even there.

SAFETY IS NOT OUR GOAL

In building relationships with people who are different from us, we have to decide: Are we really willing to risk saying the wrong thing, risk hearing how we are part of the problem? Are we willing to love and push through the hurts that may come?

Why risk our comfort?

Because on the other side of God-oriented, Scripture-informed risk is everything we are looking for: nearness to Jesus; greater faith in His power; deeper, richer experiences and relationships; satisfaction and enjoyment of the short life we have been given.

Our hearts naturally move to self-protection and away from risk-filled leadership and obedience. Although deep in our souls we crave adventure, somewhere on the way toward adulthood or somewhere within it, we stifled that craving with religion, preferring known expectations and controlled, predictable outcomes. We lost our capacity to risk, to explore, to invent, to create, to press into scary new experiences, and we created safe lives where our biggest goal is to measure up and be accepted and be enough.

But Jesus lives on the other side of our comfort zones. The streams we are craving—that He is offering—flow strongest in the spaces we see our need for Him. And as we step out of the boxes we have built, our hearts wake up. The Spirit of God stirs us toward a wild uncontrolled adventure, even if that plays out in the mundane parts of our lives.

I think there should be a God-honoring, obedient risk in our lives every single day. I’m not saying I want that to be true. I’m just saying I believe that Jesus lives on the other side of our comfort. And that when we get comfortable for too long, we start to miss our need for God.

We tend to make most of our decisions based on our fears rather than on our faith. Or we chart our moves based on our pride, believing we are enough in ourselves and we don’t need to risk. We don’t need to grow, we don’t need to help, we don’t need anything. We are enough.

These are not modern Western ideas. People believed the same lies in Jesus’s day. He continually pressed them out of their comfortable lives, cultural expectations, and predictable scenarios into the risky waters of freedom, healing, fullness, abundance, joy. He pushed them to reconsider everything they believed to be true about themselves and what God values.

It was one thing when Jesus calmed the wild stormy sea one night; but when Jesus called Peter to walk out of the boat on top of that wild sea, He urged him toward a new level of faith. Yes, Peter doubted and started to sink, but Jesus held him up.

Hear me, please. We will never kill our fears, though we tend to spend a lot of time trying to do so; we are called to walk on water—and to do so boldly despite our fears. Jesus isn’t scolding us for being afraid; He is calling us out of our comfortable boats to do something unthinkable, something that is possible only with His power.

Every time we risk, we place our lives into the hands of our God and test His enoughness. It is for our freedom and joy that we stand out past the limits and confines of our comfort.

What if I told you that to experience God’s enoughness you must willingly take risks for the glory of God?

I love that Jesus teaches us about where our abundance will come from before He calls us out on the water. It will not be in our power and striving that anything will happen. Obedient risk will simply be us leaning into His abundance, leaning into His love, simply believing that He will work, believing that He could take any situation and any boring day and cause life change to happen in it.

This isn’t just random risk, throwing caution to the wind. This is you stepping out of the boat toward whatever risk God puts in your path, no matter the cost.

This is the way the Spirit moves.

This is the life God calls us toward.

I want to see Jesus in my everyday life, not just when I arrive in heaven. I want to love Him more than I want to appear religious. I want to love people enough to lead them to the One who can heal them. I want to be healed myself. I want to initiate for the good of those around me rather than pad my existence with comfort and ease.

Is there a risk He is calling you toward?

Is there someone outside your circle to befriend? Is there a sin to confess? Is there a person you need to tell about Christ? Is there someone to forgive? Is there a need you are supposed to meet?

There is no safer risk than throwing the weight of your life on an eternal, loving, steadfast God.

THE RISKY BUSINESS OF HEALING

After Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath, He was attacked with criticism, doubt, hate, condemnation. He knew it was coming, yet He took the risk. Why? He actually went out of His way to take a risk on this day. He bent down and He kneaded mud with His saliva. This is the step that was clearly against Sabbath ritual.

For our good and for His glory, He risks for us. He risks His reputation. He risks His followers—because everybody is banking on “This is God,” and if He sins and in this moment they believe that He sins, they will not follow Him anymore.

And He risks all that for one man’s healing.

We each decide whom and how and when we will choose to love. As we go about our days, we often step over the sinners, the broken ones, as if they deserve to be in these positions. Like the religious people that day, we think we need to be the judges when our job is to point the way to healing and participate in the process.

Jesus didn’t just heal the blind man on the spot; the beggar had to walk down to the water and wash the mud from his eyes. He risked hope. He risked receiving the love Jesus had shown him, choosing to let down the walls of self-protection he’d erected.

Maybe you have been called to risk big life change, to adopt, to change jobs, or even to move overseas. But we also find ourselves called to risk in the little things, like the risk to rest when tasks and worry call our name. Or the risk to forgive when the wounds go deep. Or the risk to hope when logic says to give up.

The small risks can be trickier. Sometimes making a big, elaborate life change that you know God has called you to is actually easier than forgiving a friend who has hurt you or risking being vulnerable with your small group.

The blind man chose to take the risk. He walked down to that water by himself, and then on the other side of risk, he found healing.

Instead of celebrating, the Pharisees were ticked that Jesus broke the Sabbath. Their vision and compassion were clouded by a determination to prove how great they were. Jesus wasn’t having it. He said to them, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”¹

Jesus highlighted a dichotomy between people who are willing to risk everything to see and people who think they already do see, yet are blind.

The people who think they can see but are actually blind

• think they are capable,

• think they are adequate,

• think they are in control,

• think they don’t have need,

• think God has made them “special” and better than others, and

• think they know all the answers to people’s problems.

The people who will see because of His healing will

• see their weakness,

• see their inadequacy,

• see God’s power,

• see the need around them, and

• see God’s infinite ability to meet all their needs.

Jesus was clear: I came for the sick. Those who are well, those who think they already “see,” have no need for a physician.

Jesus risks for the healing of people, and so should we.

He risked everything and busted through man-made religion and rules to heal a man everyone saw as a burden. Jesus healed a blind man on the Sabbath so that today you are no longer in chains. So that you don’t have to wonder for the rest of your life if God sees the brokenness of one individual and will risk everything for your healing.

He wants us to know His ways are for our good. The Sabbath—do you even know what the Sabbath is for? My plans are for your healing, your restoration.

Jesus risked everything for our healing, and those of us who have been healed are called to go and give that healing away. We are to risk for others to be healed, risk for others’ good, even and especially when we don’t feel strong enough or brave enough for the task. We still get out of the boat.

So many individuals are walking away from the church and from God because people have built religious systems they cannot measure up to. They think they are too broken for God because we have acted like they are too broken for us. We have to move from being judges to being healers. God in us is the hope of the world.

ALL FOR THE GLORY OF GOD

One of the most fantastic of God’s gifts from our racial bridge-building group was the friendship of a ministry leader in town named Tasha Morrison. Soon after the awkward tacos, she called me on my phone. “Jennie, where are you?”

It was a rare occasion indeed. “I am at the gym.”

She said, “Stay there. I am on my way.”

I sat just inside at a table, and a few minutes later Tasha walked in with a navy and white Hobby Lobby bag the size of Utah. She hurled it up on the table. I still had not a clue what was about to happen. Tasha sat down, put her hands on top of the bag, and looked directly into my eyes. Now remember this is our second time to meet, and she said, “Jennie, you have a Black son, and you are awfully white. I think God has put me in your life to help you raise your Black son.”

Tasha risked possibly offending me because she knew I was open and wanted to learn all I could to be the best mom I can to Coop. She correctly guessed that I’d be more than willing to listen.

Then we started going through the bag together. She had brought me Black hair and skin products I had never heard of, and she walked through how and why we would use each one of them. She brought children’s books about Martin Luther King Jr. and others about the gift and complexities of being a kid of color.

Then I pulled out a handful of Black magazines, like Ebony and Essence. I tilted my head, a bit confused. These obviously were not for Cooper. She said, “Jennie, Coop needs to see leaders of color on your coffee table. He needs to see people who look like him who are successful creators and business leaders. Just put them on your coffee table.”

I needed someone to risk my feelings for the greater good, to help me better love my son. Tasha was honest, and I needed to be open to the truth she was sharing, things I would have never understood or considered on my own, in my white world. Tasha probably spent $150 on that enormous bag for my son.

Understanding begins where friendships start. I’ve found that in my relationship with Tasha. I’m inspired by the risks she’s willing to take to cross those racial barriers and help me do the same. Almost every time she comes over, she still puts things in my hand, in my life. Like this year for the first time, we have a Black Santa for Coop and for our family. Black Santa. We needed Black Santa! Of course I never noticed how white my world was until I got a little color in it. My life was flat missing some of the best parts.

It’s amazing what you learn when you build community with those unlike you. I’ve encountered new words and phrases and ideas I would never have known without these conversations. Stepping outside of sameness expanded my world, and I’m a better person for it.

Tasha shows up for me, and I show up for her. But we both had to be intentional to get to this place. She had to intentionally risk because she believed unity and diversity in our lives was worth it. We had to grant each other permission to be who we are and to say what we think and feel. She gave me the grace and permission to say the wrong things and know she won’t run away.

Together we all can risk for the glory of God.

Maybe your risk isn’t to start a racial bridge-building group, but some step of risk-filled obedience is waiting for you. What is it?

Recently a friend told me about another woman who was walking through Whole Foods with her two toddlers on her hips (not in a cart, so I’m already thinking, I don’t understand you). As she shops, she hears a man say, “I don’t believe in God.”

She keeps walking and God is prompting her, Go back and talk to him. Go back and pray for him. And she’s got her toddlers. In her arms. At the grocery store.

Let me just tell you in this scenario what Jennie Allen would have done: I’d have thought, Heck no, and kept going. I really wouldn’t have thought about it again. Except maybe the Holy Spirit is loving enough that He would beat me up and give me a chance to rethink that attitude.

The woman at Whole Foods also keeps going, but she cannot shake the sense she’s supposed to talk to the man. So she reluctantly goes back with her two toddlers. She looks at the man, and she says, “Sir, I heard you say that you don’t believe in God.”

And he says, “Yes, that’s right. I don’t.”

She says, “For some reason, I’m supposed to pray for you. Is that okay? Can I pray for you? I know this is a little weird.”

And he says, “Sure. Okay.”

In the middle of the grocery store, holding her toddlers, she prays for him. When they look up, he’s teary and she asks him, “Why don’t you believe in God?”

“Because He’s never done anything for me.”

She says, “Well, He just made me and my toddlers come across the grocery store to talk to you and pray for you. So you can’t use that excuse anymore.”

They went on to discuss God and life, and in the middle of the produce section of Whole Foods, his heart was tender toward God.

God wants to move through grocery stores and awkward meals. He wants to move through office happy hours and boot camps. He wants to take what feels like a random thought but is from His Spirit and move into the lives of people around us and, in turn, change ours. We don’t want to miss being part of other people’s healing.

BEYOND OUR IMAGINATIONS

Our racial bridge-building group went on to meet nearly every month, not having any idea what was ahead for our country. The unrest and tension in Ferguson, Missouri, was coming, along with a series of other events that would reveal the racial tension simmering under the surface of the American landscape.

As a naive white person, I don’t think I actually believed or thought there was that much racism in the world still. Until our conversations and then Ferguson. How beautiful of God that before Ferguson, before all this upheaval even happened, He put together a tribe of people to do life and ministry together and choose to love each other and do the hard work of risky conversations.

God knew.

And on February 6, 2015, at our second IF:Gathering, several of the women from our circle, led by Tasha Morrison, took the stage with hundreds of thousands of people watching and showed the world torn apart by racial tensions how to have an honest, brave conversation about race and unity.

Thousands of people said they wanted to host “Be the Bridge” to Racial Unity groups in their cities. And today the stories pour in constantly of how God is changing lives.

It all started with Kim initiating an awkward conversation over tacos.

I know you wonder, like I used to, if God is so abundant, why don’t we see His abundance everywhere in our lives? These streams that He wants for us, that He longs to pour out of us to a thirsty world, they are always there, flowing right outside of our comfort, right on the other side of the empty wells we keep going to.

Because we were blind and now we see, we can run past the empty jars down to the water and wash the mud off our eyes.

I want to see. I don’t want to live blind to God’s exquisite story line of healing and beauty happening around me. How do we do that? We step outside the box that represents comfort to us, whatever it is. We step out and watch God start to move beyond our categories, beyond our imagination.

Living with nothing to prove actually makes God-honoring risk a lot more fun. Just as Jesus risked His reputation to set a man free, we are able to more easily see and meet needs around us with less fear when we let go of controlling the circumstances and how our lives appear.

STEP INTO THE STREAM

What is one small or large risk you could take for the glory of God or the good of people?

WADE IN DEEPER

In the next month, visit a church that’s new to you or visit a church denomination that is unfamiliar to you. Reflect on what you appreciated about the experience.

QUENCH YOUR THIRST

Do you have diverse friendships? If so, how have they shaped you? What kinds of people intimidate you? What kinds of people do you not pursue? What keeps you from being close?

Hang out with someone different from you this week. Maybe you could meet for tacos!

THE OVERFLOW

Invite people from unique backgrounds to share a meal together. Seek to gather people of different ethnicities, denominations, ages, life stages; and answer these questions together:

1. What do we have in common?

2. How are we unique and what can we learn from each other?

3. How have our differences divided us?

4. What do you need to feel valued and understood?