Café - Hot Topic-Is your faith in the closet? by Tana Kjos

Is your faith in the closet?
by Tana M. Kjos

I live in downtown Chicago, so I do a lot of walking. One of my usual routes takes me through a busy shopping district. Even though my favorite stores are on the east side of the street, I usually cross to avoid that guy with the microphone.

I have to decide if I want to hear why I and my street-mates are all going to go to hell today. Maybe it’s because one of us is smoking, holding hands with the wrong person, or wearing clothes he doesn’t approve of.

Picture this: You’re busy running errands, carrying your latte, minding your own business, and the next thing you know, a guy with a microphone is talking to you: “That caffeine you’re drinking is going to lead to no good!” he preaches. “As it says in the Bible: You can’t drink caffeine if you want to go to heaven!”

A lot of people think all Christians are as obnoxious as that guy with the microphone, and so many of us are reluctant to share our faith. But in Genesis 12 we hear that God blesses us to be a blessing. And if that’s true, then as we share our faith, people won’t cross the street to get away from us.

Frankly, I don’t remember Jesus telling many people they were going to hell. Jesus came with the good news of God’s unending, radical, life-changing love, and called us to be witnesses to it.

This isn’t complicated, and it shouldn’t be scary. From the beginning we have had one assignment: We are blessed to be a blessing. On campus, at work, in the park, at the grocery store, or simply making dinner for our family, we are blessed to be a blessing.

Author Leonard Sweet says that the early Christian church grew as fast as it did because it out-loved and out-served its pagan neighbor. If it’s true, as Luke 6 reminds us, that it is “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” then out-loving and out-serving our neighbors should come naturally to us.

The good news that you have to share is, at least in part, your own story. Maybe it’s that you didn’t feel alone when a parent passed away because people were praying for you. Or the way you felt helping to build a Habitat for Humanity house when you knew God had used you to make someone’s life a little bit better. Your story about how God is at work in and through you is the good news you have to share.

Some of us might worry that we’ll scare off our friends, neighbors, and coworkers if we start talking about Jesus or church or the faith that gives us life. But we have good news to share!

Many of us also suffer from a basic misunderstanding of what it means to be the church. We’re used to thinking of church as a place we go instead of as something we are. We are the church, wherever we find ourselves. When church is a place you go, it is also a place you leave. And as soon as you’re out the door, you’re arguing with your spouse and cutting someone off in traffic as you leave the parking lot. We don’t think of sharing our faith with friends, neighbors, and co-workers, because faith sharing is something that only happens at church. We figure it’s best left up to church professionals.

Picture this: You help create a recycling program in your neighborhood because you care about what we leave behind on this earth. And when your neighbors and classmates ask why you’re doing this, you take the opportunity to actually tell them. Maybe you tell them that you think you really can create a little heaven right here on earth. It’s your call, your passion, your faith in action.

Sharing our faith becomes easy when we know that the church is
people — not a building we go to now and then, but people who know that their lives matter and that they are called to make a difference in the lives of their neighbors.

Faith sharing is also difficult for many of us because we have a limited understanding of vocation. We tend to equate vocation with job and career, and so we think our vocation is to be a doctor, mother, pastor, and so on. What we miss is that as Christians we all have one vocation: No matter how we make a living, our purpose — our “real job” — is to participate in what God is up to in the world. We are called to be Christ for one another, to help make the world a better place, to share God’s good news with others. We receive this call at baptism and it is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian.

Jesus put it this way when he was asked about the greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.”

He also gave us these words to pray: “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Would Jesus tell us to pray this if it weren’t possible? I don’t think so. God is at work in our world, bringing in a new kingdom. And we know from the biblical story that God has always called people to be a part of this work! That is the purpose of our lives. Whatever we do “for a living,” our true vocation is to let God’s will be done here, exactly as it’s done in heaven. Ask yourself: What slice of heaven does God want to create through me at work, at home, at the grocery store, in class?

Picture this: My daughter’s best friend came out about his sexuality to his family and friends during his last year of high school. You can imagine how difficult and scary this was for a 17-year-old to do. Later he started college on a pretty conservative Christian campus. He was horrified when he saw students harassing one another for all sorts of reasons, including race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. It would have been easy for him to pack up and move to another school. After all, his “job” in life right now was to be a student, right? But he knew he has a Christian vocation wherever he goes and whatever he does. He shared his concerns — and witnessed to his faith — to the school administration. And they heard him. This fall, he’s back for a second year and has been asked by the administration to work with a new staff person in charge of diversity on campus. He’s using his gifts of enthusiasm and love of people, his smile, and his willingness to share his own good news story to make a huge difference on this college campus. He knows that, as a Christian, that is his real job.

Sharing our faith through our words and our actions becomes easier and more natural when we get over the idea that Christians who share their faith are scary, like that guy with the microphone. It’s easier when we remember that church isn’t a place we go but who we are. And it’s easier when we reclaim our true vocation as God’s people through Christ, no matter what we happen to do for a living.

We’ll find ourselves sharing the good news everywhere we go!

Tana M. Kjos is the co-founder and creative director of A.R.E: A Renewal Enterprise, Inc., doing consulting and leadership coaching for faith-based, non-profit, and for-profit values-based organizations of all sizes.

Share a comment Share this article

Faith reflections
by Amy C. Thoren

Some months ago, a college friend and I went to a popular local establishment where folks like to socialize. My friend, who had just moved back to the Twin Cities after living many years in New York City, was eager to meet people. We wound up talking to some guys who looked to be around our age. The career question surfaced quickly: “So what do you do?” My friend, who does not attend church regularly, answered for herself and then for me. “She’s a Lutheran pastor!”

“A what?” came the response.

After the initial shock wore off, one of the guys, who was working on a Ph.D. in history, sat down next to me and said, “So let me get this straight. You believe that Jesus is the son of God?” I stammered, wondering if the Jesus in whom I put my faith was the same Jesus this guy had in mind.

“Well,” I said, “yes, but I’m not sure we mean the same thing when we say ‘believe’ and ‘Jesus’ and ‘Son of God.’” He was an atheist, he said, and he couldn’t believe he was face to face with someone who claimed to “believe.”

He asked again, “So, you’re saying you believe Jesus is the savior of the world?” “Well,” I said, “yes, but I really want to unpack all those terms.” I felt bad for my friend, worried that my inescapable public identity as a religious person would ruin our chances for having any fun. But by the end of the night, we’d all engaged in a long, lively, and authentic dialogue about religion, Christianity, and ultimate questions. We even exchanged phone numbers.

After that, I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish. (Esther 4:16b)

Though their contexts are far removed from ours chronologically and culturally, biblical characters also experienced the tension of living a public faith. For both Jews and Christians, public expression of faith could and did result in far greater consequences than being pressed on one’s beliefs in a bar.

Esther’s is a unique and difficult story. It is the only book in the Bible in which the name of God never appears. A Jewish woman in a society not kind to Jews, Esther wins the favor of the Persian king and rises to take the place of the queen. Esther hides her identity as a Jew until faced with a decision, referenced above, to risk her life in order to save her people, for whom the highest of the king’s officials had decreed total annihilation. Esther is able to reverse the decree, and the Jews are not killed.

Though filled with violence and vengence, the story of Esther raises compelling questions about concealing and disclosing one’s identity and faith. Are there times when concealing our faith serves a higher good? How much are we willing to risk to be open about our identity as people of faith?

In World War II, German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer at times feigned fidelity to the Third Reich in order to hide his illegal activity within the Confessing Church, which opposed Hitler’s regime. Though his association with the Church was known, Bonhoeffer concealed his true allegiances in order to serve in a plot to assisinate Hitler. The plot failed, and Bonhoeffer was hanged.

In both these stories, a bold “closeting” of one’s faith served a greater purpose and the characters remained true to their faith in profound and powerful ways.

But our North American context is not so hostile, and we are taught from Sunday School through adulthood the far more common biblical mandate to share our faith. Shouldn’t it be easy for us? Not necessarily. If we face no tension at all in living our faith publicly, it might suggest only that our faith’s values are identical to the values of the world. Yet we are called as Christians to look critically at the values of the world rather than accept them unquestioningly.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (I Corinthians 1:18)

In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, women are the first to discover the empty tomb where Jesus was laid after being crucified. Though terrified, the women could not keep something of such joy to themselves. The news was too good not to share.

When Jesus died, along with him could have died hope for a new reign and another way to live. But the resurrection says that this new reign and this alternative way to live are alive in spite of — even through —Jesus’ crucifixion and death. It may look crazy, as Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians, but it is the strange power of God. It is a foolishness wiser than human wisdom and a weakness stronger than human strength (I Corinthians 1:25).

I confess it was not easy to answer “yes” to the history guy at the bar, but the strange and vulnerable power of God was at work in — and in spite
of — my initial awkwardness. Later I thought of all the things I could have said that I didn’t, and I wished I’d not said some of the things I did. Yet I learned in that experience, as I learn in so many, that there is a hunger out there to hear good news through an alternative story, one not like the dominant stories of our world in which lust for power, death, sin, and hopelessness have the final say. Even the gospel story’s whisper is loud enough to be heard above these other stories’ shouting.

The courage and ability to live and share our faith is a gift, “…for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love” (2 Timothy 1.7). And the message about the cross is the power of God and unexpected good news — news too good to keep to ourselves. But the tension of living a public faith is something we, like our predecessors both Jewish and Christian, all face.

There will be times we are bold and times and we are afraid to risk sharing it. There will be times of concealment and times of disclosure. Regardless what time we find ourselves in, we are invited to hear and be part of the alternative story, living into our
calling as people changed by this message about the cross and the power of God.

Amy C. Thoren is pastor of youth, family, and educational ministries at Diamond Lake Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis. She is drawn to evangelism on the edge and believes the Spirit dwells in daring and unexpected places.