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"Love Shack"
Let me share this brief text from I John 4:16: “So we have known and believe that this is the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

If I ask you to close your eyes and picture God, what do you see? How would you describe God? What is your image of God? In I John, there is this simple image that God is love, and those who abide in love—who live in love—abide in God and God abides or lives in them. 

In the Christian New Testament, the word abide is meneo. It means to sojourn, to continue or to be held. So when I read this text I hear two things: when we live in love, we are held in God; and when we love God, God is held in us.

I want to talk for a bit about this last piece, how God abides in us, how we are the holding place for God. The writer is saying that we are God’s abode, God’s apartment. We’re God’s condo, God’s dorm room, God’s house or God’s SRO. We are God’s Love Shack!

Why does God choose to live in us, to be held by us? Just because! Not because we are beautiful or smart or rich or perfect or fabulous or because have worked hard or prayed hard—just because. We are God’s tent, God’s home. As the B52s sing, we’re God’s “Love Shack, Baby!”

And here is what really excites me. This scripture from the Judeo-Christian tradition is not the only theology that indicates that God is inside of us. The Yogi’s chant an ancient Sanskrit Blessing: Om Namah Shivaya. Why? It means, "I bow to Shiva,” the Supreme Reality, the Inner Self. It is the name given to consciousness that dwells in all of us. This mantra is free of all restrictions. It can be repeated by anyone, young or old, rich or poor and no matter what state a person is in, they will be purified. The belief is that bowing to Shiva is bowing to God—the Great Almighty. The repetition of the name of God is equivalent to being merged in God’s very being. Many Buddhists, Taoists and Hindus greet each other with “Namaste,” which literally means “I bow to you.” So the concept is that the divine spark in me recognizes the divine spark in you. 

I have a thesis that we human beings don’t really fully know who we are. Most of us have a case of mistaken identity. If we really believed that God lives in us, how would our lives look? How could we be cruel to anybody, blow up anybody, fight with anybody, destroy the souls of anybody if we thought they housed God? How could we put poison in our bodies, let somebody hurt us, not take care of our bodies if we believed God was inside? How could we even bear to hurt the feelings of the other if we thought that God would get God’s feelings hurt at the same time?

I say we don’t believe it—not nearly enough, not for long enough—for it to shape whom we are and how we live. And so we wander about, lost and lonely, frightened and false, angry and agitated, listless and lifeless. Or—let me tell you a secret, this is my disease—we run about with such speed and haste so as to avoid ever noticing that we are empty inside or afraid.

We live life without balance. And most of our world religions understand this concept. The Taoists call it “imbalance,” Buddhism calls it “ignorance,” Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition calls our lack of understanding of our oneness with God “original sin.” What would it mean for us to live as though God lives in us? As though the Divine resides in us?

I think we need an extreme house makeover to make more room inside for God to live in us. From broom sweeping to a total gutting we need to make room! We need to do some clean up. There is some junk in there that needs to go. I think this house makeover idea is about three things: prepare, pray and participate.

First, we prepare by making room inside so we can see that God is indeed in there. I have a friend named Lincoln. We grew up in the same neighborhood in Chicago. Lincoln is one of those really scary, frighteningly smart people. When he was in college he hit a rough spot, like an existential crisis at eighteen. He was miserable and went through a phase where he drank vodka for water. I remember he called me one day when I was in grad school and said, “I am either going to talk to you now or I’m driving into the tree!” The vodka was an analgesic; his spirit was broken. His “house” had too much junk in it for him to look inside and recognize God living there. It took some time, but he went to counseling and found a great place to worship in community, and threw away his fear, his sense that he was not worthy of being a Love Shack and saw in himself the goodness God sees.

Second, we pray. Since God lives inside, we can’t redecorate without being in conversation. We can’t draw up remodeling plans without some give and take. We can read our holy texts and get great suggestions, but in order to really know the Holy, we need to pray. And prayer is a conversation, not a list of demands. God wants so much to be in communication with us. Sometimes our lives will heat us up so that we will start talking with God.
      
The woman who wrote the best selling book, “Eat, Love, Pray” is Elizabeth Gilbert. Liz’s marriage was falling apart and she was devastated. She had never prayed, never had a conversation with God. Sitting on the bathroom floor, weeping, feeling really at the bottom, she spoke to God like the polite writer she is.

She introduced herself to God and said, “Hi God, this is Liz. I have never done this before but I hope I have communicated my gratitude at least. Please, f you can just tell me what to do, tell me what to do.” She said heard a voice—not Charlton Heston, and not Whoopie Goldberg. But she heard her own voice, her own best, purest, unwounded voice. And that voice was what she needed to hear. The voice said go back to bed. It sounded right and real to her. Her best inner, divine spark, God in the flesh, talking to her in her own voice. And God just may do that, you know, so we actually recognize what God is saying! So we are not startled out of our clothes, so we can believe what we hear.

If you were to take a moment now to be silent, to hear your own Godly self, that part of you where God resides, what would you hear that voice saying? I hope you would hear it say, “I love you so much. You do not have to do anything for me to love you. You are not the sum total of your mistakes nor are you the sum total of your successes. You are just mine and I love you!”

And finally, we participate. We do not serve a puppeteer. We are on this planet to do something, to be something. I think it is to partner with the Holy—to become who God wants us to be—and so we move with God, we dance with God, we push and shove and tussle with God. God survives our anger and we survive our anger, too. In the turning and the twisting we become who God wants us to be.

I’m 50 years old and I’m not finished becoming, but I am on my way. I am no longer afraid of what people think of me. I am just here. When I make mistakes I don’t collapse, I just say oops! I get up and I believe that I am forgiven. All of my dreams have not come true. I grieve—a child I did not have –I think I would have been a great mom. And there are wonderful children in my live and my husband and family make me feel so happy. I feel like God and I have partnered pretty well and I sense that I am participating in what God is doing in the world.

Conversation with Jacqui Lewis

Daniel Pawlus: Jacqui, thank you for that passionate message full of great humor.

Jacqui Lewis: Thank you, Daniel.

Pawlus: You called out something that was very interesting to me. I think it’s pretty profound this idea of a mistaken identity. A lot of us seem to sense that God is “out there” somewhere. But you’re talking about a God within.

Lewis: That’s right.

Pawlus: As a pastor—and Lillian might be able to speak to this, too—how do you help your congregations get to that place, because you come together as a community but there is also a separate, individual journey, isn’t there?

Lewis: I think that’s right, Daniel. I think it’s like what Palmer Parker talks about, a both/and. It’s managing a polarity. God certainly is transcendent, out there watching us, as Bette Midler might sing, “from a distance.” But truly God is also inside, deep inside. And lots of scriptures in lots of traditions talk about this. I’m particularly fascinated always with the Genesis creation story. God scooping up the clay and shaping the human being, but it isn’t until God blows into the human being the breath of life that the human becomes a living one.

Lillian Daniel: I think so many people have trouble imagining that God can be inside them or that they’re created in God’s image because they feel like my life is such a mess or I’ve made such a mess of my life, or if my life were perfect I could see that. And I really appreciated at the end of your remarks that you share that your life wasn’t perfect and yet still you could imagine God being apart of you.

Lewis: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think it’s our humanness. I think our brokenness, our disappointment, our “regularness,” our everyday failings are just all apart of being human and God made us that way. I think God created us in God’s own image but there’s a kind of refraction, a bending. One of the things we do to help people to get that is we make our worship pretty down to earth. Worship is pretty rowdy at Middle Church!

Pawlus: Let’s talk about that a little bit. I mean, a multiracial, multicultural, tell us about that experience. You’ve specialized in this in your doctoral thesis. How many of these kinds of churches exist because I have a feeling many of us may not have that experience at all?

Lewis: There are about 300,000 Christian congregations in the United States and 7.5% of those of them would say they are multiracial and multicultural. But half of those are in transition. Some people are moving out, neighborhoods are changing. But the ones that are purposeful are about 4%. One of the things that we do at Middle Church every Sunday is to try to make worship a celebration of our humanity. So there is art and drama and puppet shows. Our passing of the peace, Lillian, is so crazy I have to cut it off sometimes! Everybody has to hug everybody. But it’s the down to “earthness.” It’s the safe place to cry, to laugh, to hug, to be unformed so God can keep forming us. And I think if more congregations would get that sort of more of a relaxed, playful environment in order to experience God’s holiness, I think we could deconstruct the space between us and God and make it more like parachoros, we would say, the dancing together as we explore becoming who God wants us to be.

Daniel: A lot of people feel like in order to even walk through the door of a church they have to have their act together, that everybody in there has 2.5 children and looks nice and is dressed up. If I’m at the end of my rope there’s no place for me there. How do you work with those folks who can’t even walk through that door?

Lewis: We take really seriously the message of the Christian scriptures about Jesus not coming for the well or the perfect or the fabulous, but coming for the regular, for those who are in need of God. And also scriptures that talk about coming as a child. So it’s that playful self that we welcome. And we really do work hard at welcoming everyone just at they are as they come through the door. Not only that, I think it’s important that we think about polarity, so it’s God out but God in. It’s personal piety, but it’s also a kind of corporate salvation. So we work really hard to make worship not just about what happens on Sunday morning but we make sandwiches and take them to the park on Sunday afternoons. We serve 65 meals a week to people living with HIV/AIDS. We take our teenagers to New Orleans. So worship or church life keeps pushing out beyond the boundaries of the church into the world.

Pawlus: I bet that’s one of the challenges. When you have great music, great choirs, certain people are attracted to that experience, but that’s not all church is. It’s not a performance, it’s this process of allowing people to go deeper together. So how do you keep that balance between it not becoming about the arts or the culture?

Daniel: Or a performance.

Pawlus: Or a performance, but informing the faith journey for people.

Lewis: It’s a really good question. I think one is the entry point—like the worship, the music—that just gets people in. And then we put people in relationship with each other, a lot of small groups and classes, safe places to tell a story. I want to talk about a guy named Nathan who joined us because of the music. You hear the music outside, the doors are open, you find your way in and there’s a place you sit in the back. You then move toward the front. Pretty soon he joins a small group. He has a safe place to talk about his addicion. He is a guy who is struggling with recovery. It’s not easy for him, but he knows that all three of his pastors are there for him. He can come and sit in our offices and cry or laugh. So again, it’s a movement from out to in, like the movement from out to deep down. We talk about a deep and wide faith, out in the world but also deep down in the soul to know how much God wants for us our best selves.

Daniel: It sounds like you’re also talking about how to cultivate a community of faith in which you can really be honest and that you can really wear your pain on your sleeve and that you don’t have to wear a mask. I mean, so many people probably rushing around Manhattan who are wearing masks. And can church be a place where you can break that down?

Lewis: Well, we hope so, right? And we hope that if we really get it that each of the people in the congregation—but not only them, the people in the world—everybody houses God. Everybody is the place where God resides. There are implications not only then for personal piety or a self-love —God loves me, I need to love me—there are implications for community and the congregation. God loves her, him, and we together will join together to make the world a better place. But there’s also, I think, implications for a kind of social ethic, that if God lives inside not only me but also the Buddhists and the Muslims and the Jews and even the people who don’t know God, can we believe that?

Daniel: And the guy who cut me off on the highway!

Lewis: Exactly. Suddenly we’re responsible to and for one another. We have to care for each other. We share our resources together. We make the world a better place together.

Pawlus: Jacqui, thank you for joining us today. It’s always a pleasure to have you here.

Lewis: Thank you, it’s great to be here!

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