A few things in 2024 caused me to make a bit of a New Year’s resolution for 2025 – to talk about the mess much more.
The mess in my own life
In my line of work, both as a pastor and, especially, as a speaker for Living Out, there is a huge pressure to be a shining, perfect example for others to follow. At Living Out events people often want me to present as a fully-sorted and attractive advert for celibacy who will reassure the doubters that singleness today is both plausible and easy.
Except that things are more complicated than that. I do, most of the time, enjoy being single and I do, with a high degree of integrity, enthusiastically commend celibacy to others. But there are times when I want to be married and when I am desperate for sex with another man.
Only Jesus is a fully-sorted and attractive advert for celibacy.
How do I resolve the apparent tension? By being more honest about the mess there is in my own life – I am not a shining, perfect example to follow: only Jesus is a fully-sorted and attractive advert for celibacy. Although I have made huge strides forward in living well with my sexuality, in becoming more Christ-like through it, although I do love my single life in so many ways, I sometimes still make as much of an embarrassing mess with my sexuality as I did when I was 16. People need to hear both sides to my experiences – without the one cancelling out the other.
The mess in my church family’s life
But this is not just true of me. I was recently reflecting with a friend on how much we use the language of church family in my local church’s life together. It communicates well what we want it to be like – a place where people feel they are at home with the spiritual equivalents of parents, siblings and children. We rightly teach that this is now a spiritual reality due to our adoption as God’s dearly loved daughters and sons (Ephesians 1:3-6).
Except that things in families are often (understatement alert!) complicated. There are people who feel as if they are on the outside, who don’t feel at home in our midst. Like all families there will be hidden resentments, personality clashes and, every so often, a blazing row that results in someone leaving.
Things in families are often (understatement alert!) complicated.
How do we welcome people to our church families positively, whilst also setting the right expectations? Again, by being more honest about church family life, the positives and negatives. By talking about the times when we’ve wanted to leave and slam the door behind us (and perhaps even have). Thankfully, the New Testament is littered with stories of church family life being hard, stories which we can use to face up to the reality that it is often a right mess. And through those stories we can hear God speak his gospel of grace into that mess. I love how the apostle Paul can be so positive about the church in Corinth (see 1 Corinthians 1:4-9), without cancelling out all the problems he goes on to confront in his letters to them.
The mess in all our lives
Being more open about the mess in our lives as Christians, in our Christian communities, is so important as we reach out to the messy world around us. Increasingly our culture seems to be happy to communicate messiness – the films we stream, the lyrics we listen to, the boxsets we binge, the books we read are full of messy people living messy lives. Many of the heroes we find in them are ambiguous figures – we are made just as aware of their failures and weaknesses as their successes and strengths.
We do our watching world a disservice when we vainly try and present ourselves and our churches as perfect.
We do our watching world a disservice when we vainly try and present ourselves and our churches as perfect. They know it’s not true and they are repelled by our hypocrisy. People prize authenticity and us being open and honest about our failures and flaws will commend the gospel and demonstrate that it is all about grace. Our world, in many ways, seems to be being increasingly honest about human failure – we need to connect that with the only one who will provide lasting relief and hope.
Back in 2005 the singer-songwriter Jason Mraz released a song with the title ‘A Beautiful Mess’. I love that phrase because I think it both communicates how God views me in my sin and gives me a vision of how I, and other Christians, should present to the world too. There should be something beautiful, Christ-like about us. Our lives and our communities should be different, attractive, but at the same time they will, until Jesus returns and restores all things, still be a bit of a mess too. We should not be nervous of that mess being seen, instead we should rely on that beautiful mess pointing others to the one who is behind all the beauty there is: God himself who, thankfully, is able to shine brightly through even the mess of our lives today.