Last Sunday we heard from Dr. Samuel Sarpiya as he shared how the tribe of Issachar “understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32. To use Samuel’s line of reasoning to tie back to our series on spiritual maturity, it seems many of us have good clarity as to what “these times” might consist of – we’ve been watching the news, we’re spotting trends, paying attention to many troubling facets of society right now. What we lack, if I may offer us (including myself) a little finger wagging, is a failure to allow these “times” to grow us up.  

No, doubt, these are strange, heavy days. We’ve talked often about this on Sunday mornings as of late. The air is thick with anger, fear, confusion, hostility. At the heart of much of this heaviness has been watching how many in the church often seem to be the loudest voice adding to the ugliness. It’s jarring to watch Christians justify cruelty, excuse greed, and baptize power as if it’s holy. 

However.

At the heart of it, the challenge in this teaching series has been that maybe we ought to spend less time trying to “grow” holiness, righteousness or maturity among those other “nonsense” Christians and rather use this moment to reflect on how we can grow up into more Christlikeness. To that end, maybe these troubling times are the very soil we’ve been planted in order to learn maturity. Maybe this cultural chaos is the “compost” (i.e. the bs! 🤣) where Christlikeness can actually take root in us!

Now, if you’re at all like me, the tendency is to shirk this suggestion, to resist this challenge and say, “but, but, but… we’re not the problem – THEY are!” Okay, stop for a sec. In our honest moments, doesn’t this response sound like a child? A child who, by nature, is immature because they’re, well, a child? This is not to deny the vast challenges we are seeing in the Church at large. Of course we need to name and resist the anti-Christ ways we see practiced around us. Ultimately, though, we can’t “fix” the Church or the world. We can only do the work of growing up ourselves. Maturity happens when we stay rooted while the world spins. When we let today’s tensions stretch us into patience, today’s divisions stretch us into empathy and today’s grief stretch us into hope.

This quote from a recent Holy Post Podcast Instagram post seems relevant here:

We spend a lot of our social, emotional, political and theological imagination being confused and obsessed with the evils of the empire, but the Lord has given us an answer to what we do when empires do terrible things: we love our neighbours, however risky that is. I may not ever be able to convince the powers to operate by the logic of the Kingdom of God, but I can. My family can. My church can …In a situation where the purpose is to overwhelm us and make us respond out of fear, the people of God are not a people of fear. We’ve been given a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind, so that is what we ought to be cultivating – not only personally, but also communally.

To cultivate a spirit of power, love and a sound mind is, in other words, to grow up. To mature into Jesus-likeness. And now that we “understand the time,” the challenge becomes how do we allow the time to form us?

To not just survive the moment, but allow it to shape us – from judgmental people into compassionate people. From being people who need to be right to people who are defined by humility. From people who feel safe in our silence to people who are embracing courageous ways of protecting the vulnerable.

If the “time” is but a whirlwind storm of trial and hardship and despair all around, then maturity will be revealed through staying firm in Jesus and his self-giving way of love until that same love becomes our own reflex. Let me ask you: are you there yet? I know I’m not. I know I have much to go in terms of growing love as a reflex. I suspect we all might. The challenge then is to not allow this cultural moment to pass us by or, worse, to de-form us, to jade us, to shrivel us up into bitter, annoyed people who have nothing of hope to offer the world.  Instead, may we have the wisdom and willingness to use this cultural moment, this time we’re in, to cultivate growth and Jesus-likeness in ourselves and our community. Selah.