Upheaval, change, fear and meaninglessness have been a hallmark of the past century in the modern Western world.
The consuming destruction of the Great War, the economic crisises in the decades since , the horrific desecration of life through the atomic bombs and botched wars, insidious racial inequity – we are the offspring of those traumatized generations.
Having been raised a Christian, of the conservative evangelical Midwest Protestant type, the more awake I become to the fallen yet beautiful world, the more questions and grief I bring before God.
What is going on?
How are we to live as Christians?
Why is the world this way now?
God! Where are you?
When I discovered in college the U2 song on the Joshua Tree album, it immediately resonated.
Since that time I’ve been on an urgent search for God in the world, but I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
It’s not been fruitless, and there has been much joy on the journey, but also more suffering that comes along with it.
In February 2020 a YMCA group called OnPrinciple brought a cohort of 12 Y leaders and 12 Y mentors together for a year program to grow in our ability to strengthen the Christian presence in the YMCA.
It included a 10 day journey through the Holy Land visiting sacred sites and fellow YMCA leaders there.
If anyone, I realized, has yearnings and doubts about the work of God in the world, it’s Palestinian Christian YMCA workers.
There were many transformational moments on the trip, one of them being Nazareth, which had several significant experiences.
One of them being winding through the bustling cobbled streets of old Nazareth in the Galilee area of Palestine.
As a large group we were making our way through the maze of covered markets and came into a narrow passageway that angles through brightly painted row houses; we stopped at an unassuming doorway.
It opens to a dark underground room, above the mantle is a engraved marble sign that indicates the place is a synagogue.
Descending the small set of steps ushers us into an old, old space built over two millenia ago.
It’s the synagogue where Jesus and his family gathered in Nazareth twenty centuries prior.
The experience within has changed a bit since then.
Now it is packed with many Christian tourists on modern white folding chairs, there is electric lighting and a microphone that helps us hear the words of the our guide.
But to recall the gospel writings of Jesus in his synagogue, to remember the Jewish context of his upbringing, to imagine the pulsing energy and pietistic devotion to the LORD of the families gathered there – it all makes for a special, sacred moment.
Though the original structure wasn’t underground, over the milennia housing structures were built up over it, so now it has the feel of a place hidden away, easily overlooked, a space you seek on purpose.
Have I found what I am looking for?
Not yet.
But like the effort put into finding the synagogue, a guide is needed.
As a Christian, Christ is my guide in this world, he is present with me in his old synagogue, in the YMCA, here at my kitchen table, and out in the world.
His friends are with me, his spirit is with me, his words are with me, his stories are with me, if I will remember them.
Sometimes Christ works in mysterious ways; it doesn’t always make sense to me, and my trust is constantly tested.
I’ve found that in my busyness Christ’s presence can be easily overlooked.
But, he also goes ahead of me, and purposefully stays hidden, not in a coy way, but for his many reasons, which include the healing of the whole world he loves.
I hope to go back to Nazareth again, to sit in the synagogue with more YMCA friends and family, to share the the spiritual experience with them.
In the meantime I’ll keep looking for ways to love, care and serve in imitation of Christ Jesus; I trust that is how I will find what I’m searching for.
