Even as I write this, I shiver with excitement, excitement with sharing what God has been teaching me lately.
For those of you who don't know, these past few months have been an intense spiritual roller coaster, and not necessarily for the best. My walk has been shaky, to say the least. I've had pastors and elders of a church that I wanted to join try to convince me that I was not a true Christian, my parents threaten to divorce, and felt generally disconnected from the church and any spiritual community, mostly because I felt tainted by association with my parents. Although I was trying to grow in my faith--I'm in the process of reading through the entire Bible in a year--I felt like things were stagnant in my life.
Over the summer, I worked my longest days on Sundays, and living around my house, where there was little spiritual encouragement, and that only made my walk steeper and more difficult. Then, God blessed me with a job at a company that I've always dreamed of working for, but the only thing was that I would be alone. This was the first time that I've been truly alone; I didn't know anyone personally in this new place, and I'd have to start all over. This was difficult for me to do; I had already tried to start my life over once in Alabama, but that didn't go over so well, but at least I had friends there. Here, I was alone. I didn't know who to trust, and for the first few days before I started work, I did nothing. I hid in my apartment and sulked in my loneliness. I prayed to God to relieve my loneliness, but I doubted that He would. I was miserable.
They say that only in your lowest moments in life are you able to hear what God is telling you. I can testify that that is truth. I started going to a church recommended by one of my friends on here, and for someone who has felt closed off and rejected from the world, it was overwhelming to sit in that sanctuary the first day and hear about how this church wanted to help the world. In the opening, one of the members talked about the people who needed the most love and attention from the church. I sank more and more in my seat as I took in every characteristic, every word described me. I thought how could this be? I'm nobody important. How could this church be unlike the rest of them, apathetic to my cries to feel like a normal, happy Christian, to be like the others like my age who didn't drink the poison of having a broken family? Her words made me embarrassed; I didn't want help; I'd been hurt before by people who wanted to "help", but in the end, I just felt more broken. However, there was something different about this. Perhaps it was a truly genuine invitation, but whatever it was, for the first time in a while, I felt accepted, even though I hurried out of the service without talking to anyone, except to drop my visitor card.
I went back the following Sunday, feeling like being a little more open, and talked for a few more people before the service started. Someone got baptized, and I enjoyed it, though it didn't mean all that much to me; after my history with a more conservative church, baptism and other church ceremonies left a bitter taste in my mouth. Then, the message was delivered on communion.
Now, communion has a special importance to me, and it's ironic that it should have been preached about that Sunday, because it was communion that started my walk with Christ--sort of. When I was a young boy, I saw the adults taking communion, and wanted to do the same thing, purely out of curiosity. So I became a Christian, not necessarily knowing what I was getting into, and mostly for the free snacks. And in hindsight, communion never was of particular significance to me, much like baptism. It was more or less something that was required of you as an obedient Christian and you wanted to be on God's good side. This belief is probably what led me to attend a church of Christ after I went to college--I liked that what was preached was right. There was wholesome teaching on how to be a good Christian, and that was the ticket to heaven, as were a laundry list of other responsibilities. There was grace in there, too, yes, every Sunday, we were reminded about our salvation by grace, and of course, celebrated with communion. I think that sometimes when we do something routine, it loses its importance quickly. That's what it became to me. Break the bread, take a cup, drink it, put it back on the tray, pass it along, repent of your sins and pray for godly holiness for the next week.
Which brings me to last Sunday, where the message was on "Does communion save you?". I listened intently, desperate for spiritual nourishment that I had been missing all summer. The first few minutes of the message were on the context of the Last Supper within Passover, what Passover symbolized, and that segued into a dissection of the elements of the Last Supper, and how these constituted the greatest blessing of all: God's salvation. "Never let that get far away from you," the pastor remarked. While I was still pondering, he continued on about the bread, the symbolic body of Jesus broken on the cross, the fruit of the vine symbolizing the blood of the covenant poured out for the forgiveness of our sins. I'd heard this before, but was trying as hard as I could to think and relate this to my life, but I couldn't, until the next point. I wonder why I'd never heard this before, but the pastor added that there was a food that the Jews ate at Passover that wasn't at the Last Supper: bitter herbs to remind of them of the suffering they endured in Egypt. Jesus didn't eat these at the Last Supper because after His sacrifice, we would never have to taste the bitterness of our past.
At that moment, it all made sense, everything that I'd learned about Jesus' death and sacrifice, it became personal. I was the person Jesus died for on the cross. I was one who was protected by His blood that was spilled. I didn't have to live in the past. All of the anxiety, the torment, the depression, the hurt, the anguish, the desperation for a panacea was suddenly meaningless, because I didn't have to taste the bitterness of the past. It was that moment that I imagined Jesus on the cross, barely smiling, telling me that His death was for the pain that I would go through. He died so that I could live without guilt for the things I wasn't guilty of, and even for the things I was guilty of.
I don't ever remember crying during a service, in fact, I used to frown on people who did, thinking it was only for show, but this time, it was me who was losing it. As the message continued on about the main point of communion was reliving the blessing of Jesus' death and resurrection, and yes, that wonderful news about not having to live in the past, the tears came harder and harder. How could I have not known this? How could I have missed this? Now my life had new meaning: now, I wasn't some outcast Christian who felt abandoned and who believed that he wasn't clean enough to be a true believer. I really was loved and the pain I was feeling and had dragged around with me everywhere, I didn't have to carry it anymore! I had heard that Jesus longed to meet us, but now I had clarity. Just like the pastor told us to be, I was excited. I was excited that no matter how much my parents loved me or each other, or even how much others loved me, that none of that mattered to Jesus. I didn't stop crying until after the final song (during which the very nice lady in front of me handed me a tissue), which was a heart-wrenching rendition of "I Am Not Alone". I thought back to me in my apartment, alone, and thinking that I was because that's all I knew, what I'd experienced. I could only thank God for reminding me that I was never alone and not to let the past drag me down. I am Nathan Caldwell, made perfect in His sight by His blood on the cross. And though I don't have the cleanest history, He tells me that it doesn't matter anymore. What a blessing!
Brothers and sisters, I implore you, be wary of legalism. I know that it can be easy to believe, and that's the danger of it. I thought that by following God's law and being pure in my own eyes that I could have salvation by my own merit. It was selfish, and it made me feel good because I was able to do things better than my parents; that would save me. In truth, it only brought pain. I still held on to my past, using it as a reminder of all of the bad things that I had to be better than. Eventually, I just had too much baggage; I couldn't carry it all, and I fell down. But the good news is that Jesus tells us that we never had to carry that baggage, and I just wish that I had heard that so long ago.
