be faithful to the gospel

“She was just the nastiest person…”

This was a comment from a co-worker of mine today as we talked about religion. She was telling me about visiting a church this Sunday and how it was good, more contemporary than she was used to, but it was a good experience anyway. She and her husband were helping her son to find a church he felt comfortable to attend and it began a conversation about what styles of worship we connected with. She related how she could go pretty much anywhere, but she wouldn’t go to a Pentecostal church, because of a person she met at a former workplace.

This person was a gossip and “the nastiest person,” always telling the rest of her co-workers that they were “heathens and going to hell.” Then she would pray in tongues at work and scared this friend of mine. It turned her off from a whole section of the church.

As she talked, I thought of, and shared with her, the scripture, “if I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, it is as a gonging symbol.” But it got me thinking again about how bad a job the church does sometimes at fulfilling the most simple of Jesus’ commands: Love your neighbor.

How was gossiping and condemning, then trying to display a spiritual gift in front of others, showing the love of God to this group of people? It did the very opposite than I am sure that this woman believed it would. I am sure she probably felt very justified with herself, having “shared the Gospel,” without any regard for those who were being “shared with.” I am sure the next line of thought was to blame the co-workers, because they weren’t open to the “full-gospel” or whatever, and justified her condemnation of them even more.

In this Lenten season, let us pray that we, as the Church, represent Jesus well, without our own prejudices and judgments bleeding through our messages to the world around us. Let us live the Gospel. It reminds me of what the layman said in the Ash Wednesday service as he placed the ashes on my forehead:

“Turn away from sin…be faithful to the Gospel.” Amen.