"Slow-Motion Grace," Indeed...

Sometimes you find an article, or hear a sermon or a song, or read a book, or even hear a passing comment, that speaks perfectly to you in that moment. Such is L. Gregory Jones' wonderful piece in the latest Christian Century. "Slow-motion grace," it's called.

He writes of Jayber Crow, the main character in Wendell Berry's novel of the same name. First off, I love Wendell Berry. Score one for Jones. But more than that, it is the piece of the storyline around which this article revolves - the enmity between Jayber and Troy, the man who married the girl Jayber loves - which strikes me to the core.

I wrote in an earlier post about church conflict, which continues into another week. I wrote that I hate church conflict, and this is still true. Something in me desires peace almost - almost - at any cost, and I particularly loathe being...well, loathed. It is distasteful, and disturbing, and more to the real point, it hurts. It hurts a great deal.

But the problem is that I can switch so quickly from hating the conflict to hating the person at its center. And though some of that is simply a natural human reaction, self-protection perhaps, it is nonetheless exactly the opposite of what Jesus calls us into, of what Jesus lived. I am no fan of the phrase, "Hate the sin, love the sinner," as it too often lends itself to a poisonous self-righteousness. But how shall we live together when we not only disagree, but do so painfully? And when the conflict is not clean and clear (as it rarely is), but hidden and vicious? What then?

All I have today are two quotes, the first from Berry:

Of all the trials I have experienced, [Troy] was the hardest. He was the trial that convicted me over and over again. I did not like him. I could not like him. Maybe I didn't need to like him, but I needed at least not to dislike him, and I did thoroughly dislike him. I also enjoyed disliking him. In his presence I was the perfect absence, the night shadow, of the charity that I sought for and longed for.

And the second from Jones:


....it is not enough simply to understand God's love in Christ, or even to absorb it into one's soul. It must be lived in the company of others; one must cultivate a way of life that bears witness to love through membership in a community.

Somehow, I doubt that I will live this vision today. But to have it before me is enough for now.