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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nUnfortunately,\nI cannot be in an intimate relationship with God if I am hiding and protecting\nmyself from Him. I cannot experience close connection with other human beings\nif I am hiding and protecting myself from them. You are perhaps familiar with\nthe famous quote from C.S. Lewis:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To love at all is to be vulnerable.\nLove anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to\nmake sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.\nWrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all\nentanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But\nin that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be\nbroken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to\nbe vulnerable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Incarnation, Jesus chose to be vulnerable. The eternal Son of God who was immortal willingly took on our human flesh. One motive was to be able to offer himself on the Cross, to pay the price of our redemption. As God, he could not die. As man, he could. But becoming flesh was not simply about paying a ransom on the Cross. The deeper motive was to love us, to show us how to love, and to make us all capable of loving in that way. From start to finish, vulnerable love was the motive of Jesus becoming flesh and of everything he said and did in the flesh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd the Word became vulnerable and dwelt among us\u201d (John 1:14). That would be another way of putting it. To be human is to be vulnerable. This is the profound insight of Curt Thompson in The Soul of Shame<\/em>: \u201cSo much of what we do in life is designed, among other things, to protect us from the fact that we are vulnerable at all times. To be human is to be vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At\nall times we humans are vulnerable \u2013 able to be wounded, abandoned, rejected,\nexcluded, betrayed, injured, or killed. Sometimes we barely notice our\nvulnerability, and other times we feel it intensely. But it\u2019s always there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus\nshows us how our human condition of vulnerability need not be an experience of\nshame and isolation, but can be transformed into an experience of healing and\nsalvation. When we listen to the Gospels closely, we hear one story after\nanother of Jesus modeling vulnerability for us. His heart remains wide open in\nlove, even when others are misunderstanding, accusing, rejecting, or abandoning\nhim. He does not break off to hide himself. Yes, he spends forty days in the\ndesert, but that was actually an even deeper experience of vulnerability,\nenduring temptation as well as allowing himself to be comforted by the angels\nGod sends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many\nof us resist and avoid vulnerability because we tend to associate being\nvulnerable with feeling shame \u2013 and shame is perhaps the most painful human\nemotion. When we feel shame as Adam and Eve felt it, we feel unlovable and\ndevoid of dignity. We do not want to be seen or known. So we hide and isolate.\nShame thrives in isolation. What begins as one traumatic experience \u2013 genuinely\npainful \u2013 becomes a perpetual cycle that we do not know how to break. Jesus,\nthe New Adam, breaks our cycle of shame and opens for us a vulnerable path to salvation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This path includes connecting with God and others. Again, Jesus is our model of what it means to be truly human. He does not go it alone. He consistently reaches out to his Father and to his friends \u2013 even when they choose to abandon him. He establishes the Church as a community of believers, calling each by name, but always into a community of faith. When we hear the story of the early Church in the Acts of the Apostles it is a story of community and communion, not of isolation. Salvation happens in Christian community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The name Jesus means \u201cSavior,\u201d and salvation means becoming safe by becoming whole and holy. It is safety that we are seeking when we hide from our vulnerability. But we will not find wholeness or holiness in our hiding. We may need it for a time, especially when our survival truly depends on it. But our places of hiding, our panic rooms<\/a>, will indeed become tombs and places of death if we refuse to let ourselves be seen and known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\ninvitation to salvation is an invitation to become vulnerable AND safe. We may\nunderstand this at intellectual level, but it is important to experience it as\nwell. That means finding a safe community in which we can truly be seen and\nknown, heard and understood, cherished and appreciated and encouraged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are many in twelve step programs who have claimed that they find an experience of Jesus much more easily in the church basement (in their group meetings) than in the church itself, where they find plenty of people putting on masks, bustling about, rigidly following rules, judging and gossiping, or following familiar routines \u2013 but precious few people opening up humbly in vulnerable human connection. That is quite an indictment! Is that true of me or of my parish community?<\/p>\n\n\n\n To\nput it differently \u2013 when broken people walk through our doors, feeling their\nshame deeply, what will they encounter here? Will they find a friendly face who\nshows them that it is safe to be vulnerable here? Or will they find fifty new\nways of hiding from their vulnerability?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those\nare questions that we can all take to prayer this Lent!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For many of us, vulnerability is one of the hardest human experiences to manage. It can be terrifying and overwhelming. It can cause us to feel exposed, naked, unprotected, or unsafe \u2013 and we can find fifty ways to run or to hide. Fleeing from vulnerability is a story as old as the human race … <\/p>\n