“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  -Matthew 7: 7
 
I’ve long imagined this as knocking to get intosomething, maybe even heaven. But now I’m thinking it may be Jesus’ invitation to knock on doors leading outof boxes we create for ourselves. Right before these words are the comment, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? Matthew 7: 3-4
 
This year’s lazy days of summer are interrupted by the dis-ease of disturbing headlines, urgent emails, the looming uncertainty of our United Methodist Way Forward.  It’s so very tempting to crawl in and close the lid on boxes of protected space:  caves of set opinion, comfort zones of predictable social activities, familiar physical places.  It’s tempting to try to ignore, or learn to live with, the discomfort of the speck in our eye.  The blink, blink, blink of irritation becomes “normal.” 
             Isolation contradicts the sacrament of communion.
            Cynicism contradicts the covenant of baptism.  -source unknown

But Jesus has something else in mind for us. 
 
Last week I joined a small group of Lewiston residents gathered directly opposite Calvary UMC, outside a laundry mat.  In the early evening of a summer Monday, they came to remember a friend cruelly killed the day before in sight of her children. They came with candles, grief, memory, and hope for healing of their community. Their friend’s last meal was at Calvary’s open breakfast table, sharing the daily bread and fellowship that many of Lewiston’s homeless find there each week when the saints risk opening the door to their church. My candle from that night now sits on my desk reminding me daily of the little lights that shone that night on a dark Lewiston street. 
 
At the communion table we extend open hands to receive God’s gift of grace, the life of Jesus the Christ. In the free-flowing waters of baptism we are immersed in God’s Spirit as its life courses through community willing, even if not ready, to be transformed. These are the marks of an open-door church practicing out of the box faith because Jesus invites us to be part of God’s expansive kingdom that is growing right in the middle of the worst human messes. 
 
This year we’ll feature examples of MidMaine churches taking risks to knock on and walk through the door. Please share your storiesso that others may learn and be inspired!  
 
The audacious promise of Jesus’ invitation, the door will be opened to you,is echoed in U2’s popular new song, (which brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it!). Listen here(you can skip the ad). 

The door is open to go through
If I could I would come too
But the path is made by you
As you're walking start singing and stop talking
Oh, if I could hear myself when I say
Oh, love is bigger than anything in its way

So young to be the words of your own song
I know the rage in you is strong
Write a world where we can belong
To each other and sing it like no other
Oh, if I could hear myself when I say
Oh, love is bigger than anything in its way

If the moonlight caught you crying on Killiney Bay
Oh sing your song
Let your song be sung
If you listen you can hear the silence say
When you think you're done
You've just begun…..
​

​My covenant group has been practicing mediation on the previousweek’s gospel from the common lectionary.  A whole new space for encountering the good news opens up when you have a week of study and presentation behind me and the open space of ongoing reflection before me. Last week’s encounter with Mark 4: 35-41 made me aware of the difficulty that can begin when leaders don’t trust followers. I can remember any number of times when I, unlike Jesus in this passage, did not trust others to take me “into the boat,” just as I am.  Instead I sometimes prefer to stay on shore in a beached boat waving to those who set out, paddle my own boat even when exhausted, or avoid a boat altogether and walk alone on water (you can imagine how that turns out). 
 
What I’ve learned by experience is that when leaders don’t trust followers to take us as we are, our identity starts to dis-integrate into private (protected) and public (partial). I’m not saying that we out to let it all hang out.  The disciple’s boat in this story was not full of dirty laundry trying to hand dry in the wind before the storm. I am saying that we need to be whole people, authentic wherever we are. The alternative leads to:
1. fractured selves trying to adapt to segmented circumstances in a personally destructive pattern. 
2. barriers erected to those we seek to lead, those who are trying to learn how to be authentic people of God be observing how we try to do the same.  If what we show them ourselves isn’t real, or is only partial reality, should we be surprised when they don’t live up to our expectations?
3. Distrust.
 
By trusting his followers to take him “as he was” into a potentially dangerous situation, Jesus demonstrated that they really are in this together. His quizzical question to them asks why they don’t trust him.  I wonder what difference it would have made if their cry in the boat, instead of “don’t you care?” had been, “we need you.” 
 
When, a few verses later, in Mark 5: 24b-34, Jesus encounters someone who does trust him without reserve, both the disciples and we overhear him say to the woman with 12 years of hemorrhaging, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed of your disease.”  We don’t hear any more than that.  There is no evidence offered of whether it “worked.” We are invited to trust that she found the peace and wellness she longed for.  The passage itself is written in a way that draws us into that trusting relationship. Jesus’ followers would have remembered when he noticed the limits of their faith. Will this example lead them/us into deeper faith? 
 
I think that we often read or hear these passages through the lens, “how do I get the results I want (safety in a storm, physical healing). In each of these stories Jesus goes further than he’s asked to, actually stilling the storm, actually welcoming the woman into his family. Jesus’ tendency to exceed expectation is not limited to the supplicants’ attitude (panicked, skeptical, desperate, or willing).  It’s just what he does because of who he is. It’s his authentic self at work.  
 
But what Jesus is seeking is the trust, faith, relationship, not the results themselves.