Sometimes when you are doing a big construction or remodeling project, one of the first things you have to do is build scaffolding – a framework that enables you to work at high levels. The scaffolding provides the support you need while you are getting the work done. And then when you finish the work, you take the scaffolding down. Scaffolding is always meant to be temporary.
For this chancel project we haven’t needed that kind of scaffolding, because the work has been pretty much at ground level. We did need it, however, a few years ago during the project to repair and refinish the sanctuary walls. You can see how high the walls are. Scaffolding was necessary.
Scaffolding is a familiar term in construction. But it is also used in education to describe the tools and processes that are useful in helping someone learn a new thing. Very often it involves bringing in a more advanced student to work with the new learner, to model the kind of behavior that is being taught. That more advanced person serves as human scaffolding for the other.
The idea is that when there is something that the learner cannot do on their own, you provide help for a while, until they have learned it well enough to work without the help. And when they reach that point, the scaffolding is no longer needed.
So with this in mind, I have been wondering about how we might need scaffolding in our life of faith. Are there kinds of scaffolding that help us to grow as disciples of Jesus?
In the letter to the Romans, Paul writes, through Christ we have obtained access to the grace of God, in which we now stand. In Eugene Peterson’s translation called The Message he writes it this way: “We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand – out in the wide-open spaces of God’s grace.”
When I think of it that way, finding myself in a new, unfamiliar, wide-open space, it feels slightly intimidating. In fact, I might need some scaffolding to help me learn how to live in this space.
When this platform first went up it looked to me like a wide-open space – too wide and open. But people helped me to make sense of it by drawing pencil lines on the floor to show me how it would be organized. Lines showing where the pulpit will be, where the organ will be, where the low wall will be placed. All of this has been helpful to me, to be able to imagine what will be and how we will use this space.
This kind of scaffolding is also needed for us as disciples of Jesus. God welcomes us into a brand-new space – a space that is different from the world as we know it. We arrive here not by our own power or wits or goodness. We arrive in this space of grace by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God gives us access through Jesus. If I am standing now in God’s amazing grace, through no credit of my own, how do I learn to live in this space of grace? How do I build a life fitted to this space?
I definitely need some scaffolding for that.
We know that our role model for this life is Jesus. He is the one we watch and learn from, by reading the gospels. This is where we learn about how Jesus spoke with other people, and who he chose to speak to. We learn how he treated people. We see what he prioritized. Every follower of Christ needs to hear the gospel to grow in understanding of how to live in this space of grace. Jesus is our model, our guide.
But then I am reminded of the story about the little boy who awakened in the night terrified by a thunderstorm. His mother came to his bedside to soothe him, and she assured him he need not be afraid because he always had Jesus with him. And the boy said, “I know, mama, but I need Jesus with skin on.” You and I might need models – scaffolding – with skin on.
Who do we know who inhabits the space of grace well?
If grace is fundamentally about forgiveness, how God extends forgiveness to us for all our offenses and shortcomings, bringing us into this space of grace, then the big question for us becomes one of forgiveness. How do we extend forgiveness to others?
There is a song called God Will that is about forgiveness. Each verse asks the questions about who will forgive you for all the lying and cheating and betraying you do, and the refrain is, “God will, but I won’t. And that’s the difference between God and me.”
It’s a funny song. But it’s not a song to live by. Because if our answer is that God will, but I won’t, then I think we have missed the fundamental point in being a follower of Jesus.
When God moves us into this wide-open space of grace, it isn’t to continue in our old, selfish, unforgiving ways. It is for the purpose of being changed into a new being.
One who accepts the grace and sees the glory of God in all things. One who experiences suffering and challenges quite differently. A new being who recognizes that we are at peace with God only because God has done the work of making peace with us. But because we are freed of trying to do that work ourselves, we can turn to the work of making peace with our neighbors. By the power of God, extending grace to one another.
Again, I am going to need some scaffolding for this.
I think that, as a nation, one of the ways we struggle with forgiveness is seen in the remembrances of 9/11. This week we commemorated the 25th year of remembering the things that happened to us back then. Even now, 25 years later, there is a heaviness to the memory. We do this because we don’t want to forget – ever. But should we seek to forgive? And what would that forgiveness look like.
There is something called the Forgiveness Project. It was started in 2003 by a journalist, Marina Cantacuzino, who began collecting stories of reconciliation and forgiveness. This was at a moment when the memory or 9/11 was still fresh and the war in Iraq was beginning. Marina began a project of gathering stories of people who had been harmed by violence and, in response, chose forgiveness instead of retaliation.
The foundation has continued for more than 20 years to gather stories of forgiveness from all over the world. I read several of them this past week, and I noticed a pattern. In every case it seemed that part of the process was being able to see the person who harmed you as a human being. Just as much a human as you are. One storyteller described the exact moment she looked at her perpetrator and was oddly struck by how goofy he looked, how vulnerable he seemed. Another told about seeing the offender and being struck with just how young he was. The people who harmed them were just people – not monsters. So many of the stories described a process of either getting to know the person or learning more about them, helping them find forgiveness.
Understanding that you share the basic human condition with a person who harmed you can be a powerful thing. But sometimes the ones who have harmed you are hard to put a face on. One of the stories was written by a woman whose struggle centered on the war in Iraq, which was a significant part of our nation’s response to 9/11. Her husband came home from the war carrying the burden of severe PTSD. Because of his actions, she lost almost everything, including her sense of self. Her anger was initially directed toward her husband, but eventually she was able to forgive him. It was then that she had to come to terms with the larger burden of anger she was carrying, which was directed toward the American people and government who wanted this war. That, it seems to me, is a hard enemy to live with.
Eventually, she found ways to talk about it and through conversations with other Americans who supported the war or, at least, did nothing to oppose it, she was able to work toward reconciliation. She was finally able to find some peace.
The pattern of finding some glimmers of humanity in the others, even in our very real pain, creates the conditions where grace may begin to seep into our hearts. When our very bodies may become a space of grace.
On Friday, Kim and I went to the 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony along with others from our community, including a few from our congregation. There were words of remembrance from our police and fire officers, words that expressed grief for where we have been and a sense of responsibility for where we are now and the choices we make for our future. I sensed a desire for Americans to be reconciled with one another, and felt hopeful that we might allow space for grace.
At the end of the ceremony a bagpiper played a very familiar tune – Amazing Grace.
We have to learn how to live in the wide-open space of God’s grace – it is our calling. It is a process of learning, often slow and hard. And no one does it all on their own. We need the scaffolding of others who can help us find the way, until we are doing it ourselves. Remember, scaffolding is meant to be temporary.
The truth is, though, we are always going to need some scaffolding, as long as we are in these mortal bodies. As our buttons say, we are a work in progress, and we will always be a work in progress. God is not finished with us yet, and as long as we are “in the flesh” God will not be finished with us. Beloved,
May you stand in God’s grace, knowing that you are standing with a host of other human beings who are also a work in progress.
May you seek out the models, the human scaffolding of one another, with a heart willing to learn, willing to hope.
May you open wide the space for God’s grace.
Photo by Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa on Unsplash
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