I Wonder If I’ve Ever Really Understood the Gospel

I’ve started a Master of Ministry at St. Stephens University. It’s a beautiful and challenging journey, and I’m just getting started. With theologians and teachers like David Moore, LA Henry, Bradley Jersak and Peter Fitch (to name just a few), I’m finding a bigger and more beautiful gospel. On the way, I’m unlearning a lot, and I’m grateful. Here’s just a glimpse into my takeaways from our first module.

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. Yes, I’ve been following Jesus for decades.  Yes, I’ve been transformed and healed over time. Yes, I’ve prayed with a lot of people and seen some beautiful things happen. But my privilege is a veil that keeps me from seeing the gospel fully as liberation. 

I’ve talked about freedom, yes, but mostly in terms of personal freedom and healing. Freedom for myself and others from personal oppression in a spiritual sense. It’s a privileged view of liberation because I don’t feel the need for more. Yes, I see the inequities, the things wrong in our world, and they grieve me.  But I don’t feel them in a marginalized, queer, black or brown kind of way. Not at all.  

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. If the gospel is good news to the poor, then I can’t understand or proclaim it from a privileged position. I can only understand, proclaim and live the good news of liberation from the margins, in solidarity with–or better, perhaps, in submission to–the poor, the ignored, the despised, the un-privileged. And I can only do this if I intentionally become less. If I yield my seat at the table to voices who understand liberation in a way I never will. I must become a listener, a follower, one who submits my privilege as a platform for others. If my privilege serves a purpose at all, it serves only to empower a liberation movement led by people who understand the good news far better than I do. 

If it’s not good news to the most marginalized person in the room, it’s not good news.  

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. That thought feels freeing and terrifying. Because I don’t really believe–not really–that there’s enough at the table for everyone. That the wedding feast is a feast for all of us. Is it possible that those of us who live with privilege are the most impoverished in spirit? We hold and cling and build from fear. 

I wonder if I’ve ever really understood the gospel. That a very good God comes to us in human form, in poverty and in solidarity with the poor and marginalized and sick, to show us the way to be human. Self-emptying, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Jesus leads a liberation movement that is social and relational and costly.  

Or maybe, as a woman, I have tasted this. Maybe I know more of this than I’ve let myself know. But I’ve accepted it or owned it in a way that hasn’t made room for anger. What if I let myself get angry? This question from David Moore stays with me. 

The first black people I remember seeing were the servers at my grandparents’ country club. The white people sat at the table. The black people stood around us, waiting on us. As I hold the memory, I see Jesus standing with them. Then I see a bigger table; we are all around it together. It just keeps getting bigger. And the bigness distances us from each other. 

What if it’s not about one bigger table that distances?  What If together, in Christ, our bread and wine, we are the table? Together as one, there is enough. What if the communion table within each of us makes us one?

The contemplative journey—silence, listening, attention—is about becoming less. Emptying. So that what is false and shaped by un-love, damaged by the violence of life, takes up less space. So that what is false and loud and self-promoting gets quiet to make space for others to breathe, for others to enter and be heard. Here I begin to notice that it’s less about my individual self and more about the whole.  

This is the kind of diminishing I choose (on my best days). Not diminished by others, but chosen by me. I become more, not less, as I live in the union of love. In this space I learn to offer myself freely, without fear, becoming more fully myself.

What if I become more whole and holy not in my individual self but in my connection with others? In holy attention to the other that makes space. Here the lines between our individual selves become more porous and the love begins to seep through. All rooted in love, we grow together to become the banqueting table. 

–Susan Carson (she/her) founded Roots&Branches in 2012 with a passion to create safe spaces for transformational encounters with Jesus through listening prayer and spiritual practices. As a spiritual guide, she has facilitated meaningful encounters with Jesus for hundreds of spiritual seekers. Susan is author of rooted (IN): Thriving in Connection with God, Yourself, and Others, and host of the rooted (IN).ten.tionally podcast. Susan has a breadth of leadership experience, serving as the founder and leader of Christian AIDS Network, as curriculum and communications developer for Kerus Global Education, as Pastor and Director of Curriculum for Vineyard Community Church, and as founder and director of her own business Last Word Communications. Susan has over 25 years of experience in training and curriculum development. She’s a certified Spiritual Director through Sustainable Faith School of Spiritual Direction.  Find out more at susancarson.net and rootsandbranchesnetwork.com.