Are you sitting comfortably?

My mother finds the wooden pews in her church deeply uncomfortable…physically. Another person found a recent act of worship uncomfortable…deeply unsettling. Still another person found a situation at church uncomfortable, because they didn’t know how to handle it…lack of knowledge and informed preparation. Does it matter that we find things uncomfortable? The old adage speaks of Jesus coming to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable, but surely such homespun wisdom is simplistic? Ultimately, shouldn’t solace and reassurance override everything else when it comes to our experiences within the community of faith?

Candidly, I don’t know. Certainly, I believe passionately in the Christ who consistently brought a measure of healing to very difficult situations, but I must also acknowledge the troubled history of the earliest churches. There were times when the very people who had received directly from Jesus were told to stay put and minister in situations in which they were likely to find most demanding. At the start of his ministry, Jesus chose to speak in the synagogue in Nazareth, the one place where he was assured of a frosty reception. More than ever, I am convinced that the Christian life is a life lived in tension: we are caught up irrevocably in struggles between the earthly and the heavenly, we are told that to some extent out lives must mirror the life of the Christ who had nowhere regular to lay his head and who ministered against the backdrop of consistent misunderstanding. I don’t see that we can or should expect to escape from the uncomfortable; I would actually be extremely worried if everything appeared to be plain sailing.