Painting the Secular Canvas Blank
Our Easter Sunday service had just finished. The finish line of the busiest week in the church calendar.
The next morning, not a day off, but an eighteen-hour flight to the US. I was ducking into my office to grab a few things for my journey. Tired, I pulled into the parking lot. Then I saw it.
Across the front of our offices was a large sheet and two large words written in spray paint. I got out of my car, looked behind the sheet and there it was. Brazen, bold, and in block letters: “%&$# Off God!”
A note stuck to the wall explained that the sheet (which was blocking the F-bomb) was the charitable work of the Catholic father and some of his church members from the parish across the road. My stomach sank. Who would do such a thing, on Easter morning of all times?
It felt like the secular moment had reached out with a mendacious targeted message of discouragement. I was already disheartened, concerned by the mood evident in the wider culture. The growing fractious cultural landscape of constant controversy, in which Christianity seemed to be dragged through the mud in continual crisis, at times being targeted, at other times wounding itself. A mood that now reached down into the realities of pastoral ministry, reshaping the inner lives of those I serve for the cause of Christ. The joy and gratitude that I had felt at the height of our Resurrection Sunday service dissipated.
STOP AND LISTEN
I was exhausted. I was cold. I just wanted to rest, to spend time with my family before I jumped on the plane.
I wondered who I should call to deal with this problem. My staff had already left for their Easter breaks. Maybe a servant-hearted volunteer? I pondered.
Then, the nudge of the Holy Spirit: Mark, stop. I want you to deal with this. Paint the wall.
An hour earlier, I had been on stage, preaching to a packed church, and celebrating the resurrection. Now I was grumbling and ferreting around a dark and dusty storage shed looking for a can of paint.
TURNING CURSES INTO BLESSINGS
As I began to paint, my harried, tired state began to slow down as I settled into the gentle and rhythmic brushwork. The sun broke through the clouds, warming the back of my neck. I felt the Spirit nudge me, encouraging me to pray for the person or people who had painted this sign. I asked God to reach out and touch them, reveal Himself to them in their pain and rebellion. The sense that this was an evil secular assault began to disappear. Most likely it was just the work of an angry and bored teenager.
Again, I read the note left by the Catholic priest. I began to marvel that he and his parishioners had spent their Easter morning trying to scrub paint off a concrete wall, locating a sheet to cover the expletive. Something continued to shift in me.
“What other gifts and blessings lay hidden, waiting to be discovered in this secular moment?”
Here in this moment of increased antagonism against Christianity, this act of vandalism, this insult to God, had drawn Catholics to serve us, their Protestant brothers and sisters. An Easter moment of grace, a show of Christian unity, that no program or event could manufacture. What other gifts and blessings lay hidden, waiting to be discovered in this secular moment?
Technically, in the parlance of our contested cultural moment, this graffiti could be defined as an anti-religious hate crime. Yet such a viewpoint seemed ridiculous in light of the Christian way Father Dilshan and his parishioners responded. They had merely tried their best to clean up the mess and got on with their worship. I realized that they were driven by a different way of viewing the world—not by fear but rather a desire not to see God’s name defamed.
Maybe there was a more significant lesson here for the church, I wondered. For in any renewal, God’s name is glorified. Curses get turned into blessings.
PAINTING THE SECULAR CANVAS BLANK
After an afternoon’s work, the graffiti was gone. In its place a blank wall, but also a blank canvas, covered with fresh paint and fresh possibilities. God had deposited something powerful in me, reframing the challenge before the church in the West.
As cultural Christianity washes away, a blank canvas is appearing, with the possibility of a new story being written upon it. What seemed like a crisis, when reframed through the eyes of the Spirit, was an incredible opportunity. Reframed from a lens of defeat to one of potential. God just had to stop me and interrupt my frantic and worried pattern.
“What if this secular moment in our culture is only a crisis if we ignore God’s calls for renewal?”
In the face of this cultural challenge, our programs, our smarts, our resources, our money, our communications, our skills, our education are not going to cut it anymore. Much of the Western church is operating on the kinetic forward motion of previous moves of God, lounging on a platform built by the service and ministry of passed and passing generations.
However, the fuel tank is approaching empty.
What if this secular moment in our culture is only a crisis if we ignore God’s calls for renewal? What if we reframe this as brilliantly good news?
God always has His people where He wants His people. With nothing to turn to but Him. It is in this place of weakness that His power thunders forth.
Do we dare believe that He can do this again in the West?
Excerpted from Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of our Post-Christian Culture by Mark Sayers (©2019). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.
Mark Sayers is the Senior Pastor of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of a number of books and is particularly interested in the intersection of faith and culture. Mark is married to Trudi, and they have a daughter, Grace, and twin boys Billy and Hudson. Learn more at his website.