Liturgy: My Life is a Mess

What is the King’s Liturgy? King’s Liturgy defines our experience together as a Christian community. It outlines the rhythms we celebrate with the Church at large: Scripture readings, Sabbath habits, and celebration of Holy Days and historical events.

This Week’s Lectionary Readings
Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
Psalm 121

This week’s liturgy is contributed by Eric Bennett, Vice President for Student Development:

My life is a mess.

I want to be a godly man—yet when I look at my life, what I see mostly is a broken, irregular path littered with mistakes and failure. Most of my days are hopelessly tangled in a web of distractions. I am the Vice President for Student Development, responsible in part for Christian formation at The King’s College, and yet the best I can do is a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following of Jesus. 

The liturgy this week reminds me that Jesus loves me no matter what. However messy I may be, he just keeps on loving me. He loves me when I don’t want him to love me. He loves me when I don’t act like a Christian. He loves me when my Life is a mess.

In the Second World War, a group of soldiers fought in the countryside of France. During one of the battles, an American soldier was killed. His comrades didn’t want to leave the body on the battlefield and decided to give him a Christian burial. They remembered a church a few miles behind the front lines whose grounds included a small cemetery surrounded by a white fence. After receiving permission to take their friend’s body to the cemetery, they set out for the church. 

“Our friend was killed in battle,” they said to the old priest who opened the door, “and we want to give him a church burial.”

“I’m sorry,” the priest replied in broken English, “but I can bury only those of the same faith here. But, you may bury him outside the fence.”

Exhausted, the soldiers dig a grave and bury their friend outside the fence. The next morning, the entire unit was ordered to move on, so the group raced back to the church for one final goodbye to their friend. When they arrived, they couldn’t find the gravesite. Tired and confused, they knocked on the door of the church and ask the priest if he knew where they had buried there friend. A grin flashed across the priest’s face. 

“After you left last night, I couldn’t sleep. So, I went outside and I moved the fence.”

While life is complicated and our schedules hectic, my prayer this week is that you will remember that Jesus loves you and that He did more than move the fence – He tore it down.