“Brokenness, disunity, and hatred are evident all over the planet. The world needs the witness Belhar calls the church to live out in the world. The church’s primary responsibility is to love God so fully that God’s saving presence shines through her like light in the midst of darkness. The church then becomes a beacon of hope, a lighthouse on the shore of a storm-tossed sea. By confessing, internalizing, and living out the principles of Belhar in her own experience, the church positions herself to become what Henri Nouwen calls, ‘a wounded healer.'”
Mark Lomax
Lenten Reflections on the Confession of Belhar
Christ is risen! Christ’s proclamation that God loves us and Christ’s call to love God and one another provide words of hope in this broken and fearful world.
This Lenten season have used a new resource to explore the Belhar Confession: Lenten Reflections on the Confession of Belhar, edited by Kerri N. Allen and Donald K. McKim. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in which I serve as a teaching elder (pastor), added the Confession of Belhar to our Book of Confessions in 2016. This confession came from the Dutch Reformed Mission Church during its historic struggle against apartheid in South Africa. I am grateful to Kerri and Donald and all the authors.
See you along the Trail.
“The church is not gilded sanctuaries, stained glass windows, padded pews, cushy carpets, table, and font. The church is people from every nation, culture, and ethnicity who (1) call on and believe in God through Christ; (2) are consequently filled with God’s Spirit and led by God’s word to light candles in the shadows of life; (3) live among and act in unity with people who’ve been abandoned, pushed to the margins of society, and disenfranchised; and (4) advocate for justice on the steps of the courthouse or the statehouse, serving the present age in ways that reconcile disparate peoples and groups.”
“The Belhar pushes the church, as she confesses, to be present in the lives of others beyond formal gatherings and policy-making engagements. Belhar calls the church to come to know itself, to actually love the neighbor, and set captives free.”
“The Gospel says we are to care enough about the welfare of others to teach and tell them all that Christ has taught and continues to tell us. The Belhar insists that we be the church by ‘living in a new obedience which can open new possibilities of life for society and the world.’ Together the gospel and Belhar pull off the comfortable covers of quietism and push us to engage one another in the interest of attaining peace and justice together.”
“Belhar constrains us to say out loud to God and the faithful how we have been complicit through our unwillingness to speak and act, even as we witness injustice in the public square.”
Along the Graybeard Trail 