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Here humans craft and share their personal, compelling, beautiful, sometimes difficult 17 minute story of when God got real in their life and how that experience changed them. Following their story, they consider with host Sarah Hollar how their experience continues to affect them in their relationships, their sense of self and their way in the world.
Music.
Hello, friends. Welcome to episode two of When God Got Real.
Thanks for giving us a listen.
Walking among us are people who were brought up in the church.
On Sundays, they were carted as children to a solemn space with rows all pointed
in the same direction and told, do not squirm.
They were held captive, not necessarily by their interest, but by parental mandate.
There, they learned something about God.
Some heard lessons of judgment. Some heard lessons of mercy.
Some heard both. How they made meaning of what they heard was not and is not universal.
Sometimes it takes a longer, more disruptive journey to discover the benefits
of an active up-in-your-business God over a theoretical one.
Here is my friend and colleague Matt's story of when privilege and assumptions
weren't enough And God got real.
Music.
It seems sort of strange to think about now, but I can actually remember the
moment God finally got real to me.
I grew up in church, so God was always around, always part of the conversation,
always present in a kind of default way.
I knew the language. I knew what a relationship with Jesus was supposed to mean.
I even felt God calling me into ministry.
Even when I got married, moved to Texas for seminary, and had two little girls,
God was more a concept than a real thing.
God was something I studied. God was a theological idea.
God was an option for explaining creation.
God was in my textbooks, in my papers, in my classroom discussions.
But God was not in my spirit, at least not in a tangible way.
God was not in my everyday life. Looking back, I say God was more of a hobby
and a distant one at that.
At that time, I didn't even realize how disconnected I was. Why would I?
I had privilege on my side. As a young, straight, cisgender male who was married
with kids and pursuing a respected career path, I didn't need God to be real.
The gaps in life were already filled in. I had no idea that I was skating by
on ease and assumption, and then life happened.
I graduated seminary in December of 2007 with two daughters under the age of two.
We had to sell a car just to Ford to move back to North Carolina.
Our little family of four landed in a living situation that was,
to put it nicely, far from ideal.
And suddenly, God felt really, really far away.
By February 2008, I had no job prospects. We were living in a cramped space.
My wife was working nights at a hospital. Our girls weren't thriving.
And by that September, we were divorced. I was living with my parents.
The economy was tanking. And churches, especially Baptist ones,
weren't hiring. and they certainly weren't hiring someone who had just gotten divorced.
The conversations with churches went something like this.
Wow, you look really great on paper, but we just don't think this is going to work out.
I was somehow stained or damaged goods.
And then a glimmer of hope. A short-term job at a more progressive church opened
up. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could actually be myself.
Oddly enough, it was during that time in Baptist Seminary that I was introduced
to the Book of Common Prayer, and it had quietly started to bring God a little closer.
God still didn't feel personal yet, but God wasn't quite as distant either.
One part of this newly found job involved regular conversations with the church's leadership team.
And when my time there was wrapping up, someone told me, you'd be a great fit
for the Episcopal Church.
I sort of laughed it off and that was that. The job ended.
At that point, I was just trying to survive.
Ministry felt like a dead end. I was overqualified for most secular jobs and
not the right fit for others.
This wasn't the dream. I wasn't supposed to be aimlessly scrolling Craigslist for work.
I was supposed to be helping people discover Jesus.
The thing is, I knew the historical Jesus, but I didn't know my Jesus.
I wasn't ready for ministry, and I wasn't ready to admit any of this to myself.
Then one day, there it was, St.
Mark's Episcopal Church, listed completely in the wrong place on Craigslist,
and that conversation from my earlier Baptist church popped into mind.
You'd be a great fit for the Episcopal Church.
So I thought to myself, what do I have to lose?
And we had an interview scheduled within the hour. That was December of 2009,
and by January 2010, I had fallen literally and spiritually into a job at St.
Mark's, and God got real.
I remember walking away from that first interview conversation thinking two things.
One, you and I both shared a love of shoes, and more importantly,
you showed me something no one else had, compassion and grace.
I'd been searching for nearly two years. I'd spoken to churches,
filled out applications, tried everything, and not once had someone looked me
in the eye and offered grace, myself included.
I didn't know how to offer myself grace or compassion. I'd never had to learn
because, again, my privilege had always insulated me from needing to.
This isn't a knock on the tradition I came from, but grace and compassion,
especially loving people like Jesus loved, were understood and practiced differently there.
The love you and St. Mark's extended to me wasn't theoretical.
It was real. Over the nearly 11 years I spent at St.
Mark's, God got real to me over and over again.
God was real in big ways, in small ways, in quiet ways.
And I think that once God became real to me, I was finally able to be real to others.
So how do you know when God is real?
I wish I had a formula or a checklist, a test you could take that says,
yep, God is real for me, but I don't think it works like that.
All I can say is, you'll know.
When God is real, things shift. You start to see God in places you never expected.
I remember sitting in a movie theater many years ago with my family,
watching Toy Story 3, and suddenly this scene hit me like a sacrament.
It felt like baptism, and before I could stop myself, I said it out loud right
there in the theater. This is baptism.
Other times I've been in conversations where words came out of my mouth that
I didn't plan, things I had never thought before.
And I knew in that moment the Spirit was present, that God was moving, that God was real.
Now, I can't go 10 or 15 minutes without being reminded that God is real and
present and God wants to engage with me.
And if that's true for me, it has to be true for others too.
Being a priest doesn't give me exclusive access to God's realness.
Wearing a collar doesn't make God more present to me than anyone else.
It does shape how I understand God's love, but that love, that realness, it's for everyone.
One of the most beautiful and honestly addicting parts of being a priest is
walking with people in the moments when God becomes real to them.
Being present for those moments never gets old. So yeah, God got real to me.
And I believe deep down that God is trying to get real for so many others.
But here's the hard part. God set up a system that depends on us.
God is always real, always present. But God relies on humanity to show that realness to each other.
And we don't always get it right. But sometimes, miraculously, we do.
St. Mark's got it right with me. You got it right with me.
And now I just hope I can get it right with someone else.
And I believe that is one thing I am called to do, to remember that God is real
and help others discover that God is real in their own way and in their own time.
The journey is the destination.
It reminds us that for God to be real, we must be present in the moment.
We must be where our feet are, not focused on what may come or worrying about what has come.
A dear friend of mine put it this way, Live and live well. Breathe.
Breathe in and breathe deeply. Be present. Do not be past. Do not be future.
Be now. On a crystal clear, breezy, 70-degree day, roll down the windows and feel.
Feel the wind against your skin.
Feel the warmth of the sun. If you run, then allow those first few breaths on
a cool autumn day to freeze your lungs.
And do not be alarmed. Be alive.
Get knee-deep in a novel and lose track of time. If you bike, pedal hard.
And if you crash, then crash well.
Feel the satisfaction of a job well done, a paper well written,
a project thoroughly completed, a play well performed.
If you must wipe the snot from your three-year-old's nose, don't be disgusted
if the Kleenex didn't catch it all, because soon he'll be wiping his own nose.
If you've recently experienced loss, then grieve and grieve well.
At the table with friends and family, laugh.
If you're eating and laughing at the same time, then you might as well laugh
until you puke. And if you eat, then smell.
The aromas are not impediments to your day.
Steak on the grill. Coffee beans freshly ground. Cookies in the oven. And taste.
Taste every ounce of flavor. Taste every ounce of friendship.
Taste every ounce of life. Because life is most certainly a gift.
And God is most certainly real.
Music.
Thank you.
Matt, thank you for your story.
It's rich and it's messy. And
I hear good news in it because the positive outcome wasn't a one and done.
It seems as if it initiated a change in your understanding of God.
It seems that change continues to inform how you move in the world,
how you seek the best version of yourself, and how you look for that version in others.
You spoke of grace. God got real for you when God aligned circumstances to affirm
you when you were not living out of your best self,
when you felt disheartened and lost?
Is that God's grace? How do you define and experience the grace of God?
Well, to put it simply, yes. For me, that is God's grace, or at least that's
how I understand and God's grace for me.
And it's also how I try to offer grace to others.
We all have our stuff. We all have our shortcomings, our good and our bad and our ugly.
But God created us exactly how God wanted us to be.
We don't need to improve ourselves or do anything to make God love us more.
So God made us perfect in his image, just as we are here today now.
And so if God can look past my shortcomings and say, it's okay, it's okay.
I love you and you are mine just the way you are.
And that's the grace that God offers.
Then hopefully that's also the grace that I can offer to someone else,
because that was the grace that was offered to me in my story to be able to
say all that's okay it's it was hard and it was messy but we still love you
and we still acknowledge that you are made in the image and likeness of god
um so yeah i think i think that's,
that's at least where my understanding my definition of grace begins.
Well, when I was thinking about asking you this question, I was also thinking
about how I see the grace of God.
And I was thinking that it's the practical and tangible actions,
the interventions that say, you are mine.
I know you and I love you and I do not, I will not define you by your shortcomings or your messes.
I know them. I know all of them. I'm not a fan of them.
But you are more than your flaws and uncertainties, and I do not abandon you to them.
I am in the health that allows you to recover and begin again.
And that offer of help to begin again, that's good stuff.
That's really good stuff. And I think that for today especially is really good stuff.
If we can, when we find ourselves in a situation, whether it's on social media
or in a conversation or whatever, if we can just pause and remember that good stuff.
Then I think it changes our entire interaction with the people across from us,
whether we agree with them or
not, or just how we view, see anyone or anything or the creation itself.
If we'll just take a minute and pause and realize that we have been given grace
and we are called to offer grace to others, the whole world changes.
And that's what makes it so good. Good news, good news.
In your story, you talk about how you grew up in a tradition where making personal
testimony about God moving in your life was normalized and it was expected.
In the world outside that tradition, why and when do you decide to share something
this personal, this intimate, and something that's somewhat elusive?
It's true that in my Baptist world, this idea of personal testimony is something
that is expected and is normalized.
But recently I've been wondering why can't it be expected and normalized in
an Episcopal way in this Episcopal church now I'm not saying it would look or feel the same way,
but shouldn't we all be able to articulate a moment if not the moment if we
say God is real when God is present to us, to be able to say,
I know God is real because, and I think that might be,
what the church, what the people are being called to do today to help bring
about that good news of the grace that we just spoke about, to be able to say,
I can identify God here in this moment of my life, and it was really good to be able to say,
this is God in my life, and I own this moment.
And if it's such a good thing, why not share that?
And I think for me, the reason I am more aware and more able to share this is
because I'm understanding more and more that the thing that I love about people are the stories.
When you hear the story.
You can't unhear it. You can't unlearn it. You can't easily disconnect yourself from that person.
And I believe with all that I am deep in my bones that we are meant to be in
community. That's when people thrive.
And the quickest, easiest way to be in community is the sharing of stories.
And if I can open myself up and be a little vulnerable to somebody to where
we're able to engage in community, then why wouldn't I do that?
Why wouldn't I seek out those rich, deep community moments with friends and
family or even people that I don't know,
whether it's sitting on an airplane, when you're dressed in a collar and all
black and you sit on an airplane, people, they're either going to do one of two things.
They're going to turn around and act like you don't exist, or they're going to just unload.
And so I love engaging with stories with people because that's where that goodness comes out.
That's when my story might find an intersection with their story or their story
might have an intersection with God that they don't even know about yet.
And when that discovery happens, it's this sense of awe and wonder and amazement, and it's so good.
Well, that pretty much answers the question I was going to ask next with,
why did you say yes to sharing your story here?
And how is the experience of remembering it, recording it, letting it go out in the world?
How is just the experience of that been for you?
This was so good.
It's not like I didn't know my story,
but looking back, it was such a good reminder to see where I had been,
to see, to remember what it was like to journey through the good,
the bad, and the ugly, and then to come out on the other side of it and to say,
I wouldn't trade any of that.
Now on this side of it for anything because that's
that my our experiences make us who we are
they they form us and they shape us to be the person that god wants us to be
um and and looking back sharing this was a reminder of of how much god really
does love me um and how real god really is to me.
And that's not to say that, you know, God is always right next to me all the time, everywhere.
I mean, I think people have this understanding that clergy always have it together.
They're always, I mean, you know this, they're always people of deep faith and
they know the answers and they have this rich spiritual life.
And that's true, but it's not always true.
I'm I'm human, just as human as the next person.
And it was helpful to see the journey through the desert when it was dry and
when it was not easy to be on this end and say, well, if I can get through that,
if God can carry me through that.
There's not a whole lot left that God's not going to be able to carry me through
and sustain me and allow me to be who I am in God's creation.
That's one of the great benefits
of claiming naming when
god got real because it does remind you oh
i wasn't abandoned i won't be abandoned and i can start looking for that expecting
that not despairing because god god will be with me and i know that to my core
yeah yeah yeah well Well, my friend, thank you.
Thank you for your yes. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your story.
Just thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you, listeners and subscribers.
Thank you for your time, attention, and ponderings.
I invite your comments and reviews.
I also invite you to share your story of when God got real. Send them along
to sarah at whengodgotreal.com.
Until next time, breathe and be well.
Music.