Stop Talking about Jesus

by a Mars Hill woman 

Pastor Mark,

Please stop talking about Jesus. Please stop talking about sin.

You keep ripping my little Christian family’s world to pieces and your teaching keeps bringing out secrets.

Through your teaching, God told me I needed to leave my home behind and follow him to Mars Hill. I was lonely and scared.

Through your teaching, my visiting sisters decided to come back and hear more.

Through your teaching, they were convicted.

So one at a time, they told us their secrets.

One of them is bulimic and cutting herself, and the other has been getting drunk and sleeping with her secret boyfriend we knew nothing about.

Our world is in pieces.

We have all been crying non-stop.

This pain is too much. Why did you have to talk about sin and Jesus?

Now they have confessed and we are all shattered.

We are all broken into little bits.

My Dad had to go to the ER because his heart was giving him problems from all the stress and grief.

I can’t stop bursting into tears.

We are so messed up. We are clinging to one another for dear life.

And now more than ever, we need to hear you talk about Jesus.

More than ever, we need to hear you preach the Bible and the gospel.

More than ever, we need to be reminded that the truth is that the Truth will indeed set us free.

There is a thank-you in this pain, but I don’t understand it because this all hurts so badly.

This Jesus from the Bible and alive today… he is the most painful and comforting person I have ever encountered.

You are still burning
The flame that is turning
My smoldering ash into a bird…

So when You break
My arms I’ll take hold of You
I know Your heart is a hand that takes hold of me

The hand that is breaking
Is the hand that is making
All the dead things in me grow
A gift of a holy loss
This burning out the dross

Why do You set out to break the one thing
The one thing that I have to give
It’s hard to believe that I could
That I should begin again

But I know You heart is a hand… 

-Sixpence None the Richer, Still Burning