No more workarounds

 

“A workaround is a bypass of a recognized problem or limitation in a system or policy. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed.”

For example at St James a combination of I-phones, lap tops and tablets in various locations and combinations patch together a decent enough online service.  However, workarounds are never a long term answer and the time is coming to invest in some proper technology and training that will allow us to have a far more straightforward solution that will also deliver the best possible quality of service.

We can try to find work arounds in our ethical and moral lives too. We try to earn God’s forgiveness so our Christian faith becomes a religion of sin management. Or we try to run our lives or our church with our agenda and resources, unwilling to give up control.  Or we find workarounds in difficult relationships when a direct honest conversation and perhaps confession is needed. 

Good Friday is when we remember the time for workarounds is over.  No more complex sacrificial system or strict law keeping, no more religious pride or moralising.   The permanent solution is usually a costly one, but the temporary fixes while seemingly easier and cheaper in the long term are far more costly.  So it is with Christ’s death for us on the cross.

He also calls to us to avoid workarounds by taking up our own cross and following him.   This is a call to sacrificially invest our lives in service to others whilst at the same time letting go of outcomes.   Giving and giving and giving and trusting the fruit to God. These words from Oscar Romero speak into this reality of a Christian discipleship which avoids workarounds.

Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador was shot dead on 24th March 1980, while conducting the Mass. He wrote, “Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No sermon says all that should be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. That is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted knowing they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that affects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the Master Builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.”