Beautiful Broken Bridges
When a minister begins work in a new community, among the first things they should do is to reach out to other leaders in the community to introduce themselves. On the list should be the superintendent of schools and local principals, the chiefs of police and the fire department, the mayor, and whoever looks out for the interests of senior citizens and veterans. They should make a point of contacting other religious leaders in the area to offer support and learn about the spiritual issues facing the community.
These steps might feel bold or cheeky, but they are important for several reasons. First, ministry is as contextual a profession as can be. The role of the minister is to convene people and feed their spiritual needs so that each can live out a meaningful life in their neighborhoods and communities. The minister can’t support their congregation without understanding where those in it spend their days and live out their callings. Second, it’s easier to reach out to new people early in a minister’s appointment because they only need say, when asked the agenda for the meeting, “I’m new here.”
Third, and most importantly, outreach builds bridges, and bridges are what make community building possible. My colleague Sharon, Yale’s former University Chaplain, used to always say that you need to get to know people who, like you, care for your constituents before a crisis is upon you. That way, in an emergency that calls for all hands on-deck, colleagues can connect and collaborate rather than awkwardly introducing themselves while sharing a foxhole, bullets whizzing over their heads. Does that motivation, preparation for tough times, mean that those agenda-free conversations had an agenda after all? Perhaps. Spiritual work is still work.
Images in the news this week of a collapsing bridge took our nation’s collective breath away. I found myself watching the Key Bridge fall in a film loop online, unable to tear my eyes away. I watched it knowing that footage was capturing the last moments of the lives of construction workers who were unable to flee in time. I imagined the horror that must have gripped the sailors on the Dali, helpless as their vessel rained down destruction.
When we consider the different kinds of bridges on which humans have relied for millennia, architectural masterpieces some of them, perhaps the real wonder is that they don’t collapse more often. Communities isolated by mountains and rivers built bridges from rope and boards so separated people could find their way to each other. Later, sturdier bridges even made possible mammal migration that altered the evolution of species, which we know because of the different evolutionary paths traveled by the fauna of isolated lands like the Galapagos Islands.
Last weekend, I drove from my home in New Haven, CT to Brooklyn, NY to spend the weekend with a friend. Between our two cities I crossed over more than a dozen bridges, a couple of them high enough that they require tall fences and signs imploring the suicidal to get help rather than going over the side. Bridges that carry traffic are feats of engineering that boggle the mind when one thinks about it: how strong! How long! How high! But the day I was driving was rainy and windy, and I was too distracted to think much about the incredible feats I was traversing and taking for granted. Bridges might seem invincible in their grandiosity and scientific worthiness. They’re not.
Jesus told his disciples on many occasions that he wouldn’t be with them forever, but they either didn’t listen to him or didn’t believe him. He in fact told them a lot of things they didn’t believe. Simon Peter rebuked Jesus for telling his followers that he would come to be put to death, and Jesus called him Satan, saying “get thee behind me.” Weeks or months later, Jesus told Peter that Peter would pretend not even to know him when the heat was on. Peter didn’t believe that either.
Jesus: Prince of Peace. Jesus: the way, the truth, and the light. Jesus: the bridge? Yes, Jesus the bridge. Jesus connects humanity with God, our Creator, and in fact Jesus is unique in his position between humanity and the divine, a foot on each bank of the river. Jesus gives us a path on which to walk when we seek to connect with God and with each other, even across separations that were once impassable. Jesus is wondrous, miraculous, and beautiful; yet his bones could be broken, his flesh pierced, his hopes dashed, his body killed. He was both perfectly strong and entirely vulnerable, and this Good Friday we weep over that vulnerable part we recognize all too well.
Jesus is, like a bridge, there for us, whether we notice him or need him. Unlike bridges, Jesus’ there-ness cannot be taken away. We are wise to cultivate a relationship with him, like the newly appointed minister who connects with fellow servants of a communal context. Jesus’ availability to us isn’t predicated, however, on us doing collegial relationship — or anything else, for that matter — right.
When we build and tend to bridges, literal and metaphorical; and respect the bridges others have made for our use; we acknowledge that togetherness is God’s agenda. God sent Jesus among us that all may be one. Although we don’t always understand why, especially when people like Jesus’ own contemporaries are horribly disappointing, God wants us to reach out and partner with each other in doing God’s holy work. He calls us to collaborate — every day and when the chips are down — in building the Kingdom Jesus taught us about as he promised it to us.
