I successfully avoided golf courses for 43 years.
I have this character flaw where I hate being bad at things.
This is real life.
If I don’t think I can master something, or at least not embarrass myself, I avoid it completely.
And, friends, I was pretty confident I wouldn’t be able to master golf and that it would master me if I bothered to step foot on one of its courses.
The problem, though, is that my husband enjoys golf–he has the clubs, shoes, clothes, hats, and gloves, and for the first several years of our relationship, he put his love for golf on hold because I was very anti-golf.
I don’t do pretentious well, the golf skirts and polos aren’t my style, and have I already mentioned I don’t like things I’m not good at?
I’m not sure what changed my mind–the challenge maybe? But, I found myself on the golf course with women’s clubs (that ended up being kids’ clubs, but that’s a story for another day) from Goodwill in my navy chino shorts, cream tank top, and running shoes. Even though I looked the part, I still felt like an outsider. Despite my best efforts to meld into the role of bougie golfer, I couldn’t make myself fit the country club persona.
As the seasoned country club-esque golfers in their fancy name-brand golf clothes with golf clubs that surely didn’t come from Goodwill zipped around us in their golf carts, I continued to feel even more like I didn’t belong.
I’m not a “country club” kind of human; I’m more of the dive bar and dirt track kind of human, and, just to be clear–I’m good with that! Being thrust into a world of country clubbers left me feeling a little weary and definitely out of my element.
I can’t help but think that’s exactly how way too many people feel when they’re brave enough to walk through the doors of so many churches in America today.
And if you’re in this space today because you are a survivor of church hurt, spiritual abuse, and/or religious trauma, I know in my soul you’ve felt this way too.
When I think back to the church of my youth, there were more similarities to a country club than there were the teachings of Christ:
We had to dress a certain way.
We weren’t respected if we weren’t members.
We had no say if we didn’t give our money.
The board was a bunch of old white men.
We were expected to attend a certain amount of functions.
There was a certain type of language expected.
Bad behavior was swept under the rug.
A certain set of standards had to be met to remain in the fold.
If this was your experience too, or maybe this is your experience now, I encourage you to pick up your bible (or open the app) and take the time to read Luke without that lens. What I’m learning through Luke’s recollections is that none of those things on that list mirror what Jesus did or expected during his time on earth.
Jesus didn’t model a country club mentality; he modeled an action-oriented servant mentality.
Jesus’s First Message
Just a brief recap of what we know about Jesus’s early life:
Born in Bethlehem
Raised in Nazareth
Separated from his parents for 3 days when he was 12
Baptized by John
Began his ministry at 30
Led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tested
Quoted scripture back to his tester in the wilderness
Those things happen in the first 3 ½ chapters of Luke, and then these verses immediately follow:
Then Jesus, armed with the Holy Spirit’s power, returned to Galilee, and his fame spread throughout the region. He taught in the synagogues and they glorified him. (Luke 4:14-15 TPT)
Luke doesn’t record Jesus’s words from his preaching in the synagogues in Galilee. He just tells us that Jesus’s fame spread throughout the region of Galilee, and he was glorified there. But Luke does give us the details of what happens when Jesus returns to the town he grew up in–Nazareth.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, he went into the synagogue, as he always did on the Sabbath. When Jesus came to the front to read the Scriptures, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found where it is written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and he has anointed me to be hope for the poor, healing for the brokenhearted, and new eyes for the blind, and to preach to prisoners, ‘You are set free!’ I have come to share the message of Jubilee, for the time of God’s great acceptance has begun.”
After he read this he rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. Everyone stared at Jesus, wondering what he was about to say. Then he added, “Today, these Scriptures came true in front of you.”
Much like our sermons today, it was customary for scripture to be read first and then expounded on. They just happened to read the scripture in Hebrew and then discuss them in Aramaic to make them applicable to their listeners. This scene with Jesus wouldn’t have seemed out of the ordinary for them. When Jesus is handed the scriptures, he chooses these passages out of Isaiah 58 and 61 that say:
The Spirit of God, the Master, is on me
because God anointed me.
He sent me to preach good news to the poor,
heal the heartbroken,
Announce freedom to all captives,
pardon all prisoners.
God sent me to announce the year of his grace—
a celebration of God’s destruction of our enemies—
and to comfort all who mourn…
And
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
His listeners would have been familiar with these scriptures, just as they would have been familiar with the coming of the Messiah. When he finishes reading these scriptures, he closes the scroll and announces he is the fulfillment of those scriptures, inferring that he is the Messiah they have been waiting for.
We tend to focus on that last statement where Jesus announces he is the Messiah, but when we ignore the first part of his message, we miss so much.
It isn’t just about Jesus being the Messiah; it’s also about:
Hope for the poor
Healing for the brokenhearted
Eyes for the Blind
Freedom for the prisoners
A time of celebration for God’s acceptance
Just to put this into perspective: Jesus walks into his hometown to the people he had known his entire life to deliver his first recorded sermon, and the message he gives them is that he has come to love on, heal, and give freedom to the least of these.
Mic drop.
And, they didn’t much appreciate it.
Action Instead of Lip Service
In my country-club-esque church, I was taught that Jesus’s words here were for the sake of fulfilling prophecy. For the record, I’m not arguing that point at all. Jesus was a fulfillment of prophecy.
How much, though, are we missing the big picture when we only read these words as the fulfillment of prophecy and not the call to action they were?
These are physical actions Jesus takes throughout the rest of his life:
Offering hope to the poor by preaching for us to take care of them
Healing the physically broken and brokenhearted
Giving the blind sight
But, there were also emotional needs he met and calls us to meet:
Offering HOPE to the poor
Meeting the needs of the grieving and brokenhearted
Offering a new perspective and hope to those blinded by so many other things
Giving freedom to those stuck in any sort of bondage
Celebrating the freedom Christ has provided for us
These are the things Jesus said in his very first recorded sermon, but they are also the things he DID throughout his ministry, and those are the actions he is calling us to today.
I have to be honest with you here–these are not the actions I saw in my church growing up, and when I look at that list of country club requirements, I have to wonder where Jesus was in them because I’ve searched, and I just don’t see him anywhere in there at all.
The poor didn’t find hope.
The brokenhearted weren’t healed.
The blind weren’t given sight.
The prisoners were kept in bondage.
Because they weren’t welcome there.
Mirroring what Jesus DID Do
Our faith communities don’t have to be country clubs. I’ll go so far as to say they shouldn’t be country clubs. Instead, we should be following the example of what Jesus did and:
Offering HOPE to the poor
Meeting the needs of the grieving and brokenhearted
Offering a new perspective and hope to those blinded by so many other things
Giving freedom to those stuck in any sort of bondage
Celebrating the freedom Christ has provided for us
For those of you who aren’t in a faith community, that’s okay. There are plenty of places you can serve and ways to be like Jesus and DO what he DID in your communities.
You don’t need a church to do these things.
BUT…
It’s funny for me to look back on my first golfing experience now. While it was slightly traumatizing, the game itself reeled me in. I have my own set of clubs now–from Dunhams instead of Goodwill (don’t judge), and we’ve found several golf courses for the everyday man around us where I don’t have to wear fancy golf skirts, shoes, or polos (even though I found some of those at Goodwill too! Ha!).
I hope my love for golf and hillbilly golf courses will be your experience with faith communities–even if you’ve had a terrible country club experience, I pray God will lead you to an authentic, Jesus-loving church that cares more about loving people and serving the least of these than they do about their own country club-esque status.
They’re out there.
I promise.
Reflections:
If you’re in a church, how would you describe their priorities?
How do you see your church doing these things Jesus talked about in his first sermon?
How can you do these things more in your own life and community?