Vulnerability:
The way of the Kingdom​

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Some years ago, I led a mission in a high school. One of the teachers was a very dramatic, wonderful woman who expected a huge amount from the children. Most of the children were terrified of her. 

One day there was a message for me to go to the deputy head’s office. When I arrived, the teacher was there with the deputy head and a very distressed young man called Toby. Toby was about 15 and had been caught in the act of throwing paint over the teacher’s car. The deputy head was reading the riot act. Eventually the teacher stood up and the boy looked really worried. She sat down next to him and began to share her story. 

She had been brought up in care because of her mother’s drug problem. Her father had been absent for many years and didn’t want to know about his daughter. Toby sat there with his mouth open as she shared with him her experience of having had a teacher at school who believed in her. That teacher had gone out of her way to help our teacher deal with her brokenness. She looked at Toby and said, “If you let me, I’d like to do the same for you.” Her willingness to share her vulnerability and her brokenness was, I hope, a catalyst for Toby to turn his life around. 

Vulnerability is not a popular word in today’s society. Yet it’s part of the human condition. The way of the kingdom is about discovery and mystery and being led into the depths of our vulnerable self. When that happens, we begin to realise that the Church was never meant to be a stale, bureaucratic institution obsessed with numbers, property, rules and regulations. 

Instead, because of vulnerability we become a spirit-led Church that talks more about mercy than sin, a Church that isn’t locked into the past, but sees the potential of what it can become, a Church in which vulnerability, openness and journeying are key to understanding. 

Vulnerability always compels us beyond ourselves. Whenever we see real pain, most people find a depth of compassion within that causes them to act for the one who is in need. When we reach out to the broken and the needy, we are reaching out to the God who suffers in our midst. 

Through the doors of our centre come many suffering people. We meet those seeking asylum, those who have no language to communicate their need other than the pain in their eyes. We meet those caught in addictions and we meet the lonely, the frightened, the poverty-stricken. Vulnerability pushes us beyond the safe boundaries we create for ourselves into ministry. 

Usually, it’s only when we are vulnerable that God can reveal to us His tenderness and desire to be in an intimate, vulnerable relationship with us. We are drawn into the mystery because of vulnerability. 

This kingdom, which we are called to build within ourselves and within the world, is a kingdom that is marked by a vulnerability always accompanied by grace, and grace will ultimately work its miracle as the kingdom is born within us and among us. So this Lent, get in touch with your vulnerability and build the Kingdom of God. 

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