Living in community with your team on the Race is a lot like being in a marriage. Not that I speak from personal experience (so please correct me if I’m wrong), but I believe you’re forced into situations where successful navigation requires a more intimate understanding of each other without already having enough of that understanding to begin with. To thrive in a marriage relationship, you’re compelled to have more faith than there is a foundation, to keep more hope than there is a reason, and to show more love than there is a history. And to do all of that – to have faith, hope, and love beyond what you’re given – requires a commitment.
At a squad retreat this past weekend, the word that I received for my World Race community was “unveiled”. According to God’s design, the relationship we have with our boyfriends or girlfriends before marriage are meant to be veiled to an extent. We aren’t supposed to see and experience the other person entirely, whether that is physically, spiritually, or emotionally. A non-marital relationship lacks the marital commitment that makes the complete giving of the entirety of who you were, who you are, and who you will be to another person a safe act. Therefore at a wedding, before the groom unveils his bride, the couple recites their vows. They promise to stay with each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, and in sickness and in health as long as they both shall live. He declares that no matter what was, is, or will become of the woman behind that veil, he will commit to her. She declares that no matter what was, is, or will become of the man beyond that veil, she will commit to him. So when the groom takes the veil off his bride, it symbolizes a shift in this relationship because of that commitment. Their commitment to each other gives the groom the right to take the veil off of his bride, and for them to see each other face to face, unveiled, because they have first promised to never forsake each other.
Christ has already made this commitment to His Bride, the Church, and our problems come in when we forget that. We become scared to live unveiled in relationship with Him and with one another because we stop believing and living in the commitment He made to us. We hide behind our sins, and sin even more behind the hidden. Perfect love casts out all fear, and we forget to thrive in the perfect love poured out on us. Being unveiled when we don’t put our faith in the commitment of Christ is incredibly painful, which is why we shirk away and refuse to be vulnerable. We fail to confess our sins, and stop giving and seeking forgiveness from others. Even when we do put our faith in His commitment, it’s still painful to do these things because of our sinful nature. A.W. Tozer writes, “Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made of can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free.” It is ever necessary for the sake of our sanctification to have our Beloved gaze upon us, and it is in relationship and spiritual experience with Him that we can step into our unveiled identity. It is His gaze that sets us free. It is His gaze that reminds us of His love for us, and His commitment to us. It is His gaze that reassures us that it’s okay to be unveiled because He knows who we were, who we are, and who we will be. He knows all of us, and He loves us. He has chosen us, covered us in His blood of redemption, and He will never forsake us.
So how does this all relate to living in community? Remembering that God loves us and has committed to love His Church, makes it easier to be secure in our unveiled relationship with Him. We can look into the dark areas of our hearts, examine selfish desires, and expose sin not only before God, before His Church. If we are secure in this vertical relationship and our identity as His beloved Bride, we can thrive in our horizontal relationships and be unveiled before our brothers and sisters. Because of Jesus’ commitment to us all individually, we can be thrust into stressful ministry and living situations collectively and successfully navigate them. It is His relationship with us and commitment to love, sanctify, and never forsake us that gives us the ability to have more faith than there is a foundation, to keep more hope than there is a reason, and to show more love than there is a history. So before Jesus ascends in Matthew 28:19-20, he says to His disciples in the voice of our Master, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” But Jesus ends in the voice of our beloved Bridegroom, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
A friend of mine from college (if you’re reading this, shoutout to Diane Lee!) once challenged my fellowship with these words that I hope also challenge you: “God has torn the veil. Why are you still putting it up?”
