Shawn Casselberry's Blog
smiles and cries. / Apr 17, 01:55 PM
There’s a line in the movie Training Day where the rookie narcotics detective Jake Hoyt claims he has the streets figured out. He says it’s all about smiles and cries. He goes on and says, “You gotta control your smiles and cries, because that’s all you have and nobody can take that away from you.” In his view, to survive the streets you have to be tough and control your emotions so nobody can hurt you. But as followers of Jesus in the city, we do not bury our emotions in order to survive, we embrace them in order to fully live.
During a training with Mary Nelson from Bethel New Life, Inc., she told us that ministry in the city is all about the agony and the ecstasy. We all knew what she meant. One minute you are celebrating a triumphant moment and the next minute you are mourning a tragedy. We see men and women coming off the streets finding freedom in Christ and others that return to the streets bound to their old addictions. We see teens growing stronger in their faith and becoming leaders in the community and at the same time see other teens disengage from school and get involved in gangs (We have had twenty-three student homicides this year alone). We see neighbors organizing to resist the negative forces that threaten the well-being of their neighborhoods and others that fatalistically give up all hope for change. It’s agony and it’s ecstasy. It’s smiles and cries.
Our ministry is sharing in the laughter and the tears of our neighbors. In this way, we live the cross and the resurrection daily. This is hard to quantify in an annual report. Our ministry is not an evangelistic technique or tool, it is sharing all of our lives with people. This means that the agonies and tragedies are just as significant as the ecstasies and triumphs. Mourning with a mom who lost her son is just as sacred as celebrating when a neighbor finds a job. Isn’t this what Paul’s getting at when he urges the Corinthians to be Christ’s Body. “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” Being the church is about suffering and rejoicing with each other, sharing the agonies and the ecstasies. It’s all about smiles and cries.
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