One of my closest friends is the Reverend Emily Knight. She’s in my head today because she was named this morning as the District Committee on Ministry gathered because of her formative work as the newly named chair of our North East District counterparts.
It was lovely to be so close for a while when we were both in Jacksonville, but I’ve known her for many years. See, we met in seminary; she annoyed me immediately.
We are very different people. She is an extrovert and exudes excitement. I laugh every time at her occasional Sunday afternoon voicemails, thrilled and energized by the worship experience, which she shares and then laments that I must be sleeping. I always am, often just as thrilled by the worship experience, but responding instead with a nap.
She cares deeply and immediately about people. She’s a Linda (I categorize people based on Bob’s Burgers characters), energetic, passionate, quirky, and probably never happier than when she’s celebrating and encouraging the passions of another. These are things that make me nervous when they get pointed at me.
But here’s the thing: it’s real. She means it. And that changes everything.
One day at Duke we were in a small group discussing some grand theological subject including lambs and sheep and the implications of Jesus and sacrifice, and I said something about these two different animals and what the distinction could be. Only it turns out, as you probably know, as apparently just about everyone else knows, that lambs are baby sheep.
Emily stopped the conversation, and in unbelieving phrases interrupted by laughter, educated me.
By then she no longer annoyed me – or at least a whole lot less – and was a dear friend, journeying together through the educational and emotional experience of seminary. So while I was embarrassed at learning a kindergarten fact as a graduate student, I also found myself captive by her joy. It wasn’t at my expense, and we still laugh about it today.
So, when I was having a rough time a little while back and we found ourselves at the same meeting, not only did she notice, she sought me out. And though I wasn’t ready to share, at one moment as we sat with one another, she drew this ridiculous, fat, smiling sheep on my notes. It made me smile then, and again as I remember it now. And all I could think about was the gift I have in her, in friendship, in the acts of grace she continues to live out for me.
The gifts we receive from one another don’t only come from people that are like us, that we always agree with, or that we even understand. The diversity of personality, the myriad of gifts is not just an intentional creation, scripture tell us, but is how Christian communities are formed and operate. And that goes for friendships, small groups, congregations… God is at work in our diversity, forming us and fashioning us into something more, together.
Emily makes me a better person, a better pastor. I hope every now and then I do the same for her. It reminds me that the diversity of personalities and gifts and passions and hopes and dreams alongside challenges and fears and disappointments are conjoined into this Body of Christ that is First Bonita. That we recognize diversity as the way God works, and that we are better when we celebrate the genuine selves of one another and allow them to be at work in us. Thanks be to God.
Rev. Ben Richards
