So, therefore, none of you can become my disciples if you do not give up all of your possessions.
{Gospel reading for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, Ordinary Time, Luke 14:25-33)
Angels Everywhere {into the story}
I’m beginning a new practice (at least for a bit), interacting with one of the lectionary texts for the upcoming Sunday. I’d like to ruminate on them ahead of time, and I thought you might want to join me. Not sure exactly how regular this will be, but we will see. If you are unfamiliar with the lectionary, it is a way for many Christians across the world to read shared texts and hear together our shared gospel story. So, into the story…
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Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people show hospitality to angels without knowing it.
{Epistle reading for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, Ordinary Time, Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16}
As a child, this was one of the Scripture passages that set our imaginations awhirl. Would I bump into an angel at the mall? Might I catch a mischievous wink from a cherubim on the corner?
This possibility of encountering divine creatures transformed the ordinary into the magical. Anything could happen. You could run into an angel absolutely anywhere.
The text seems to suppose that running across angels is humdrum. These angels are not met amid flaming bushes or a choir of heavenly hosts. They are met over dinner, breaking of break, coffee perhaps. Hospitality.
If there was anything we sunday school kids knew about angels, it was that they were God’s messengers. When an angel was present, God was present. And God is everywhere, ours to see if we’ll live with open eyes. It’s a good reason to pay attention next time we’re having a conversation, no matter the person and no matter how unlikely the space. You never know who you’re chatting with. You never know what you’ll discover in the story you’re hearing – and in the story you’re telling.
I’m a Consumer Christian
The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself it is not hungry. {Simone Weil}
Give us this day our daily bread. {Jesus}
Much ink has been spilt (with good cause) resisting the soul-numbing prevalence of hyper-individualism, where we view God – and then in turn people and neighborhoods and natural resources – merely as raw material for the pursuit of our isolated whims. The gospel tells me that my comfort and the satisfaction of my every impulse is not the goal of the universe. Bummer.
In the church, we have created a cottage industry around denouncing consumerism, and I understand the revulsion to this spirit of our age. I too am frustrated to no end when we belittle the mystery and beauty of Christian community by our penchant for using churchy experiences with all their gizmos and “energy” the same way we down a can of Red Bull: guzzle, toss, grab another when wanted. Yum. I recently read that at some churches, you can now get your pastor delivered via hologram. Truly, I am at a loss for words.
I’m concerned, however, that the way we talk about all this sends the message that there is something wrong with our cravings and the hope to fill our unmet longings, something unseemly about our hunger. I’ve seen shame attached to the notion of someone coming to the church community without arriving ready to give. Jesus invited the weary people to come, to come and eat, come and drink, come and rest. To hear some of us, we only want the people who are ready to come and work, come and plug right in “doing mission.”
I once heard a young pastor on the speaking circuit say, with a swagger: “We aren’t here to meet your Christian needs. If you’re a Christian, we aren’t really here for you – we’re here to be on mission for those who don’t know God.” It came across brash. He sounded revolutionary, a bad-ass pastor. He prompted a lot of laughter. I wanted to cry.
A while back, during our Denver years, Miska and I were exhausted. Serving God had worn us out. A church up in the hills welcomed us in. We attended on Saturday nights. It was a peaceful space. We heard the Scriptures and prayed some prayers (or didn’t). We sang along with a few songs and soaked in the gospel. We didn’t sign up for any ministries or serve on any teams. We dropped checks in the offering plate, and we (usually) showed up on time for church. Other than that, not much. Oh, we did attend a small group. Twice.
We were consumers, and it saved my soul.
Jesus’ first miracle was wine at a wedding in Cana, an extravagant act intended for no good reason other than the peoples’ consumption and joy. The Psalmist describes our want for God in visceral terms: hunger, thirst, cravings. Jesus gave us a table with wine and bread as the retelling of the Great Story. At Jesus’ Table, all we do is come and receive; we gorge on grace. We do not come to Jesus to work. We come to rest. We come to allow grace to work on us. The Christian’s work is what happens when resting people find the free life of the Spirit flowing among them. Work is what we do when the Kingdom has taken root and joyful obedience begins to sprout. But first, we rest. First, we consume.
The gospel never calls us to myopic self-centeredness. The kingdom of God moves and (re)creates and leads us to lay down our life and give ourselves away. But who can say exactly when – or how? The new creation I first encounter is God’s love that pours and pours and pours into my soul. And I must drink it in. I must consume it, a man desperate and starved with nothing much, for the moment, to give.
Words I’ve Heard
A few things I’ve read or heard this week that made me sad, made me laugh, made me want to be a better man:
//sad//
“This is it. This is when it all went away. The Anglican Communion is not going to make it.”
Diana Butler Bass on Episcopal Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s “fighting words” tossed toward the Archbishop of Canterbury and the wider Anglican world.
//laugh//
“Wow!! This is AWESOME!! You are the high king of the church and you get to run the slides!?”
Wyatt, trying to understand what it means for his dad to be a pastor (and confusing it with a certain Chronicles of Narnia character) but actually far more plussed about the revelation that his dad was tapped to run slides for an Evensong gathering at All Souls (our church).
“Dad, I’ve been thinking about it – and when we get to heaven, I think you’ll be able to drink and drive.”
For once, this wasn’t one of our boys (could have been though). After a discussion the night before on the dangers of alcohol, one of Wyatt and Seth’s friends said this (loudly, and among a large crowd of other parents) to his dad when he was picking him up from an event.
//want to be a better man//
“The truth’s not foolish.”
Colum McCann’s character Claire in Let the Great World Spin
“I gave them all the truth and none of the honesty.”
Colum McCann’s character Gloria in Let the Great World Spin
Things Far and Near
A litany from the gospel reading, Luke 10.25-37
The lawyer raises the question for us:
What must we do to truly live with God?
The Scriptures tell us to love God with all our heart
But my heart loves so many other things
Love God with all our soul
But I have so many competing desires
Love God with all our strength
But my energy and my passion is divided
Love God with all our mind
But my mind feels too powerful or too broken
to be a place of love
Love, not only God – but also our neighbor, even as we love ourselves
But who is our neighbor?
Our neighbor is whoever God has brought near to us.
Then we will love our God who has come near to us and our neighbor God has brought near to us
In this way, we will love our God
With all of our heart, our soul, our strength and our mind.
And then, people of God, we will truly live.
And a blessing in response to Ephesians 2:11-12
To all who have known what is to be far
Far from love
Far from hope
Far from life
Far from God
Jesus has come near to you
Jesus has brought you near to him
So live near. And free. And alive.
And go the far places in your world. And witness that Jesus is near.
Amen.
Drowning
Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God who came to save us from our sins?
I believe
Do you believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to bring you life and to bring you home into his kingdom?
I believe
Do you renounce Satan and his kingdom and all his evil works?
I do
And will you turn from your sins and obey Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit?
I will
Will you now lay your life down and be buried in God’s love?
I will
Last Sunday, Wyatt received baptism. One of the perks of being your boy’s pastor is that you get to participate front and center in these sacred moments. I was knee deep in the baptismal waters, my arm around his shoulders (and that’s where I hope to always be, wading into his water, standing next to him). With joy, I laid priestly hands on my son and said holy words, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Spirit, be buried in Jesus’ death…
Baptism is many things, but three things at least – and all three are about belonging. In our baptism, we declare that we belong to Jesus and to Jesus’ kingdom. In baptism, the church declares that we belong to the community, this family of faithful storytellers. And, most importantly, in baptism the Spirit declares that we belong to the Triune God. Baptism is really more about what God is doing than about what we are doing. God has marked us, come after us, loved us to death. And life.
Because this whole thing is a communal affair, the entire community renews our baptismal vows before the new vows are taken. In a way then, with each new baptism, it is as though we are being baptized anew. The last question of the vows, the words that are spoken just before we put a body under the waters, echoes for me today.
Will you now lay your life down and be buried in God’s love?
Will I?
The verbs in this question are passive. Will I lay down? Will I be buried? Will I surrender the illusion that I can pull my life together? Baptism is something I receive, not something I do. I don’t baptize myself; another baptizes me. I don’t finagle my way into the church; the community simply gives me a wide welcome. I didn’t snag a ticket into God’s kingdom with my spit-n-shine resume. God isn’t lucky to have me. God came and got me because God is kind and because this is what God does – God comes and rescues.
So this is the question my baptism asks me: Will I lay down and drown in love? Will I drown?
Will I hold my ground and guard my self-interests in my marriage – or will I drown?
Will I wallow in selfish guilt about what my poor fathering choices say about me, or will I surrender every shred of image and reputation and just love my boys, now, today? Will I protect myself – or will I drown?
Will I keep distance from those I’m sure to disappoint or those who I think will leave me lonely – or will I drown?
I choose to drown.
I surrender the image of the put together husband, father, writer, pastor, friend.
I choose to drown.
I am probably not as smart or brilliant or witty or insightful or artful as you are.
I choose to drown.
I will probably never write a bestseller.
I choose to drown.
I want to drown. Because I want to live.
What kind of drowning are you surrendering to?
To Live {why the church.5}
He felt…another kind of awake. {Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin}
Jesus is our shalom…creating within his body a new humanity, a new way of being human. {St. Paul}
In these bodies, we will love / In these bodies, we will die / And where you invest your love, you invest your life. {Mumford and Sons}
Perhaps the plainest way to say it is this: the church exists because Jesus rose from the dead.
Easter happened, and Easter is the prototype for all God’s intentions for the world. God did not raise Jesus into the spiritualized psyches of his followers. God did not raise Jesus by enshrining Jesus-ideals into an ethical philosophy for cultures to emulate. God raised Jesus’ rotting, blood-crusted flesh from a dark, musty cave. Dead Jesus lay in the tomb, but alive Jesus walked out.
So now, whenever we hear the prophets and the apostles speak of God’s cosmic project of New Creation, we know what they are talking about. Dead things coming back to life. Old things restored, new. Not ideals, but a reality. Physical. Present. Body, God’s Body.
The church is what happens when resurrection gets to work. Humans are communal creatures. I feel a bit silly pausing to make this obvious point, but… Without friendships, we are lonely. Without a love or a child or an intimate relationship, we are not whole. When we call someone a hermit, we aren’t passing a complement. We are hardwired for committed, intentional, sustained, I’m-with-you-even-when-I-don’t-like-you relationships. Against this, though, we all have horror stories and vast mounds of disappointment. Maybe we’ve given up. Maybe we’ve settled for something shallow or cheap, imitations. Maybe we’ve grown cynical – perhaps the most damaging turn of all.
But resurrection happened, and now we’re discovering what it means to be alive. In other words, we’re learning anew what it means to be truly human. And to be human means, at least in part, to live a physical, particular, embodied life within God’s physical, particular, embodied community, the church. If God were only trying to elevate disembodied souls into distant heaven, perhaps the church wouldn’t matter much (other than to organize, strategize and get this work done efficiently – but I think I’ve sufficiently run that horse into the ground). However, if God is reconstituting (resurrecting) the whole of his good and beautiful creation, well then, the church (the physical, embodied people of God) becomes ground zero.
Knowing this, we could never act as though the community of God is merely a means to something God is doing. Rather, the community of God rests at the heart of what God is doing. And God is doing a heck of a lot. God’s mission is to rescue and love and remake and welcome and forgive and embrace and basically overrun this whole sorry mess with the wonder of resurrection. The old Hebrew word works best: shalom. Wholeness. Well-being. Utter, comprehensive goodness.
This is God’s mission. Not ours. God is doing resurrection. And God will resurrect in a God-way, a Trinitarian way – forming a people who begin to live in Trinitarian love and begin to embody resurrection in the tangible spaces, the streets and dining room tables and nursing homes. It’s slow. It’s messy. Most days, it looks like an absolute disaster. But if relationship and communities, if each and every individual story, matters – then this is the only way.
Here’s the crux of why I need church. I need church because I’m selfish and cynical and proud and a shadow of my true self. I’ve lived among death for too long, and I want to live. I want to be a human alive, a human resurrected. And true humanity is physical, relational, with others, over the long haul. I need the church because Jesus rose from the dead, and I want to rise up from among the dead too. I want to learn “another kind of awake.”
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So, I’m not sure when I’ll return to this series. Might be done. However, I would love to interact to any questions this raises for you – especially if you are struggling with finding your life and place within a physical community, a church. Why do you struggle with this? What questions do you have? Why do you think that maybe it isn’t important? Email me (winn [at] winncollier.com) or post here. If it’s the sort of question I could interact with on the blog, I will. If it is more appropriate just for email dialogue, fine too.
[further why the church? posts:part one, two, three, four]
God’s Body {why the church.4}
The church is not an ideal to be striven for; she exists and they’re within her.
{Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest}
In retrospect, I can say that I joined the church out of basic need; I was becoming a Christian, and as the religion can’t be practiced alone, I needed to try to align myself with a community of faith. {Kathleen Norris}
Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing human witness and physical presence to the Jesus-inaugurated kingdom of God in this world. It is not the kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.
{Eugene Peterson}
We are tempted to think of the church primarily as a human affair, our human arrangement to try to get religious stuff done. We believe God wants us to follow certain principles and directives, that God wants us to make our world better – but it’s up to us to figure out how exactly to go about it. Church, in this paradigm, is the way we organize our religious activity for the greatest efficiency and broadest impact. God gives us the goal (sometimes articulated as getting to heaven or raising healthy families or transforming society), but the energy, the strategy, the humph — well, that’s all us. It makes sense then that when the church isn’t “working,” when it doesn’t seem efficient (and it rarely is) or productive, we should take our leave. We cancel our membership in the club and go look for another, more productive stratagem. Or we just give up, dog-tired and disillusioned.
However, the church is not what we are making of the world. The church is something God is making in the world. The church is God’s creation, not ours. The church is first an expression of what God is doing (and has been doing since In the beginning…). The church exists as this physical mystery crafted from the raw material, the timber and stone, of God’s people — those people whom God is “fitting in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.”(Eph 2:21)
And this imagery of God as a master craftsmen fashioning a strong, sturdy abode is pitch-perfect for how Scripture describes what God is up to in and among us. God does not meddle primarily in theories or abstractions. God’s core impulse is incarnation. God always goes physical. Christian faith is not ideals and principles and morals separated from the mortar and sinew of physicality and relationships. Christian faith is always embodied. This is why Paul would say, “we see [God’s people, the church] taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.” (Eph 2:22)
We see it. We touch it. We live in it, with others. We experience it. We love (and are loved) within it. We are frustrated by it. We hope for it to be more. We are surprised by the grace it offers. We find it clunky. We find it strange. And we know deep down that we are missing something true whenever we are distanced from it…And, in those distant spaces, we often sense a yearning within us to return home.
It almost sounds like, well, a family.
Family is about right. Paul uses precisely this picture to help us grasp a sense of the church’s essence (Eph 2:19). Scripture gives us multiple other images as well (one theologian counted ninety-six), all unique and varied, multi-faceted. However, what we will notice with almost every image is its physicality. It is something of substance, something tangible, something you can get your hands on, something you can live in or with. Something you see. The church is a city (Rev 21:2), a tribe/people (I Pet 2:9), fishermen (Mark 1:17), salt (Matt 5:13), branches on the tree (John 15:5), God’s farm (I Cor 3:9), God’s building (I Cor 3:9) and a letter (2 Cor 3:2-3), to name a few. The church is not a philosophy, an ethical system, a warm, gooey sentimental feeling. The church is flesh and bones.
It’s popular to say we like Jesus but we don’t like the church. I understand; I’ve said it myself. However, Jesus and the church are inseparable. The church is Jesus’ body (I Cor 12:27). The church is how Jesus embodies himself in the world. The church is how God goes physical. To say we want Jesus but not the church is like saying we want love but not marriage. Or friendship without the tangible commitment of time and presence, desiring some vague notion attached to the concept of friendship without the hard work of actually being a friend.
My hunch is this: many of us give up on the church because we expect both too much and too little. We expect too much because we have been sold big jugs of grade C moonshine. It never tastes as good as promised. We’ve bought an ideal, what the church is supposed to be, a place where no one is lonely and everyone gets their God-fix and we are always fulfilled (or quickly moving that direction) — and we are certain to see tangible, immediate results of how our life is better, our kids are clean and keen, and our world is being transformed before our very eyes. But we aren’t an ideal. We are a family. And families have weird uncles and feuds and kids who get carted off to jail. Families have lots of love and rich stories, but there’s always pain and disappointment and seasons where it’s just plain vanilla, unexciting. Families need to forgive and to repent. And keep becoming more and more who God has in mind for them to be. However, there is something of profound beauty and value embodied in a family, even amid all its lunacy and disfunction.
At the same time, we expect too little of church. We miss the mysterious and everyday ways God takes on flesh and bone. We need eyes to see how we are being formed into a new kind of person, amid a new kind of community. These long stretches of commonness — living with others, hearing each other’s stories, discovering our vocations, working through the irritation of friendship with people who see the world differently than we do, raising our kids, loving (and being annoyed by) our neighbors, working through the joys and pains of our marriage (or singleness) — are the necessary, mundane ways God has chosen to take up residence it this world.
Every bit of this is physical, every bit necessary. There is no other way.
Tadpoles and Sacraments {why the church.3}
The church is a sacrament of the world’s possibility. {Luke Timothy Johnson}
The church is not ideal. {Eugene Peterson}
Queenlight shines through things, through everything. {David James Duncan, The River Why}
Last Saturday, the Collier men hit a bike trail that, for most of its winding path, runs alongside the Rivanna River. The loop tracks a couple miles with meandering curves and a couple narrow passes, cutting back and forth between dense forest cover and green open spaces. One of the boys’ favorite spots is where the trail dips under Free Bridge, creating a short, eerie stretch Seth has dubbed, “The Tunnel of Doom.”
I enjoy these experiences. I appreciate the quiet and the wind in my face. I enjoy Seth and Wyatt, very much. Still, for me, it’s fundamentally a bike ride. I mount my brown Specialized Hardrock, and I ride, there and back.
Wyatt and Seth understand these Saturday jaunts differently. Usually, we’ve only been on the trail a few minutes before our leader (Wyatt, most often) pulls over and, quicker than I can catch up, has his bike down, his helmet off, backpack undone. Time to snack. After a few rounds of Cheez-its and Fruit Roll-ups (indeed, dad supplies nutritious fare), we are back on the trail. But not for long. We need to stop under the overpass because the boys want to touch the water and jump in the mud and throw dirt. Later, they detour to pick up rocks for their collection. Rocks. And by rocks, I mean gravel.
The ultimate detour, however, is when we stop at Tadpole Pond. Pond is a bit generous. It’s an 8 inch deep, 4 foot wide hollow in the bankside granite. More of a large dimple really. But this spot is magic because a couple weeks ago we discovered hundreds of tadpoles swimming there; and we spent a good chunk of time catching those fast, slick little boogers. Tadpole Pond is now the main attraction. So we stopped; and the boys renewed the chase. A couple they caught (all catch-and-release, of course) had sprouted micro-legs. A few were teeny-tiny frogs. Most were still just tad-poling around. For at least 45 minutes, the boys rollicked with their slimy friends. They even named a few (Charlie, Bob, Tim and Charlie.2).
Instead of chomping for them to hurry up, I made a choice (this once) to let the quest to get on with the ride recede for a bit. I laid back on a cool rock under the refreshing shade. I listened to my boys laugh. I watched the tree branches sway. I was present, and at least for the moment, I understood that getting there and getting back really wasn’t the point. The ride and the river and those poor little tadpoles offered a generous invitation to experience the joys of being a father and the pleasure of having sons. My boys’ detours are not a hurdle to my completing our ride. Our rides are an opportunity for me to be on detour with my boys.
What I’ve tried to say is that the church isn’t only about “the ride,” about getting God’s stuff done. The church is God’s invitation to experience, receive and participate in the messy, detourish ways that God is forming a new kind of community in his world. And this new community is not theoretical or abstract. It is physical, embodied. What does God want to do here, now, with us? Scripture tells us that God desires to form a people, a community, who enjoy and embody his very presence in the world (and we must remember, God is Trinity: perfect, divine community). God does not have a metaphysical philosophy for us to spread or an individualistic moral agenda for us to carry out. God wants us. God wants us as his people in his world.
And terms like these – us and people – are inherently, inevitably, always plural, communal, trinitarian. When we look for what God is up to, we find God alive, active and present among his creation. God amid God’s community. To say we can enjoy God’s hope for us without being bothered by God’s community is like saying I can experience the joys of being Wyatt and Seth’s dad without being bothered by tadpoles.
And this touches on what we mean when we say the church is a sacrament. A sacrament provides a place where heaven and earth meet, a physical moment of grace. A sacrament, by it’s mere presence, mysteriously offers an encounter with the Trinity. A sacrament doesn’t have to do anything, anything other than carve out a physical space where hope and life and God come to us. In the Lord’s Table, we taste mercy. In baptism, we are drowned by God’s love. In marriage and friendship and on crisp mornings above the timberline, God arrives amid words and kisses and sunrises. Physical. Present. Mystery. Sacrament.
So, in the church, amid laughter and repentance and relationship, amid works of mercy and justice, (all messy but all necessary) God touches us. God loves us. God is present. What the Eucharist offers each of us with bread and wine, the church offers to the world with presence and tears. And joy, lots of joy.
A note to my pastor-friends: If we sell the church on utilitarian terms (“God and church will make your life work” or “Our main purpose is to get busy doing God’s work”), we shouldn’t protest when people leave the church for utilitarian reasons (“it isn’t working for me” or “I’m burned out”). We’ve spotted the consumerism rampant in the way people use the church, but have we owned up to the consumerism riddled throughout the ways we motivate and lead?
A note to my leave-church-behind friends: God’s community doesn’t always “work.” I’m sorry if someone told you it did. And working isn’t exactly the point. There’s something there, for sure. But there’s something else first. God is first, what God is doing in you – and in you with others. Sometimes, you really need a few detours. You need an afternoon of tadpoles.
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I have more to say, but I’m curious where this is taking you. Any push back or questions or brimming hopefulness? I’d love to interact and see where we might head next. Peace.
The Economy of Church {why the church.2}
Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitute the basis of our community. What determines our brother-hood is what man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. {Dietrich Bonhoeffer}
We are part of God’s great renovation project for human beings. We work, but we work resting. {Richard Foster}
Being a dad is a significant job. We have a crucial task to raise our children to be moral, virtuous adults. The world needs better people, more civic-minded citizens who will live and work to serve society. The most effective tool to change culture and counteract rampant violence and greed is to raise a generation who, when their time comes, will clean up this mess. My first role as Wyatt and Seth’s dad is to instill good values in them so that they can in turn utilize their skills and influence to change their world for the better. If I properly leverage my fathering efforts, providing my sons with the correct mixture of affection, discipline, vision and training, I believe our world will improve.
******
What a bunch of rubbish. Are you repulsed by me reducing the wonders and joys of fatherhood to a formula to implement some cause, even a cause as noble as improving the world? Are you agitated that I would suggest maneuvering fatherly love for a calculated agenda rather than simply cherishing and nourishing ones God has given me to love and share my life with?
Many of us, perhaps unwittingly, think of church in these same sterile, exploitative terms.
Many of us talk about the church primarily in terms of what the church is to do. We know God has a vision for his world, to love and renew and restore it – and we understand the church sits at the nexus of how God intends to get on with this vision. Our response, however, often follows typical American entrepreneurial fashion. We see a job to be done, and so we roll up our sleeves and mastermind a strategy – and then push and prod to work it. In this schema, the church is primarily God’s publicity arm. God tells us his action priorities, gives us a range of resources to utilize for the enterprise, and then we amass the energy and effort to make it happen. Essentially (perhaps this will sound familiar), God leverages his efforts, providing his sons and daughters the proper mixture of vision and affection and instruction – and then God watches for us to make the operation take shape.
Thankfully however, God’s intentions for his people in his world do not begin with what we are to do but rather with who we are. Unfortunately, we are much better at arranging our activity than we are at knowing our identity. We are competent (in varying degrees) at exegeting culture and formulating (or critiquing) structures and adjusting both our theology and our praxis. We can start a movement or an anti-movement. We can organize a church’s leadership flowchart and motivate people to works of justice and mission and mercy (and to opening their wallets). All good things, but they aren’t the starting point. Or the ending point, for that matter.
Eugene Peterson recently shared his concern that many of us have “no ontology of church. It is all pragmatic – what we do for God.” We prioritize our responsibilities and maneuver our tasks, but we have no comprehension of what our presence (just the fact that we exist in God’s world) actually means. We don’t know who we are to be, and we keep jumping to what we are supposed to do in order to make up the gap. This kind of activity will always be hollow. And, for many of us, it has worn us out.
In this way of things, the church is always looking for the next fix, the next idea, the next angle or inspiration or cultural sea change. Whether we are progressives with our social agenda or conservatives with our evangelistic blitzkrieg, what we share is our conviction that everything rises and falls on God’s expectation that we make something happen. We are just trying to figure out what to do, dammit!
Of course, we can not talk about the church without talking about the church’s work in the world; but we must talk about God’s work within the church first. We are to live in community, but the Spirit has made us his beloved community first. We are to bring shalom to our neighborhoods, but Jesus has made us a people who receive and experience shalom first. We are to announce God’s love to the world, but God has first made us a people drowning in his love. (This touches on my hesitation with some “missional church” language, where we define mission primarily in functional terms while we relegate other portions of the church’s essence to serve as only a means to a “missional” task.)
This distorted vision of God’s dream for the church falls flat, leaving us empty and disillusioned. I’ve lost count of the number of my friends who have walked away from Christian community because they felt as though they had been exploited and misled. Much of our church talk of creating meaningful relationships ends up feeling as though it is really only a ruse to keep people in the seats and writing checks (buns and funds). A lot of the strategies and ministry pushes lead to more activity but rarely to more life.
If we act as though the merits of church are ultimately defined by results and getting things done, we shouldn’t be surprised when people pack it up. No one likes being used for results. And truthfully, on these criteria we don’t always stack up that well against the competition. The church has its moments, but other movements have had their successes too (the ONE campaign has had better luck addressing third-world debt than any collection of churches I know). Depending on your concern, better bang for your buck might move you elsewhere…if results or bang for your buck is the name of the game. But perhaps we have irreplaceable, intrinsic value far richer and deeper than the bottom-line, more essential even than the results we churn out. Perhaps we should follow Peterson’s advice and “eliminate success from our vocabulary.”
Defining the church first and foremost as God’s way of getting things done makes God the ultimate utilitarian. God cast as an industrialist, myopically focused on efficiency and production. No wonder we feel used. If we are merely commodities in God’s economy, what is our inherent beauty? Thankfully, we are not merely economic units to fuel divine output. Chastened capitalism may be the best arrangement humans have cobbled together, but God does better.
God certainly has grand purposes for his world, and our vocation is certainly right smack in the middle of how God intends to set the world right. However, I’m pleading for us to work from first things before we move to second things. God has not placed a people in his world simply to carry out his agenda. God has placed a people in his world to embody and revel in – and serve as an encounter with – the Trinity’s divine love.
What if the church’s mere existence in the world is itself a central piece of God’s work. What if God’s people are a Trinitarian sacrament, a community whose presence offers tastes of laughter and righteousness and restoration, glimpses in the now of the new creation that is to come. But I’m getting ahead of myself…