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Minutes
of Meetings with God |
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We, the Church |
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Occasions come when the pace of life slows way down. The surgical repair of an old injury to my right ankle (it was badly broken years ago in a head on crash with a drunk driver) really put the brakes on for me for a while. Thankfully, the recovery didn't bring along much in the way of pain. Anti-inflammatory prescriptions did a good job of helping me stay comfortable. I got around, rather slowly on a pair of crutches. The main difficulty that presented itself (other than not being able to carry anything of size while moving around on the crutches) was a normal tendency for my leg to swell if it was not elevated above my heart. So, I spent lots of hours laying on the couch with my leg propped up on pillows. I spent a good bit of time on the couch, writing on a borrowed lap-top computer. One person, who apparently knows me too well, after hearing that I was beginning to feel pretty good very soon after the surgery, said: "That's not all good, because he'll start to get real antsy and begin wanting to do more than he probably should!" Folks that phoned or visited gave me the same advice; advice that I have probably given them in the past: "Let yourself enjoy this slow time, it will be all too short and when it's gone, you'll wish you had it." They were right. And I went stir-crazy. My behind may have been stuck on the couch in our living room, but my thoughts were roaming all over the place. It seemed that because my body was stuck being still, my mind was working overtime. Most of what I thought about was centered on the church and on Christian living: who we've become as the church, what we do, what we leave undone, what we have found of Christ among us, and what of Christ we have lost as Christians. One of the thoughts that weighed heavily is that, as the Church, we have mostly lost touch with and concern for the desperate condition of our sisters and brothers with whom we share this magnificent gift of life. Church has become a place that we visit, usually once a week, but often much less often. What happens in that place we call church in our hour's visit, seems to have less and less connection with or influence upon all those hours and days we spend away from the place. The Church, to begin with, was not a place. The Church was people who, first and foremost were joined together by a self-transcending love for Jesus, the Risen One, and an equally self-transcending love for each other. That love spilled over to touch the lives of family, friends and neighbors. It was more than mere words, it was loving, selfless action that would give up anything, even life itself, to make the lives of others better; just like Jesus loved and lived. The Church's goal was love like that the Apostle Paul described in I Corinthians 13. Second, the Church was a people of hope. The hope was that not only their own lives, but every single person's life could and would be totally transformed by God's love; a person could be completely "born again". The hope was that this world would ultimately be transformed from a place of suffering, tears and death by a loving God who would come to be ever, undeniably present so it would be said:
The hope envisioned all of creation being be born again. It was a thrilling, passionate hope, not a horrible fear or dread of what is to come. It was a joyous anticipation. Somewhere along the line, we, the Church have managed to lose most of our self-transcending love and most of our hope. On the one hand, we have become increasingly unholy. That is not to say we have become increasingly evil; rather, we have become more self-centered as well as more interested in material things. Some would say that most Christians have become decadent; lovers of things rather than lovers of God, especially as God is most clearly revealed in Jesus, the Risen One; we rely on ourselves rather than on the one who has given us both life and new life. On the other hand, we have also become ever increasingly hopeless. Too often we convince ourselves that human beings cannot change for the better. So we abandon them to desperate and painful lives of slavery to habit or addiction or disease or poverty or hunger or nakedness or homelessness or disease. We take care of our own selves and our own families, but almost no one else. We convince ourselves that institutions, societies, and nations cannot change for the better. So in our resignation to the evil and failure around us, we become accomplices to the injustice, oppression, and exploitation that not only continues, but thrives and grows. One of the sad examples of our apathy is 50% of the people who could vote in the last U.S. presidential election chose not to do so; and a good many, perhaps most, of those who did not vote would call themselves, Christians. It is as though they gave up their hope that God could work through them to make the nation better. We, the Church, have developed trouble communicating our love and our hope to a world that suffers excruciating hunger for both. Our love too often comes across as arrogance, self-righteousness, condescension or a pitiful "hand-out". Our hope comes across as either outright apathy or as resignation to the current state of human affairs that some see as supporting the status quo. Or, our hope is expressed as a terrible apocalypticism that draws a picture of a vengeful God and a torturous end to humanity. It is rather too much like being invited to witness or be victim of a mass execution. That sort of hope is not actually hope but a kind of spiritual terrorism that prays upon peoples worst fears and causes adults and especially children to be afraid of the God who loves them dearly (John 3:16-17). We, the Church, have lost so much of the joy, of our hope. We forget that same prophet who drew such frightening pictures of the end-time of human history, is also the one who drew the most loving and passionate picture of that same time. To do so, he took one of the most exciting, happy, and exhilarating of human experiences ... a wedding and accompanying feast.
We have a bright hope: everything will end in a grand celebration of love and life; all are invited. The question is: Will we accept the invitation? |