“I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it.”
“You don’t get what?”
“The church is a terrible place. It should be a place of healing. It’s not. It’s a place of venal appetites, judgment, distancing —- there is no game played in the world that doesn’t have its ecclesiastical equivalent. The only difference is that more often than not the battles are over less power and less money.”
“It’s in the world, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s filled with sinners, right?”
“Right.”
“So you were expecting…?”
“Something better.”
“Well, that’s a work in progress. And that’s the church. I empowered the church to announce redemption, but truth be told the church is also in need of redemption. Why do you think I went to the Temple, read the Law, and (I think it’s fair to say) took a beating from the establishment of my own day?”
I just sit there.
“I’m sorry. The dreams and hopes surface time and again — the hoped for end becomes the dreamed of present. It’s inevitable, because you were made for more. And then there are all the games you are talking about…promises the church makes, promises it breaks, games it plays, language it uses (especially around ordination, but about membership in the church as well). The fact of the matter is, I called you to this and I made you for this.”
“The priesthood?”
“That and also the larger participation in my life. It is what I made you for?”
“So I can’t quit?”
“Well, no, to be honest, on one level you can’t. It’s the only game in town. Walking away from it is like walking away from breathing.”
“So what do I do with the anger?”
“Give it to me — or watch how I dealt with it. Did it hurt me? Yes. Did it grieve me? Yes. But even in its harshest, meanest moments, the cruelty of any child of God is a moment filled with the possibility of redemption — whether it leads to repentance or gives way to its own futility, spiraling out of control. To mend or to heal, even when you stand in what seems like a powerless position, requires living with the tattered, brutal ugliness of it all. You can live out of the anger — which you will feel keenly from time to time — or you can choose to see it with my eyes.”
“So do the occasions for anger ever go away? There is freedom in what you say — even power — but I know that the outrage will come back and there will be reason, even good reason to feel it anew.”
“No, sadly, my child, I cannot promise you that it will go away. Indeed, the more you walk in the light, the more likely you are to recognize the depth of the darkness. And let me caution you, again, you will find some of the worst darkness within the church itself. It is, then, that you will need to remember this conversation. There is and always is only one choice that you can make: the choice of intimacy, intimacy with me, with my purposes, and with the purposes of the Father.”
“So, I will be tempted to look elsewhere?”
“You will not only be tempted to look elsewhere, you will fail to recognize it as temptation.”
“So why even bother with the church, if it is such a stumbling block? Why not wipe it from the face of the earth, start again, declare your independence of it?”
“Because no human being, never mind men, women, and children, scattered across the centuries, can be expected to see me, feel me, touch me, me without seeing me in the flesh.”
“But you already assumed flesh and lived with us. That should be enough.”
“It isn’t. I dwell in you and you dwell in me. When you touch others, I use your hands, when you speak to others I use your tongue, when you listen to others I use your ears. The church, at its best, is the embodiment of my presence. It has no other purpose.”
“And when it betrays you?”
“Then it betrays me and the greatest pain I suffer is not the pain of betrayal, it is the way in which the church betrays those given to its care. It is your responsibility in those moments to remind the church of its calling, to challenge its faithfulness, to heal the wounds it inflicts, to repent for its failures.”
“Oh, so, on top of all of the grief it has caused me, I also need to apologize for its short-comings??”
“My dear child, the church’s sin and your own sin has the same roots, as does the sin of everyone called by my name. Its origins are not so easily severed from your own life and the first fruit of redemption is not the right to judge, it is the call to heal, to love as I have loved you.”
“So the anger never goes away?”
“No. But you will learn something new from it, draw new strength from it, and gain a new vision from it.”
“Why does it need to be that way?”
“Because your sin, the sin of the world, and the sins of the church are one in nature; and the healing that I do, the love that I share puts everyone touched by that love at enmity with the world’s sin.”
“So, the tension that I feel — the fear that this ‘new vision’ I’ve been given will evaporate with the next round of nonsense from the church is inevitable?”
“Inevitable? Yes. But it is more than that. It is both sign and inspiration. A sign of the redemptive work begun in you, a sign of the need in the world around you, and inspiration for the vision of what needs to be done.”
“You look like there is more.”
“Living with that tension — your awareness of it — even suffering at its hands — is also intimacy with me, with the Father, with the Spirit. My cross is not, in the first place, a symbol of suffering. It is not, in the first place, a symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of my love. It is about my longing for you, for everyone — inside and outside of the church. And from moment to moment my desire to love reaches across the soul wrenching destructive power of sin to heal. The cross represents the intersection of sin and my love and just as my body was nailed to it, the conflict between the two, and my triumph over sin lies at the center of my claim on your life. It is not a call to morbid self-abnegation. It is a call to embody my love.”
“But so much of this suffering seems pointless. What I have watched isn’t noble suffering or great sin. The sin is venal, stupid, and it masquerades as your church; and those who suffer, suffer to no point. Their pain makes no statement.”
“Did you expect it to make sense? Did my suffering make sense? The further from the truth one moves the less any action sense and the more important the masks become. Would evil parade through town with it’s own flag or with mine?”
“So I have to endure this nonsense?”
“No, you need to embrace it.”
“I don’t want to, I am tired of the absurdity, the stupidity of it all. I am not placed or empowered to change it. I am forever working on the fringes. There is a time to cut one’s losses; and I have enough clarity to move on with your work without this dead weight of a church wrapped around my neck.”
“Well, dear one, then you won’t be able to walk with me. And to cut yourself off from the nonsense, as you call it, is to cut yourself off from the journey.”
“What? Oh, I know, the whole pride thing.”
“Well, in part, yes. The judgment that the sin is out there always presents the peril of pride. The hardest part of fighting for what is right is fighting that fight knowing all along that the seeds of that sin are within you. So, apart from me it is always possible that you will confuse my word with your word. But you knew that.”
“Then there is more?”
“Yes, you see the struggle between sin and redemption is all there is to life. Societies and countries make some measure of what they think of as their own achievement. The world might even seem to make progress together — from time to time. But those efforts vanish sooner or later. What seemed important, defining, engrossing, all encompassing becomes a memory — at best — to those who follow. But the perennial struggle, the issue that has always been there and always will be is the one between sin and intimacy with me. between a rebellion against my purposes and deep abiding with them. Walk away from this and you walk away from everything, or — if you prefer — walk away from this and you will only run into it elsewhere.”
He paused for a long time and then added, “Unless of course you forget completely.”
“So this is as much about my own redemption as it is about anything else?”
“There never was any difference. The one sin is many sins, your sin the sin of others, theirs are yours, and only one love that is a love of all. Life offers itself up as endless complexities, line after line on newspapers, now pressing — pivotal — life-changing, then finally fading ink on yellowing paper, ashes, memories, whispers on the wind, then silence. There really is only one moment — defining, all encompassing, eternal.”
“It all has such a sense of loneliness, emptiness, darkness…”
“Oh….the darkness is there, to be sure and it weighs heavily. But remember, your life, your vocation is not the affirmation that darkness exists, it is a journey into the light.”
“So, this all started with my anger. What about it?”
“Use it as a tool of my redemptive purposes. Listen to it. Acknowledge the truths that it tells you. Minister out of those truths. Counter evil where you can. Nurture the light where possible. But hold it lightly, it teaches you something about your own failings as well. Remember, too, whenever and wherever sin is at work redemption is needed. It is not enough to rail against the darkness, you need to listen for the possibility of redemption and healing.”
Aha, Fred, this one has got to be one your best – but then I think that of all of them – but this one was so convicting. Next time I want to run from a church because of something big or little I will definitely keep all you have written in mind. I know the Lord sometimes moves us on to other places of worship but when we bolt just because there are sinners inside the church you have made that clear to us it is plainly wrong to leave. After all aren’t we sinners also that are looking at the other sinners? So why look for the perfect place to worship? It does not exist! If it did and I walked through the door all of a sudden it would not be perfect any longer.
And sometimes when I get home from church and a leader or a member has been particularly unchristian toward me for no apparent reason I will remember him or her more earnestly in prayer and hope that when my time occurs that I am not as a christian should be someone will grant me mercy and pray for me.