That used to make me crazy, until I came to grasp that it was a blind spot that could use more light. So, when talking about a spirituality of music, for example, I now try to carefully "connect the dots" between why I experience something as simultaneously ecstatic and revelatory for me and how it connects with the wider Christian tradition. In other words, I try to "show my work." As an intuitive, this isn't also a simple matter but because most people are not intuitives, it is essential. So, here goes...
Part One: Showing My Work
The Canadian theologian,
Douglas John Hall, has been making an essential observation about the Church in
North America for the past twenty years:
namely, that we have become more of a “side line” institution than anything
resembling a “main line” organization; and, this dis-establishment of
Christianity holds for us the promise of greater fidelity to the way of Jesus
Christ than anything we experienced during the era of American civil
religion. In a word, he argues that now
that we have become irrelevant to the status quo, we can live more simply and
joyfully into a more authentic discipleship.
In his life works – from the
three volume systematic theology Thinking/ Confessing/Professing
the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context to his award-winning
distillation of Luther’s theology of the cross, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus
and the Suffering World, and Waiting
for Gospel: An Appeal to the Dispirited
Remnants of the Protestant Establishment – Hall explains how our social
irrelevancy can be a double-edged blessing.
We no longer have to live as custodians and/or slaves to the status
quo. As people shaped and guided by the
Cross, we can forsake the path of power and embrace a life of solidarity and
compassion. We can abandon the assignment
of being sacred apologists for the status quo and give ourselves to small acts
of mercy and tenderness. Hall concludes:
…to my mind the only Christianly authentic way of meeting the challenge
of this second great metamorphosis… would be to: 1) Frankly and openly admit the reality of
the humiliation of Christendom; 2) Resist the temptation to regard this great
change in purely negative terms, as though the failure of a form of
Christianity meant the failure of Christianity itself; and 3) Try to give our
disestablishment some positive and meaningful direction rather than simply
allowing it to happen to us. (Waiting
for Gospel. P. 60)
Hall goes on to quote the
Anglican Bishop or Edinburgh, Richard Holloway,
Historians have traditionally seen (Nicaea) as the
final triumph of the Church and the beginning of its long dominance of European
history. It established dogmatic Christianity in a long partnership with the
world of political power that became known as Christendom – and only in our day
is it in its final stages of dissolution.
So glorious and powerful was the institution of Christendom that it was
almost impossible to see through it to the man who stood behind it, the peasant
from Galilee who had refused to cringe before the very powers that crucified
him and was later, officially, to deify him. The fascinating thing about our
own day is that, as the political and theological structures of Christendom
crash down before our eyes, we can see once again, through the rubble and dust
of the centuries, a clearer picture of the prophet of Nazareth. (ibid)
As a pastor and artist, I both
confirm and experience the effects of Hall’s analysis on a regular basis. The Church as a social institution is not
only irrelevant but largely forgotten.
No longer is a “first church” necessary in any tradition because nobody
notices or cares. In a recent sermon I called, “New
Directions out of Our Old Ways,” I put it like this:
We come out of a story of power – a story of being in
control – a story of being in charge.
That is what it meant to be the historic first church of our town: our members called the shots and set the
social, spiritual and economic agenda for the whole community. In fact, you could not even organize a town
in Massachusetts without first calling together a congregational church. But
250 years later that is no longer true:
we are NOT the movers and shakers, we are NOT those in control and we
are NOT ever going to be in charge again (thanks be to God!)
When we are honest, our nation is becoming a post-Christian
society – our small city is becoming a truly multi-cultural and multi-faith
town – and Pittsfield is never going back to a manufacturing and industrial
economy no matter how strong the nostalgia for General Electric’s heyday might
burn in some hearts. So now that the old
realm is over, what is our new
story? How do we discover new directions
from out of our old ways and live into actions that point towards God’s hope
and peace?
I then when on to offer three
suggestions about what our new “narrative home” might include:
1) Exchanging
privilege and power for tenderness;
2) Exploring small acts of hospitality with
our new neighbors; and
3) Embracing humility and playfulness as our modus
operandi rather than ponderous obligation.
As is often the case, however, my conclusions were not entirely
self-evident to the wider congregation. In fact, as I have heard over
and over throughout my ministry, people need me to be more didactic in drawing
my conclusions. I can’t tell you how
many times I have shared a song that drips with theological significance to me
only to hear someone say with sincerity:
“I don’t get it.” Like my high
school algebra teacher always said: “Show us your work, man!” Clearly there are times when I need to do a
better job of lighting the pathway I have discerned in pursuit of new insights.
So, what follows will be my
thinking about how I arrived at my three concluding points involving
tenderness, hospitality and playful humility.
I will draw from the wisdom of Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, Mary
Oliver, Richard Rohr, Robert Bly and Douglas John Hall as mentors. I will freely engage the use of poetry and
the arts as sources of both inspiration and insight. And I will try to offer a nuanced accounting of
why the context of Christian disestablishment in North America is a blessing
not a curse.
No comments:
Post a Comment