This morning I heard a commentator on NPR news introduce a story about the process of choosing the new pope. He said that cardinals are holding their first official meeting today to decide who the best person will be to address all the current problems of the church. Hmmm. Is that the real job of a pope? (or a bishop or a priest?) To address the church's problems? I wonder if that is really how the cardinals themselves are framing the task before them. But this reporter's words illustrate how many people think that the role of the clergy is to "fix" the church.
This made me think of our visitation yesterday with our bishop, Ian Douglas, at Grace Church. Ian told our congregation during our coffee hour visit yesterday that when we find ourselves worrying about "fixing the church" we are not actually being the church. Our work as church is not to fill our pews, get more pledge units and try to restore our churches back to the thriving neighborhood family churches they were the 50's and 60's. Our work is to go out into the world and share God's healing, reconciling love.
We live in a completely different world than the one that built those churches. The church can't expect to remain the same as the whole world changes around it. As Ian often says that the only things that don't change are things that are dead. Our work as the church is, and always has been, to join in with God's mission in the world, however that ends up looking. Entering into God's mission of healing and reconciling the world is our real work, and these days, that seems to have less and less to do with full pews, traditional Sunday schools and harvest fairs. "The church doesn't have a mission," Ian said, "It's the other way around. God's mission has a church."
My church (and I know we are not alone) feels a bit overwhelmed lately by all the changes facing us. We don't know the way and there seems to be no road map. Like Jesus says to the people in the temple in John today, "You will look for me, but you won't find me. Where I am, you can't come." It's a lot easier to think that Jesus is sitting right there on the altar in the temple (local parish) and all we need to do is show up on Sunday to find him. But maybe what we need to explore is the idea that building the church has less to do with the church building than we think.
These days, Jesus seems to have left the building, and is out wandering around the world, and we're called to follow him out there into the unknown, just like the early disciples were asked to leave everything behind and follow him. Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're being called to just abandon all our buildings, but we're definitely being called to re-frame and re-vision their purpose, use and role in the context of God's mission. There is no formula for what the church needs to become or how it will look in the future. There are no easy step-by-step directions for transformation.
Paul writes to the Romans, "If you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it - if it's something you could never do for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked - well, trusting in God to do it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift." It's hard to trust God sometimes, especially in times of huge transition, but that's what we disciples are called to do. We're called to leave our safety and our own desires behind and to follow. And we need to somehow trust that God will give us the ability to trust when even that seems impossible. Lord, I trust you - help me with my mistrust!
We can't "fix" our little church. I can't "fix" it as the priest, and our bishop can't come in on his yearly visit and "fix" it either. Not even a pope can't "fix" all the current issues facing the church. But yet we trust that God's got it all in hand and is working things out in God's time. As people of the way, we need to let go of our own lives to find them - let go of the church in the way we've grown accustomed to it - and allow God to do a whole new thing with us - so that we can become a good and helpful resource for God in God's mission in the world as it is today. We may be a bit mixed up these days about our own mission, but we can trust that we belong to God's mission.
Years and years and years ago the prophet Jeremiah warned us not to do what the people of Judah were doing. They kept insisting that, "This is GOD's Temple, GOD's Temple, GOD'S Temple!" when actually it was just a human construct. Are we ready to listen to the prophets - and Paul - and Jesus - yet? It's God's church, not ours.
Today's readings: Jer. 7:1-15; Rom. 4:1-12; John 7:14-36
For Lent, Elsa is praying both the daily readings and the news and then blogging about it on weekdays.
She is reading The Message translation this year.
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