Taking Responsibility

The Catholic Worker cofounder Peter Maurin said, "The future will be different if we make the present different." I like this quote because it reminds us that we, you and I, are responsible for the future. 

I say this with all seriousness. 

Of course, the Almighty is, moment by moment, somehow moving toward the implementation of his kingdom project, a project which began tangibly with the resurrection of the Christ. But this should not be taken to mean that we are exempt and sidelined as watchers. While, we do not bring in the kingdom -- this comes only by an act of grace -- we who name the name of that carpenter from Judea are certainly called to be contributors to his kingdom.

This means, among other things, that what we do in the here and now really matters. Said another way, to build our little kingdom while the rest of the world goes to hell is not only incredibly short-sighted, it’s also anti-gospel. Or, said still another way, to say we are not responsible for our part of the world because we are waiting for God to return so that he might dump the entire works completely misses the point of the cross and Jesus’ destruction of radical evil. For now, we share in the sufferings of the crucified one; for now we carry our cross daily; for now we follow in his steps. There is no triumph, not now, there is only brokenness and the last great enemy death, and our struggle with it. 

“Look at the fields,” says Jesus, “they are ripe unto harvest...but the laborers are few...” 

We must look at our field for it too is ripe for the message of the kingdom, ripe for the message that the king has arrived and offers new life and a new way to live. 

All this was brought home to me several days ago when G, a man to whom I had been ministering and someone freshly part of our church, was sharing how the new spiritual part of his life had had a profound effect on his behavior. I asked him how he was now getting on with a particular person who had truly wronged him. He told me he had spent the evening with him and there were no problems. 

“Do you think your involvement with the LORD and the church was part of this change in you?” I asked.

He thought for a second and said, “Yes. I used to carry grudges and I wouldn’t forget, but since I came here I’m tryin’ that forgiveness thing.”

So am I.

Linking to Bonhoefer

"To endure the cross is not tragedy, it is suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If the examples of the saints help keep us to the narrow path, then for me the mainstay has been this German Lutheran. 

In his, Letters And Papers From Prison, in the midst of an ongoing discussion about religionless Christianity, Bultmann & Barth, he writes: 

"Does the question about saving ones soul appear in the Old Testament at all? Aren't righteousness and the Kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and isn't it true that Romans 3.24ff. is not an individualistic doctrine of salvation, but the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous? It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropomorphic sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of creation and of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ." (LPP.[Tegal] 5.5.1944) 

Several things are important here:

1. First, we must take into account the deeply Jewish nature of the Christian faith. As the Bishop N.T. Wright reminds us, creation, incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection are deeply embedded in the Hebrew theological universe, a universe which we Christians grew to share with them. This means that within this idea of "God alone is righteous," is contained God's fidelity to the Abrahamic Covenant -- "through you all the world will be blessed".
   
2. The gospel is therefore the primary act of God to reconcile and renew his world from corruption and death, for the gospel is the carrier of Covenant.
3. Which means the Kingdom People, the New Covenant People, or the New Humanity (N.T. Wright) -- that is the Church -- exists for the world and for the other. The gospel is not, therefore, primarily a message of personal salvation. Instead, the gospel is a message of global restoration and redemption (read: Kingdom) that of course has individual implications, but which starts from a very wide universal ring and moves inward toward the personal. 
4. The gospel then, as the message of God, reveals God not as arbitrary, capricious, or malevolent, but one who willingly suffers for the other. This brings us to the first quote above. If the church exists for the world -- and not its own pleasure and personal security -- then the church will suffer for her allegiance to the Christ and his cross, and she will carry in her own body the marks of that cross and that suffering.

Change As Loss & Gain

I was unable to discover who said, "All change is experienced as loss." I wanted to offer the name because I think someone this smart should be acknowledged. 

This axiom is especially true in church work where the known and the familiar is sacrosanct. So that, when a church's servant leadership -- e.g. pastors & deacons in my franchise of Christianity -- are called upon to offer leadership with one eye on the past and one eye on the future, (read: change) he or she is often shot at from both sides. 

Such is the nature of the work, or as I am fond of saying, if you can't take these shots you can't take the work because that is what servant leadership is all about -- responsibility without authority.

Two ideas must kept in mind at this point -- especially when the shots are falling from the sky like meteors. First, change is inevitable. That is, the ones who fight change with the most vigor are actually merely covering a retreat. Change, in the end captures us all. I have tried to bring this home to the place where I serve by showing the demographic reality of our church. If present trends continue, and without some sort of discontinuous change, we will be the last generation of believers inhabiting our hallowed halls. This is a fact. This means that some sort of intervention, or organizational development process, becomes extremely important.

By definition, organizational development is "an effort planned, organization-wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization's 'processes,' using behavioral-science knowledge.” (Beckhard, Organization development: Strategies and Models) All of which sounds straightforward, but in reality is messy, and filled with winners and losers and busted egos. 

For example, recently, our church began to institute some changes in schedule. Overwhelmingly the majority wanted this to occur. Those few who did not are now wounded and in some cases angry. Would it have been better to leave things as they were, allowing the change of decay to finally do its work? Perhaps. Time will tell if the changes we made bear the fruit we hope.

The second idea is humility. As servant leaders we may think we have the best ideas, but we must teach our tongues to say, "I do not know," and our ears to hear ideas that are not our own. Said another way, in the institutional church, organizational development is collaboration and compromise. This also means that, while both sides of the change issue must be willing to say, "You know, I was wrong," servant leaders must be especially open to this path of reality. 

The Prayer of Discouragement

"It is impossible for a person who prays regularly to remain in serious sin; because the two are incompatible, one or the other will have to be given up." -- St Teresa of Avila

Is this true? Questions come to mind. Are we really unable to pray when we've settled in sin for the long haul? Is St. Teresa referring to personal sin (which I suspect) or systemic evil? Is she referring to the prayer of the mystic (which I suspect), or the liturgical prayer of the church?

For my part, I know much more about sinning than I do about prayer, and it's not the sin that keeps me from prayer, rather it is the discouragement. It's the, "Dammit! Here I go again," reflex that keeps me from the prayer room. 

Recently, I received a very kind email from a parishioner who was pleased for a consistent crop of sermons on grace. I thanked her for the kind words and then honestly replied that I preached grace because I need it so badly. I suspect that this came as no shock to her, however, since I have been her pastor for ten years. 

I am often confronted with people who have deep scars from sin (which I define as living for self and to hell with everyone else). They would like to pray, they say, but they cannot believe they are good enough to be heard, or they do not believe that prayer could matter for them. I try to reassure them that heaven is in fact not far away, but as someone has said, "it is easier to believe the bad stuff."

So, for those so down that prayer holds no hope, I consistently practice praying for them while they listen. I recite to God -- and to them -- the elements of our conversation, knowing by experience that prayer is truly the only path to existential wholeness, and hoping that someone is doing the same for me.

Pentecost Sunday Posts

Many of the bloggers who are part of the Christian Century blogging group created posts for Pentecost Sunday. Go here for the link.