April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
PERSPECTIVE
And you call yourselves Christians
In the 1960s, I served as vicar of St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in a Kansas City suburb. A story circulating in Kansas clerical circles at the time concerned a young, ambitious clergyman who had become pastor of a church of the Disciples of Christ denomination which identified itself as "The Christian Church."
The young pastor decided to do a door-to-door canvass of his town. He was greeted at one door by a grizzled Kansan who responded to the invitation to join the congregation by saying with passion: "I was born an Episcopalian; I was baptized an Episcopalian; and I intend to be buried an Episcopalian. No one is going to make a Christian out of me!"
Denominations in this country are entering into a period of asking, "Now that we've been Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, Reformed, Roman Catholic or the hundreds of other denominations, is it too late to make Christians out of us, as well?"
It is not enough to identify with a denominational label. The question is no longer, "Why should I be an Episcopalian rather than a Roman Catholic or a Lutheran, or a Reformed rather than a Methodist?" Rather, the question is, "Why should I be a Christian at all?"
In a cartoon in New Yorker magazine, a skeleton is pictured collapsed on the front doorstep of a mansion, his bony index finger still affixed upon the doorbell. Around his neck hangs a small sign, which reads, "Please help me! I am blind!" But over the doorbell, another sign reads, "Home for the Deaf."
There's the church's encounter with the world in a nutshell: an agonized humanity blinded by a distorted emphasis on acquiring things...blinded by fear of the social upheaval of our time...blinded by the brutalism of the human spirit, expressed in questionable foreign crusades and years of inhumanity to those who have committed the major crime of being born black in this country, or having come to this land from countries south of our border, fleeing poverty...blinded by the hollowness of the human heart which remains after we have whored after the pseudo-religions of astrology, drugs and shallow, uncommitted sexuality.
This agonized, blinded humanity presses at the doors of our churches, seeking a response, an invitation to enter; seeking to be welcomed, reassured and helped. Yet our churches too often remain simply homes for the deaf.
We are experiencing "ecumenical thaw." Christians throughout the world are rejoicing in evidence of cooperation and harmony among segments of the Body of Christ. But what about the world outside the church? What about the growing numbers of people who, in answer to the census question about religious affiliation, respond, "None!" What do they think about the issues which continue to divide the Christian church?
The late maverick Southern Baptist preacher and theologian Dr. Carlyle Marney observed in a conference I attended, "I sometimes wonder if the Good Lord should not go ahead and squash down the whole denominational mess and start all over again."
Dr. Marney is probably correct that the issues that divide the Body of Christ and seem such big deals to many of us within the churches bore the living daylights out of those outside them - and more and more of us within them, as well.
This is especially true among young adults. Church attendance has been on a downhill slide - and it's adults between the ages of 21 and 35 who are primarily responsible for this decline. Young people demonstrate a deep interest in spiritual issues (witness enrollment in college religion courses and the interest in "New Age" religious expressions). They are likely to say, "I am spiritual, but I'm not religious." But what they usually mean is that they have been turned off by the institutional church.
When these young adults discover I am a priest, they delight in informing me that they are disillusioned by "organized religion." I delight in responding that in the almost 50 years I've been a priest, what I've mostly experienced is disorganized religion, but I do understand what they are saying.
These young adults who have no religious upbringing or who are members of what I call "the church alumni association" are no longer asking, "Why should I be an Episcopalian rather than a Methodist or a Lutheran, or a Reformed rather than a Roman Catholic?" Now, they are asking, "Why should I be a Christian at all?"
The paradox is that, while many young adults have gotten turned off by the church, they have often been turned on by the Bible. They have discovered that leaping from every page of God's holy Word are stirring calls to the service of humanity: calls to love, sacrifice, tolerance and understanding, inclusiveness - the Holy Spirit transforming the hearts of those who would be Jesus' disciples.
Yet what do they see in churches? Debates about liturgy, church financing, church government, who's in and out, who I can love and still be a Christian.
A suffering world cries out, "How dare you spend even 10 seconds debating these things while claiming to be a disciple of Jesus, who taught us as He washed the feet of His disciples?" Jesus said, "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love others as I have loved you." He reminded us that the commandments to "love God and our neighbor" are to be the foundation on which the church should be built.
The Holy Spirit might have been engaging in what Dr. Marney referred to as "mashing down," reducing us to the status of a church in exile, an oppressed minority stripped of pomp and circumstance, stripped of our dependence on shallow orthodoxies, fighting for survival in an increasingly secularist world.
But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran bishop martyred by the Nazis, put it: "The way the church maintains her own survival is by fighting, not for it, but for the salvation of the world."
The questions each of us must ask ourselves are: "What should unite us as Christ's Body in the world today? What does it mean to be a 'servant church' to a hurting world? What does it mean to be agents of reconciliation in a fragmented and war-torn world? What does it mean to others when we call ourselves Christians?"
As someone said about marriage, the important thing about being truly "one" is not that we see everything the same way, but that we are always looking in the same direction. The same is true for the church.
We have gathered in this sanctuary as one body, sharing "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all." We have listened to God's Word proclaimed, so that the Word may become flesh in our hearts and minds. We affirm our faith and trust in God who makes all things new.
We pray for each other and all the peoples of the earth, knowing that becoming a new creation in Christ is not something we do in isolation, but in the midst of a supportive community of believers who have dedicated themselves to being open to the transforming power of God's love. We symbolize the care we have for each other and for all God's children as we exchange the sign of Christ's peace, committing ourselves to each other as Jesus gave up His life for us.
Everything we do as Christians is meant to express in our lives what we have expressed in our worship: listening to God's Word...putting our trust in God and His love...showing concern and care for our hurting brothers and sisters...offering ourselves to Jesus, that He may form us and make us new creations in Him...going forth rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, sharing God's divine life and love incarnate in Jesus with others.
This is what we are called to be unified about in the Christian community. What a suffering world hungers for and what a hoping world looks for from us who call ourselves Christians is "neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, but a new creation" - as God in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, continues to make Christians out of all of us.[[In-content Ad]]
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