If you only knew what gone really was

The long awaited and oft-predicted epitaph of the mainline protestant church has finally been pronounced:  “It is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”

Not that we who labor in the church haven’t feared it for lo these many years.  In countless workshops, assemblies, continuing education seminars and coffee table (or tavern booth) conversations we have held forth greatly on the declining attendance, resources, relevance and spiritual well-being of our ecclesiastical fraternity.  We have known since before we received our ordination the difficulties that we faced, the challenges set upon us and the certain struggles that we would suffer.  Yet we willingly, even gladly undertook the mantle of leading the church of our childhood because we trusted those who had bequeathed it to us and we hoped, however humbly, that our faithfulness to the centuries of their work and wisdom would be looked upon graciously by our God. 

What a waste that was. 

In vain hope we have studied management books and hired praise team leaders and learned new worship songs and re-written our liturgies and redecorated our narthex to breathe life into our churches.  In vain hope we have sent out postcards and created visitor packets and led evangelism campaigns and invited our co-workers to worship services and spaghetti dinners and youth group outings. 

But it was all for naught, because it turns out that we are not Christians at all. 

No, it turns out that loving our neighbor, striving for justice and working towards the good of the poor, oppressed and downtrodden, seeking peace and offering our cheeks instead of our fists to those who would do us violence, preaching God’s word in its fullness and not merely its most convenient parts, practicing the ancient sacraments and rites of the community of believers was actually the problem.  Was wrong this whole time.  Turns out that we weren’t even close on what it means to be Christian at all.  All those things we read in the Bible, all those lectures from our seminary teachers, all those lessons from our beloved Sunday School teachers were wrong.  Turns out that being a Christian is really at once simpler and more perfunctory than we have ever imagined or practiced it to be. 

And now we are blessed, finally, with a true prophet, who in one brief and sweeping Christian fatwa has undone centuries of evidently misguided church workers and freed us from the prison of our fruitless efforts.  We are not Christian, we are no longer welcome in the church, we are helplessly lost, pagan, worthless. 

Whew.

I, for one am thankful.  Perhaps I will begin my retirement now, before the rigors of Lent, the sorrows of Gethsemane, the humbling of Good Friday.  Perhaps I will forgo the vain proclamation of what God has done for his people in Christ Jesus and get busy at stopping the “the corruption of decency” so evident in the NBA, rock concerts and movie sets.

Or perhaps, as I endure one last Ash Wednesday, I will hear anew these words of St. Paul, “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive!”  (II Corinthians 6:9) and I will remember that it is not for one politician to decide who is Christian or not. 

That job lies entirely in the hands of another, hands marked by nails driven by Pharisees old and new, hands I will trust solely for my eternal well-being. 

Let the journey begin …