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 …

Sometimes the Catholic Church can be a real pill

“All worldly things are placed under the dominion and power of the church.”  Unum Sanctum (Giles of Rome, 1302)

It seems we haven’t come very far these past 710 years. 

Once upon a time Popes crowned Emperors.  Once upon a time, Bishops ruled territories, collected taxes, made laws, executed civic justice in the name of the God whose vestments they festooned.  Once upon a time the political served the behest of the clerical, the corruption of worldly power infesting Prince and Pope equally, indistinguishably.  Once upon a time both church and government failed because neither knew their place. 

But once upon a time (as I read history) a German monk and his reforming colleagues broke the shackles of a world imprisoned by the theocracy of the totalitarian church, separating the spiritual from the political, empowering each to own individual, unique, distinct place and purpose.  We consider this newly birthed understanding an enlightenment, for it brought in the modern age, made possible modern democracy and modern government and modern people.   

Today we describe the Islamist tendencies and Jihadist atrocities of our Muslim brethren as a barbarism that we long ago abandoned, a knee-jerk rejection of a society that cannot be rejected, a less-than-quaint antiquity of a desire to subdue people with religious tyranny that we have long since learned is wrong and cannot function.  We think it wrong in their aspiration and practice. 

So why should it be ok in ours?

The unmistakable subtext at work in the description of insurance coverage for contraception as an assault on religion exudes the musty odor of a longing for those good ‘ole medieval days when  Pope spoke and Emperor did, when the church’s word was the world’s law, binding, unquestioned good.  Dominionism, even for those who deny the nomenclature, is bubbling up in 2012 in a strange alignment of protestant and catholic believers who decry the strangulation of personal liberty at the hand of government but favor of the denial of freedom at the hand of the church. 

Forget for one moment the creation destroying and justice annihilating implications of the church’s denial of contraception or the theologically pregnant equation of fertility with justification.  Overlook Catholic institutions that already provide insurance plans to their employees, Catholic or otherwise, which include contraception. Disregard that almost all Catholics in this country in fact use contraception. Accept the right of the Roman Catholic or any other church to dictate their religious belief to their followers in whatever way they choose with whatever means are at their disposal. 

Remember, instead, that the Catholic church, like the Lutheran Church or the Evangelical Church or the Mormon church is in this time and place a church, surely and merely a spiritual body residing in the midst of a very non-spiritual kingdom, where we are all called by the God who created both church and government to function as creatures of this world, who calls us to submit ourselves to the law of this kingdom even as we live by the grace won for us in Christ’s. 

“For anyone who desires to reside in a city is bound to know and observe the laws under whose protection he lives, no matter whether he is a believer or, at heart, a scoundrel or knave.”  (Martin Luther, Introduction to the Small Catechism)

Asking the church to respect the laws of the land in which it resides and works is not waging war on the church.  Not letting the church dictate what laws it will follow or what laws it will not is not waging war on religion.  No, pretending to be victimized by the big bad government is just a clever, but disingenuous way to hide the age-old desire of the church to rule over it.  No one is asking believers, Catholic or otherwise, to practice contraception if they find it against their faith.  But it is right, necessary and good to ask the institution of the church, a citizen of the world, to know its place and let the government govern. 

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars,” said Jesus. 

 
Keep your faith.  Practice it well.  But let the church be the church.  And let the government do its job. 

A Hard Word to a Cold World

They were lined up waiting for us. 

Politely, to be sure, patiently even.  Standing in the cold (and thank heavens it wasn’t a truly cold night as a January night should have been) with minimal coats and few, if any, hats or gloves.  Waiting for the arrival of a spoonful of warm, if not particularly tasteful food, a few slices of bread and a couple of ounces of juice. 

They were lined up waiting for not much.  But it was all they had to wait for.

The real face of American poverty, standing in a deserted parking lot on a cold dark evening is a stark reminder that we are not all living in the same country.  For many, for too many, for far too many of our neighbors and fellow citizens, poverty is not a statistical anomaly or a poor economic outcome, it is a daily disaster, a personal struggle for survival, an unsecured free fall.  For those few folks on that one January evening, waiting for a bite to eat before they shuffled back to their substandard housing or the car they lived in or the steam grate they slept over, it’s something to be actually worried about.

Mitt Romney, candidate to lead all of the people of this nation and be caretaker for its soul, did not, as many commentators, make a political gaffe this week.  He promulgated our great national lie; that poverty is just a minor inconvenience that affects a small portion of the population who are kept fat and lazy by overdone government largesse and a vast and effective network of religious, charitable and beneficent persons and organizations. 

It’s a lie – not because there isn’t help, but because help is not a good enough answer to the real truth of poverty in America.

Fifteen percent of Americans, or 46 million human beings, men, women and children, live in poverty right now.  That means absolutely that they do not have enough money for food, clothing and shelter, certainly not at the same time.  More so, thirty percent of us live within the reach of poverty, perhaps having just enough money for the most minimal needs.  Yes, those have TV’s, but they don’t have reliable transportation, or health care, or money to send their children to college.  And sixty percent of Americans, the experts say, live within one missed paycheck, one unaffordable medical disaster, of increasing the ranks of the most poor among us. 

No, Mr. Romney, the poor are not fine, they are not kept by the so-called “safety net,” which at its worst, prolongs their suffering and never, even at its best, changes their circumstances.  No, they are not just a few percent of surplus population (to borrow the phrase from another well-known Scrooge) who can be disregarded for the sake of some more important political demographic. 

Actually, I am not worried about the poor, either.  I am scared to death for them. 

As long as we live in a country where care for the least among us is treated as a hobby, a diversion for those needing occasional penance or the few who can afford the luxury of feigned, sometime interest, the empty stomachs and the long lines waiting for a warm meal will grow only longer and longer.  Until it becomes our national responsibility, our common calling, then we will share together the guilt and the savage price of the poor among us. 

A wise man wrote some 500 years ago:  “Nobody ought to go begging among Christians. It would even be a very simple matter to make a law to the effect that every city should look after its own poor, if only we had the courage and the intention to do so.”   (Martin Luther, a Letter to the Christian Nobility).

Our apologies, Dr. Luther, for our failure to hear your word, and for our continual selfish willingness to tell ourselves lies in the face of our Lord’s sacred charge.

They are still lined up, waiting for us.