Some of these questions have to do with the effectiveness of the church as a consumer item which can do something for “me” or the extent to which the church is an agency of change that will accomplish some generally regarded good or the way in which the church can serve as an instrument for cultural or political persuasion. Pastors are sometimes encouraged to judge their effectiveness in responding to these questions, and by the resulting increase in the number of members their congregations can record or the impact they can make on their communities. These are not unimportant indices of pastoral leadership. The Gospel of Luke-Acts seems very interested in precisely these kinds of criteria, noting the numbers by which the early church grew and the way in which the church’s influence was spread over the Mediterranean world.
Yet as I listened to the discussion and occasionally bit my tongue, I wondered what it would look like if our determination to be relevant succeeded, and the church became a more effective institution led by excellent managers and therapists who could provide the necessary religious commodities that consumers of our culture would like. Having done so, would we have lost our souls, forgotten how to speak the strange language of grace, where so much growth is underground (Cf. John 12:24: “ . . . .unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit . . . .”) and where what is measurable is often what is of least importance? I know that arguing in this way can be an effective way of dodging hard realities and giving into laziness or sentimentality. There is more than one kind of “cheap grace.” But I also know that we are dealing here with mysteries of the gospel that beggar description and simply cannot be reduced to “measurable objectives” or the trivialities of body count.
So what do I want? I hope that our seminary trains pastors who are at least uncomfortable with the culture’s rush to measure things, who are not afraid of being measured but who know the church will be judged not by the culture’s standards or its own, but by the God whose judgment is both more severe and more gracious than we can conceive. I believe that the word of the gospel always finds its own hearers and gathers them together in community. It may not be the community we would have chosen or even would want. It may not look like us or be what we are used to, but it will not be one we have programmed or targeted or managed, but one the Holy Spirit insists on giving us. The church, Will Willimon reminds us, unlike a seminary or university, does not get to have an admissions department. We have to worship and work with whomever Jesus drags to church that day.13 My hope is simply that we train students to love and to serve that ridiculous church. I think if we do that, we will find that the church will become both more transformative and a more interesting place to be, such that even the culture will grow curious about such a strange body in its midst.
February 1, 2012
In 1919 William Butler Yeats published his poem, The Second Coming, whose sentiments have almost become a cliche today. He was writing in the aftermath of World War I, yet the poem articulates what many of us are feeling in the church today: a sense that the centrifugal forces that are pulling us apart are more powerful than the glue that holds us together. “Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold . . . .”
The other much-quoted line in the poem expresses what seems all too true in our culture and religious wars of the day: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” I suppose that line could apply to many of the political campaigns that are surrounding us at the moment, but they might also apply to the politics of the church, describing a poor choice between a wise and wearied indifference on the one hand, and the passions of entrepreneurial intensity on the other.
It seems strange that largely affluent, comfortable, unthreatened American Presbyterians have found it so easy to pull apart, so hard to stay together, so exciting to construct a new denomination, so tiresome to bear with each other in the old one. I wonder why we are so angry today, why resentment provides such powerful rhetorical fuel for our arguments and divisions. Resentment adds by dividing; it increases by subtracting. And it is very powerful.
So what is the opposite of resentment? And how do we find that stuff? How do we find the grace to bear with each other? The church, Calvin reminds us, exists where the gospel is proclaimed and the “visible word” of the sacrament bears to us Christ himself. Word and sacrament do not bear to us instruments of social policy or denominational purity. They bear to us Jesus Christ, whose life among us is a social policy, whose Passion liberates us from our worst and most earnest passions. As Paul writes, “He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is head of the body, the church . . . .” (Col 1:17, 18) In him all things hold together. Which means, I take it, that resentment dies as we are drawn to him. His cross bleeds our anger away.
The most prophetic word that can be said today has to do with what it means to be the church. We know how to serve this or that political end; we know how to engage with this or that righteous cause. What we do not know is what it means that “in him all things hold together.” We would rather grow weary with our resentments and divisions, angrily and no doubt passionately inventing a more spiritual body. Splits happen, we tell ourselves. Divorces are sadly prevalent. That’s the way it is.
I don’t know the solution, much less the best ecclesial strategy. I do know that there is absolutely no point in trying to justify ourselves. There is enough sin around for everyone. And self-justification, no matter how righteous, is finally boring and tedious work. And if, in fact “in him all things hold together,” then we are surely liberated from such tedium and called instead to rejoice in his word of hope. Such liberation deprives our many divisions of the honor of taking them quite as seriously as they demand. In any case, the only appropriate song that answers to our separations and resentments is doxological in nature, a song sung not defiantly or ironically but happily and truly in the knowledge that not even we, with all our “passionate intensity,” can tear apart what Christ has joined together.
February 15, 2012
This past week our seminary has been enriched by the presence of Dr. Darrell Guder. His lectures on the missional church have reminded me of another great missional churchman, Lesslie Newbigin. Many of our students have read Newbigin’s book, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. In that book, there is a chapter entitled, “The Logic of Election,” in which Newbigin exegetes Romans 9–11 to show that the God of Jesus Christ always saves by electing the “wrong people.”14 For example, God employs the Jews to save the Gentiles, a scandalous thing to do, particularly since the Jews, in Paul’s judgment, have rejected the gospel. But, he insists, the promises of God are irrevocable, and Israel remains God’s people. Their rejection of the gospel only makes room for the Gentiles to come in. Conversely, the inclusion of the Gentiles is meant to make Israel jealous, and though a hardening has come upon Israel, it will only last until the full number of Gentiles has come in. But when that happens, to quote Paul, “all Israel will be saved.” (Rom11:26a)
Newbigin’s point is that the Gentiles weren’t particularly looking for the Jews to save them, and the Jews weren’t particularly looking to be saved by the Gentiles, the last people from whom they would expect help to come.
If all of this seems a bit contrived to you, think of all the places in scripture where people are saved by the wrong person. The man who fell among thieves is not saved by his fellow countrymen or co-religionists but by the wrong guy, a Samaritan. Joseph’s brothers are saved from starvation by the wrong guy, the guy they had considered murdering and in fact had sold into slavery. The mighty warrior Naaman is healed by paying attention to a little Jewish slave girl, hardly the right person. Jonah considers himself the wrong guy for this job and eventually sulks because the wrong people repent. The “apostle to the Gentiles” is the Jew, Saul, who was bent on persecuting the church, holding the garments while others stoned a follower of the Way. He became Paul who appeared to many as absolutely the wrong guy for this job. God’s people
