I’ve heard it twice this week – and I think it might be true: the church is not in good shape! Both at the inaugural lecture at KCML[1], and again in reading a recently published book by North American writer Robin Meyers, the message being declared is: the church needs to change direction.
Meyers puts it eloquently: “For centuries, the church provided all the answers to all the questions that anyone might dare to ask. It claimed to hold the keys to heaven and wielded absolute power over the forces of darkness. The church built humanity’s cosmological house, and most people were either content to live there or afraid not to. In the Dark Ages ...it was the church that had a monopoly on hope—if not in this world, then at least in the next. It existed to have the last word on all things and the power to hide its mistakes and cover its scandals.
“The Renaissance and the rise of science put an end to all this. In trying to silence Galileo [and later, Darwin], the church gravely wounded itself. If it knew less than a man with a telescope about the heavens, then what did it really know about heaven?” [If its creation myth wouldn’t stand up to rational enquiry, then what did it know about God?] “In its persecution of saints, its rejection of mystics, its incestuous marriage to the Empire, its hypocrisy and paranoia about sex, its fear of allowing the common man or woman to read and interpret the Bible, the church has become for many a cartoon of self-preservation, institutional hypocrisy, and cosmic cluelessness.
“Yet humanity’s spiritual impulse remains... hard-wired into our brains as we seek transcendence in the midst of impermanence. Millions now call themselves “spiritual” but not “religious”—because they no longer trust the church as an institution. ...Every Sunday morning, countless people wake up with both a desire to go to church and a gnawing sense that it won’t be worth it. They know that they “ought” to go, but that if they do so it will be mostly out of habit or guilt rooted in childhood. Few wake with a sense of real longing or anticipation for what might happen. Many have accepted boredom as the cross one must bear for church attendance. They expect little more from worship than social respectability, often wrapped in the dull air of familiarity. The last thing anyone thinks about church is that it might be dangerous.
“.. Going to church is safe, not subversive. It builds character perhaps, but it does not threaten the status quo. More passion is generated by a service that runs too long than by the destruction of the planet.... Gone is the sign of the fish scratched on the doorpost to mark another secret meeting of the Jesus People. Gone is the common meal that was intended to feed the poor. Gone is the idea that to be baptized is to become a pacifist. Gone is the idea that a Christian should [n]ever hang on to more than [they] need in a world where so many have less than they need. Gone is the radical hospitality that made the first Christians a smelly, chaotic, unruly ship of fools. Gone, most of all, is the joy.”[2]
Ring any bells?
And so, as a way into reclaiming the joyful, subversive way of Jesus, I invite you to consider how much of your thoughts, emotions and life experiences from this past week you have brought with you to worship today. As a general rule, do you bring to church the ingredients of your daily life, with the expectation of making meaning, finding hope, having your daily thoughts, joys and sorrows, focussed within the horizon of mystery and possibility that is God? Do you expect whilst here at church, for passions to be stirred, minds to be challenged, life directions changed and your next week focussed in strange new directions, which will enable the transformation of the world? Or are you here primarily to find safety and respectability in the comfort and familiarity of habitual ritual, and confident belief? I would hope we come here, week by week, our theological telescopes and microscopes at the ready, our hearts and minds open and alive to new discoveries of the evolving, emerging experience of Godness in our lives. I would hope we come so that our very selves – and the world in which we live – will be transformed into a place of deeper compassion, restored justice and fullness of life for all? With the hope that we do come with that perspective, we can approach Mark’s Gospel-challenge, issued two millennia ago and offered again and again to those who want to follow Jesus, with an expectation that being church can be exciting and offers us a genuine reason for wanting to be part of a life-giving, joyful and subversive community.
In his brief and urgent account of Jesus’ ministry, Mark tells of healings and teachings piling up within a context of argument and misunderstanding. From a 21st century perspective, we might be sceptical: evil spirits cast out, skin diseases and paralysis miraculously vanish, people at death’s door unbelievably restored to life. But how different are these stories – in outcome, anyway – from the healing miracles we see today? We might use different words and give to them different explanations, but miracles continue to happen: psychotherapy and psychiatry release people from their inner demons; chemo and radiotherapy restore people to life; surgery gives sight to the blind and enables the lame to walk. And many of us participate first hand in the bringing about of these miracles. Science and medicine have opened up amazing possibility for healing miracles, the like of which would astound our 1st century faith forbears. And yet, there’s more to Mark’s healing stories. They have a twist – showing the healer in a surprising light. For this healer puts himself on the line. Whether it be with 1st or 21st century miracles, rules and rational reasons can always be called on to justify the argument that healing and wholeness are restricted commodities. But Jesus doesn’t see it that way. His way is more challenging. Like the religious leaders, who vehemently opposed Jesus’ work, like the disciples who constantly misunderstood, we too can become seduced by argument and misunderstanding from those not guided by Jesus’ subversive message. Listen:
A leper came to [Jesus] begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!"
To be clean in this context is not about hygiene; it’s about wholeness and restoration; being embraced and welcomed back into community. Jesus was freeing the excluded from the devastating detail of religious law, which pushed the ‘leper’ to the edges of society. Jesus, choosing to subvert the rules, welcomes the one whom religion and culture had said was untouchable, unworthy, unclean. Moved with compassion[3] (or as some ancient manuscripts read “filled with anger”, ‘which being the more difficult reading is also more likely to be the original one’[4]) reaching out and touching him – “Yes, I do choose” says Jesus. “Be made clean”.
Robin Meyers suggests that “Of all the reasons given for the decline of the church in our time, the number one reason is often left unsaid: no one really expects anything important to happen... if the church cannot return to its radical roots—driven by a truly subversive anti-imperial message and mission again—then it deserves to die ... the victim of its own intellectual, spiritual, and moral dishonesty. [5]
Is that where we are? Do we really not expect anything important to happen? I do hope not. Certainly I see glimmers of excitement, where challenging, subversive choices are made. I do see this community looking around, and like Jesus, being moved with pity, filled with compassion – and even anger – refusing to accept the status quo. It is that pity, compassion and anger which drives us as we seek change in so many different areas of our society: mental health care, binge drinking and family violence, to name just a few. As we reach out to those incarcerated in the prison at Milburn; as we stand alongside those seeking democracy in Myanmar, we hear the often silent voices of those who plead with us, saying “If you choose, you can make me whole”. To follow Jesus is to hear those pleas, to put aside the cultural assumptions, government restrictions, religious apathy and to say with him “I do choose; be clean, be whole.” The Church which stands with Jesus, making that choice and acting on it, will be subversive and joyful – and will never die.
[1] Mark Johnston, “Uneasy Rider: challenges facing ministry of word and sacrament in a post-missional climate”, Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership, Inaugural Lecture, 7 February 2012.
[2] Robin Meyers, The Underground Church: Reclaiming the subversive way of Jesus Jossey-Bass © 2012
[3] The New Greek English Interlinear New Testament Tyndale, 1990, p.123
[4] Mary Ann Tolbert in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible Abingdon, 2003, p.1808
[5] Robin Meyers, The Underground Church: Reclaiming the subversive way of Jesus Jossey-Bass © 2012
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