Readings: Jeremiah 31:31-34; John 12:20-26
In memory of Rev. David Clark
Friend, Companion and Guide
When I announced to the discussion group last Monday night that we would observe Anniversary Day holiday tomorrow – and so not meet - one response was “oh - so we can’t have a go at the Church then?” Isn’t that what many of us would like to do? I imagine most of us, one time or another would like to sail in with our many criticisms and challenges about this, institution, which seems to fail us so often and, which Benedictine nun Joan Chichester eloquently describes as a ‘dysfunctional family’ of which she is ‘a loyal member’.[1] For some of us, our criticism is directed at the church universal – for others, it’s more finely tuned towards our own particular denomination or parish. I remember having to deal once with a student for ministry, who had had one of those bruising encounters with her local parish. She was devastated. “But, I expected better of the church”, she cried. A cry echoed by so many.
One of our conversation partners from recent weeks, Bill Loader suggests that “The Church - any congregation - and the Church as a whole is an odd mixture, a strange assortment of people. Some of us are in the Church out of habit and tradition, without much commitment to what it is all about - in fact, often blocking any initiatives to be relevant to the world around us. Others of us are there by habit and tradition because we have always tried to walk the way of Jesus in [our]lives. We were there when it was what everyone used to do; we are there when it’s out of fashion.”[2]
Dan Clendenin, who hosts the Journey with Jesus web site, considers some of the very good reasons why so many people don’t stay the distance – and choose to leave the church: “Tops on most people's list are gross hypocrisy, violence, and intolerance” he writes. “In the name of God's love Christians have slaughtered Muslims, Jews and Native Americans [and, we could add, Aboriginal Australians]. We have humiliated and exploited slaves, women and gays. Clerical pedophilia has devastated thousands of families. And whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant, fellow Christians have persecuted each other with similar sadistic cruelty.”
“Christians have burned books, defended the dubious, supported pseudo-science, and avoided hard questions. In movies like Babette's Feast (1987) and Chocolat (2000) church is portrayed as a place of moralistic, hair-splitting, repressed people who never have any fun and who don't really believe what they say they do. In his book What's So Amazing About Grace?, Phil Yancey tells the story of a prostitute who, when she was encouraged to go to church for help, responded, “Church! Why would I ever go there? I already feel terrible about myself. They would just make me feel worse.”
“Other people leave [the] church because our pious platitudes contrast so sharply with unanswered prayers, bitter disappointments, intellectual doubts, nagging questions, or life traumas”...[sometimes, people even leave to save their faith].
“Still others leave [the] church because they find it irrelevant, mediocre, boring or perfunctory. In her essay "An Expedition to the Pole," Annie Dillard describes her church experience: "Week after week I was moved by the pitiableness of the bare linoleum-floored sacristy which no flowers could cheer or soften, by the terrible singing I so loved, by the fatigued Bible readings, the lagging emptiness and dilution of the liturgy, the horrifying vacuity of the sermon, and by the fog of dreary senselessness pervading the whole, which existed alongside, and probably caused, the wonder of the fact that we came; we returned; we showed up; week after week, we went through it."[3]
Bill Loader invites us into a consideration of a wider vision of the church than some of us might usually hold.
“The Church is the local congregation; but it is also bigger than that. It is worldwide and it reaches back across nearly 2000 years.” Loader suggests “We can think of the Church lying across the landscape of history in the shape of a cross: it reaches out across the world and it reaches back across history and also forward into the future. The vertical aspect is the one which makes me feel [at] one with Christians down through the ages, right back to the first disciples and Jesus himself. ...The horizontal aspect is the Church across all the peoples and cultures of today’s world. We sense this when we pray..talk about [or participate in actions with] people outside our own local congregation and don’t just focus always on ourselves.”[4]
One of the major theological metaphors for the church is that of the Body of Christ. I invite you to think about that metaphor for a moment. As I get older, I find I become more aware of my body – its limitations, its vulnerability, its inability always to heal – but I also become aware of the way in which life continues to emerge and evolve from out of such fragility and mortality (one of the many delights of being a grandparent). When we look at the life, death and transformed possibilities in Jesus, we see this same broken vulnerability and re-creative power. The church – the Body of Christ – never perfect, but offering hope that in spite of all its failings, might actually point us to the possibilities of a new relationship in God to which Jeremiah pointed all those years ago; hope that even in the brokenness – or perhaps even because of it – transformation emerges.
This last week, the church farewelled one of our truly inspiring ministers: Rev. David Clark of St Luke’s Remuera, who died at the age of 64. Speaking at David’s funeral Rev. Dr. Allan Davidson[5], spoke of how David had, with great integrity, maintained his ordination and membership of the church in spite of the incredible odds and personal hatred, which he faced.
“Coming out as a gay man at the Invercargill Presbyterian General Assembly in 1991 was an act of great courage. David was unwilling to back down and to compromise. He stood at that Assembly before the Moderator confronting the Assembly with the reality they were debating. David was deeply wounded by the church. He felt acutely the rejection that not only he but other Gay and Lesbian Christians experienced. Hurtful things were said about him and sent to him. Yet David by his courage helped give Gay Christians a place to stand in the church.”
“For a time David withdrew from the courts of the church – hurt, angry, sad at the way in which he and others were being treated. [His parish] community however loved and embraced him and became even more his family. He sometimes wondered what it was that he had done to deserve this without realising that he was the reason for this. What he gave so selflessly to others – his love and friendship – was returned to him in abundance. He also taught [others] a lesson in forgiveness as he came to a position where he let go of any bitterness and recrimination he felt towards those who had hurt him. He realised that to be truly inclusive he had to accept and work with those who were hostile to what he stood for.”
“David eventually became the Convenor of the Auckland Presbytery Executive. His superb management skills came to the fore. Although some people he now worked with disagreed with David theologically on attitudes of inclusiveness and the recognition of gay people in ordained leadership they recognised David’s integrity, his considerable gifts and his love, albeit a critical love, for the church.... If the Presbyterian Church wants to honour David, then it will revisit its attitude towards Gay Christians in ordained leadership and promote the inclusive church which David himself embodied.”
There’s an absolutely mythic story about Jesus’ arrival in heaven where a vast host of angels greeted him. After the formalities, they asked him whom he had left behind on earth to finish the work he had begun. Jesus replied, ‘Just a small group of men and women who love me.’ ‘That’s all?’ asked the angels, astonished. ‘What if this tiny group should fail?’ Jesus replied: ‘I have no other plans.’[6]
The task of the church is to be the tiny group of people who pick up on that plan and go on the journey Jesus sketched out for us. We look to others to help us on the way. David Clark was one such person. The Jesus David knew comes to all loyal members of this rather dysfunctional family, as David put it ‘in identification with our common life, with our service to others, our struggles for justice and peace in this tortured world, to give us more passion to transform that world and overcome darkness, desolation and defeat however people experience them”. [7] This is the Jesus who calls us to be the church and the one with whom we journey – even, and especially, all the way to Jerusalem.
[1] Quoted in "A Loyal Member of a Dysfunctional Family" Why I Go to Church - Daniel B. Clendenin, For Sunday January 16, 2011 http://www.journeywithjesus.net/
[2] William Loader, Dear Kim: This is what I believe http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKChurch.htm
[3] "A Loyal Member of a Dysfunctional Family" Why I Go to Church - Daniel B. Clendenin.
[4] William Loader, Dear Kim: This is what I believe http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/DKChurch.htm
[5] Allan Davidson “Remembering The Revd David Clark” The Community of St Luke 21 March 2012
[6] W. J. Bausch, A world of stories for preachers and teachers. 1998.p.336-337
[7] David Clark, “Easter this year finds David Clark believing less, and knowing more...”, 12 April 2009,
http://www.stlukes.org.nz/?sid=42238 (quoted by Allan Davidson)
I think Inclusiveness of the church is very important. And Konx Church has given me this kind of feeling.
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