What Church????

I've been reading a few blogs and their commenters regarding what's going on, or not going on, at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church which is meeting right now in Anaheim, California. What gets decided there will have profound effects on how the Episcopal Church interacts with its GLBT parishioners and the "Anglican Communion." [I feel I have to keep putting the AC in quotes because it's so difficult to believe that such a thing exists any more, except as some club that requires a strict application and acceptance process. For some reason, the Episcopal Church--or a significant part of it--seems to be obsessed with not being left out of the Old Boys' Club and are prepared to sacrifice themselves, and a lot of others who haven't agreed to being sacrificed, in order to be in it. I suppose membership has its privileges, but the dues are excessive, IMO.)

Anyway, the commenter on one blog I was reading was cautioning the blog author against leaving the Episcopal Church if the decisions of General Convention went in an unfavorable direction to what was hoped. He said that no matter what, he intended to remain inside and to continue to be a thorn in the side of the Church. Leaving simply allows the Church to exercise the "out of sight, out of mind" process. Staying says "this isn't going to go away."

I think that's where I come from, too, in my own way. The catch for me is that not only don't I know what the Anglican Communion is any more, I don't know what the Church is, either. And I'm not sure I ever have. I've had a recurring dream my whole adult life that I'm trying to find "the church," but I never quite do. In this dream, I often can see the church and it seems to be within reaching distance, but I never quite reach it.

I've found this dream to be very profound in its revealing of my conscious and unconscious conflicts with what the Church is, isn't, should be, will never be, but might be. And added to the dream's message that I want to be in it, but may always be just outside it, struggling and moving toward it, is the present day upheaval that has made the definition of what the Church is even harder to hold onto.

But what I'm growing more and more to feel about my relationship with this bizarre creature we call the Church is that I'm destined to remain at least close enough to it to continue to be as much of a thorn in its side as I can manage! I don't know what that means right now and I sure don't know where any of this is going. As one other commenter on another blog put it, "My crystal ball sucks!" But all the fertilizer (read: s##t) being tossed around out there is simply nourishing my thorns and I'm taking aim!

She's Ba-a-a-ack!

I've been on a sort of hiatus from this blog for a while. I've been co-facilitating a book study on Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence and that's been taking up most of my reflection time. I'm still processing a lot of it and haven't quite known how to put the results into words. What I do know is that the emerging Church is real. I also know that I want to be part of it. One of the nuggets that has managed to solidify itself in my thoughts is something that Tickle refers to as the difference between "Believe, behave, belong," and "Belong, behave, believe."

One of the reasons I became an Episcopalian was because that particular expression of the Christian faith offered a refreshing latitude for where one could put one's self on the spiritual and theological spectrum and still be considered a good Episcopalian (if the various acronymed expressions of "Anglicanism" haven't made that an oxymoron these days).

My previous experience had been of the believe, behave, belong type. There were two checklists: one was for believing exactly what the rest of the community believed, the other was for behaving exactly as the rest of the community behaved--or at least how it said you should behave. Keep those two checklists up to date and you belonged. Mess up, and you didn't.

The belong, behave, believe pathway seems much more user-friendly, and spiritually and theologically inviting. Travelers are welcomed into the community as they are and given the freedom to walk around, look around, and join in the life of the group first. Then if they like what they see, they may begin to behave in ways that the group does because it's life-giving and rewarding. Finally, as a result of belonging, and behaving, the seeker comes to believe.

My reading of the Gospels says to me that this is how it worked with Jesus. People followed him around either close up or at a distance as they got to know him. Nowhere do I read that they were first given a litmus test of their beliefs before being allowed to join the crowd. As they liked what they saw, they began to emulate his behavior, and finally--when they were convinced of his authenticity and the value of his way over other ways--they came to believe.

It seems to me that it comes down to one basic question. Do we believe because we have to in order to belong, or do we belong because we want to believe?

Please Don't Sign on the Dotted Line

More stuff going on about the "Anglican Covenant," and it's only weeks now until the General Convention gathers in California in July. While I hope the gathering follows the Presiding Bishop's thought that there hasn't been enough time for The Episcopal Church to make an informed choice at this Convention about joining or not joining, I have an even stronger hope that no one will sign onto it, ever.

I and my friend and colleague, The Rev. Rita Nelson, are facilitating a book study on Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. If you haven't read it, make tracks to your nearest bookstore, or go to one on the internet, and get it. It's the right book for the right time. Tickle's premise is that we are smack dab in the middle of another re-formation, a phenomenon that comes along about every 500 years. Bishop Mark Dyer, whom she references in the introduction, compares the process we are in as our need to respond to the "intolerable carapace*" that the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity have become and that we struggle to shatter it so that renewal and new growth can happen.

One doesn't have to look too far to see this happening, not just in the Episcopal Church, but throughout Christendom--or what used to be Christendom. A recent article from the Episcopal News Service describes what is being called "the emergent Church." This is mainly about Episcopal circles, but the movement is happening in many other denominations as well. The Church is stretching its limbs and taking a deep breath of fresh air as it experiences the delicious freedom of being able to write new scripts for how it will respond to following in the way of Jesus. And, predictably, just as actively, those who are intimidated and frightened at such wide open spaces, are hunkering down and trying to nail the roof back on to keep from being blown away.

For me, it's the roof fixers who want a covenant and those who are enjoying the exciting possibilities still to be revealed by God who don't. I'm definitely in the second group. To sign onto this covenant is to crawl back under the intolerable carapace and submit again to the empowered structures of institutionalized Christianity. And just when the Church is moving and dancing, seeking and finding. To use a scriptural image, it's like quenching the dimly burning wick which is eager to catch fire again and bring warmth and light to an aching world. (Isaiah 42:3)

I'm not so naive as to think that in our heady enjoyment of a new freedom we won't make mistakes. But the one mistake I hope we won't make is to sign on the dotted line of an instrument that I fear is being created for the express purpose of curbing any freedom of thought that differs from what the empowered structures want us to have. Our freedom may lead us to stumble and scrape our knees, but along with this awakening Church is what Annie Dillard calls "the waking God [who] may draw us out to where we can never return." Let's not return to the carapace. Its tight structure may promise safety, but its inflexibility will never draw us out.

*The protective hard shell-like shield that covers the back of an animal (such as a crab or a turtle).

Stripping

I almost didn't go to the Maundy Thursday service last night. I was tired. I wanted a warm shower, a DVD, and bed. But the tug of Holy Week I mentioned in my previous post was too strong, and Maundy Thursday liturgy is my second favorite in the Church Year (Easter Vigil is number one).

The highlight, if that's the appropriate term, of this service for me is the stripping of the altar. It seems ironic that such a heart-wrenching act would be the part I look forward to. Yet, it has always pulled me into it, especially in my active ministry when I was the one who presided over it. Some of it goes too deep to be articulated in words. But as I sat in the congregation last night, an unaccustomed view for me, I thought about it and about the larger stripping of the Church that I think, and hope, is going on.

The stripping of the altar is an act of grief, a symbol of loss and mourning. And if we can see what's happening in the Church and Christianity today as a similar act, perhaps we may understand the process of what has to happen in order to get to the other side of our distress.

We're being laid bare. All the layers of "stuff" we've added to our understanding of what the life, death and resurrection of Jesus meant and means is being painfully stripped from us. If you've read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, you may remember Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He's a persnickety little pain-in-the-neck who makes all his fellow travelers miserable. One morning he awakes to find he's covered with a horrible dragon skin. No matter how he struggles, he can't get rid of it. Aslan the Lion appears and tells him that the only way is to have it pulled off bit by bit. With his sharp claws, Aslan helps Eustace strip off the terrible covering that has adhered to him. The process is excruciatingly painful and when the last piece has been wrenched off, Eustace's skin is raw and red. Aslan tells him to dip himself in a refreshing, cooling pool and as he does so, he begins to recognize his better self that was underneath the dragon skin.

No analogy can be pushed too far, yet I believe the Church and Christianity can learn from Eustace's experience. Perhaps not all our accretions are bad, but in order to discern which are the good ones and which are the bad, we may need to submit the Church and Christianity to the same painful process. Yes, it hurts. But when we have allowed the accretions to be stripped off, we can bathe in a refreshing, cooling, cleansing pool and begin to recognize the better part of ourselves as the people of God who follow in the way of Jesus.

There's something beautiful about the bare altar, the empty aumbry, and the darkened vigil light. They allow us to see the unadorned structure on which the rest is built. Let's not be in too much of a hurry to cover it up. Sometimes less is more.

O still, small voice of calm

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire

Thy coolness and Thy balm;

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;

Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,

O still, small voice of calm.

John Whittier, 1872

It's Holy Week, again, the first since I officially retired. There's a delicious freedom in not being responsible for multiple services and marathon sermon preparation this year. But the old tug that this time has always exerted on me is still present, though in different ways. I feel as if I've stepped back from the experience, kind of like one steps back from an impressionistic painting in order to see the full picture, rather than just the individual brush strokes and dots that go into its creation. There's certainly a deep sense of participation when one is the Celebrant of this unique seven days' events--saying the words of consecration over bread and wine, washing the feet of parishioners with whom one has not shared anything more intimate than a handshake at the door, stripping the altar, throwing the black veil over the altar cross and turning the lights out.

But there's something just as powerful in being a step or two removed from being in the center this time around. And I find that distance helpful as I listen to the cri de coeur--the heart cry-- of the Anglican community, all parts of it, known and unknown, rising to an even louder pitch, at least it seems so to me, as we approach this holiest of all span of days. Perhaps as we retrace the anguished steps of Jesus through his final attempts to bring humankind back to its senses, we struggle for some way to express our angst that somewhere along the way we've all taken leave of our senses. We're all trying to find where to place our feet where the ground won't crumble underneath them and in our stumbling we cry out against our pain and against our own clumsiness. If only there were clearer road signs that we could confidently follow, knowing they'd bring us where we want and need to be.

If ever the Church did something right, it was in establishing Holy Week and its observances as the way to Easter. It's inevitable that we will stumble and curse our awkwardness, but the promise is that if, with God's help, we keep getting up again we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is that along with the roughness of what's underfoot is the distracting howling of strange beasts and the cackling of other hysterical creatures dinning in our ears as we plow onward. Somewhere in the cacophony we suspect there are some voices that are giving us the right directions, but it's hard to discern them through the uproar. Our spiritual GPS is finding it hard to connect with the right signal.

As I reflected on some of this, I was reminded of the hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind." I confess that the masculine language of the first phrase has been daunting for me, but the rest of the poetry has always brought peace when there was none. Above are a couple of the verses that have been especially helpful. And as I further reflected on this, I thought of something that Phyllis Tickle has written in her book The Great Emergence which I'm reading right now.

She addresses this "mighty upheaval" that all of Christianity, as well as other faith traditions, is experiencing. What I like about her approach is that she offers a "still, small voice of calm" amid the clamor. Each time that these hinge times, as she terms them, occur--usually about every 500 years, three things have always resulted:

• A new more vital form of Christianity does indeed emerge.


• The organized expression of Christianity which up until then had been the dominant one is reconstituted into a more pure and less ossified expression of its former self.


• Every time the incrustations of an overly established Christianity have been broken open, the faith has spread--and been spread--dramatically into new geographic and demographic areas, thereby increasing exponentially the range and depth of Christianity's reach as a result of its time of unease and distress.

What could be more appropriate for our reflection in this Holy Week, in the midst of our distress? The traces of death to resurrection are clearly seen in this voice of calm. As we walk again the path to the cross, with all its pain and noisy shouting, we can take hope that this earthquake, wind, and fire that we now experience contains within it the voice of calm that will point us in the right direction.

Camping Out

While airing my views on churchly things over the last months, I've also been inwardly reflecting on what my idea of a New Church would look like. Knowing that whatever forms and formulas we might create to renew and re-form the Church will inevitably be the work of human beings, I suspect that some of my hopes are unattainable, at least in this world! Yet it may be okay to dream them anyway and to explore what a realistic version of my "perfect" Church could be.

So, this post is a beginning--but only a beginning--to the process of describing a new way of being the People of God Who Walk in the Way of Jesus. I've used that last phrase intentionally, because I believe that the less we use the word "church," the more freed up we can be to imagine something new. And, coincidentally, it echoes what the first followers of Christ were called--those who follow The Way. (I'd like to take up the idea of The Way in another post because it, too, can be a loaded concept, but for now I want to continue with my original direction.)

My first dream for this re-formed community would be that it claims no particular edifice as its location or identity. Having buildings, in my experience, has been one of the greatest energy and resource draining factors in the life of the Christian movement. Their beauty is certainly a testament to the human spirit's ability and desire to express its response to God through visual creativity. Yet as history has rolled on and the human spirit has come to seek a less confining venue for its need and desire to connect with The Holy, our buildings become beautiful but expensive balls and chains around our feet. The weight of them tugs heavily at our efforts to walk in the Way. We have become seduced into believing that building and maintaining them is an expression of good stewardship. And the seduction doesn't end there. Its powerful attraction beckons us to marry our buildings and even be willing to die as viable communities rather than divorce them.

In The Nomadic Church, Bill Easum and Pete Theodore write, "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, $7.3 billion [that's $7,300,000,000] was spent on religious construction in 2000." They go on to say that today "it costs between five hundred thousand and a million dollars to plant a church in the traditional way!" And that's only to put the buildings up. Let's not even go in the direction of how much it costs for yearly maintenance on those buildings erected in 2000 and all the thousands of other religious constructions that have existed for hundreds of years. It's impossible, as well, to measure the cost in lost ministry opportunities and the price we pay in human angst as a once-thriving Christian community watches itself go down a black hole, struggling to survive while pouring all its resources into a building that sucks them up like a giant sponge that never reaches capacity. Nor do we want to go in the direction of contemplating what the implications of "owning" property and buildings has had on the current situation in The Episcopal Church.

Are permanent gathering places really necessary for the People Who Walk in the Way? The Biblical models of God's gathered communities doesn't particularly defend this thought. Yes, there was the Temple and there were synagogues. Yet Jesus, in whose way we presumably walk, was an itinerate preacher. Gospel stories imply that he visited those places occasionally. But the Temple was eventually destroyed and I don't think Jesus would have wept over that or suggested that people throw lots of money into building it again or maintaining its upkeep. I even recall a story in which he was angry enough to throw furniture around in that edifice over its fundraising activities. If, as we keep telling our children, the Church is not the building but the people, then why are our budgets always top-heavy on the Buildings and Property items?

I feel the larger picture we glean from Biblical models is that the authentic community of those who walk in the ways of God is a community on the move. We may sojourn together from time to time (in fact the word parish comes from the Greek word for those who sojourn together), but sojourning and taking up permanent residence are not the same thing. To sojourn is to rest temporarily between parts of a journey. We don't need a permanent dwelling for that. A tent, or a storefront or a schoolroom or someone's home will do.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. . .They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11:8-10, 13b-16)

Are we, the People Who Walk in the Way, willing to set out on the next leg of this journey, not knowing where we are to go? Willing to live in tents and be strangers in the land? Always aware that the life of those who are on this Way is a moveable feast?

Theological Garage Sale

At a Lenten program this week the comment was made that about every 500 years we human beings have a need to churn everything up, especially in matters of faith, theology, religion, church, or whatever. It was Bishop Mark Dyer who originally compared this activity to a theological garage sale, getting rid of the stuff we no longer want or that isn't serving a useful purpose, so that we can make space for renewal and new growth.

It's been about 500 years since the historical period we call The Reformation. Mention the word reformation and we start thinking of Martin Luther, indulgences, documents nailed to church doors and general mayhem in ecclesiastical circles. One group is collecting items for a giant yard sale and the other group is defending the attic door, declaring that all its contents are sacred and must be kept until death do us part. And there may even be a third group, which I often eye wistfully, who just want to create a bonfire of the whole business and start over. We could all stand around the blaze, holding hands and singing nostalgic songs of how life used to be. But eventually the warmth would die out and we'd have to figure out what to do with the ashes and, even more importantly, what to put in their place.

So, all in all, I guess the garage sale isn't a bad idea. And as long as we're going to do some serious housecleaning, it may be a good time to think about why all this stuff was so important to us in the first place. The elephant with the clock in its stomach is a no-brainer—we only kept it because Aunt Martha gave it to us and now she's gone to her reward and we don't have to bring it out every time she comes to visit. Kind of like the bishop's chair at one parish I served. It was not exactly a thing of beauty, far from comfortable to sit in, and it took three or four brawny people to lug it from the back of the church to the front when the Bishop was coming. Eventually, it was decided to just leave it in the back, taking up significant space in the narthex, and use a decent-looking but much more comfortable and portable chair on visitation day. A good garage sale decision, as far as it went, except the old chair still hung around, oozing ugliness all over the narthex.

We Episcopalians are famous for these kinds of decisions. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer is a great example. We were afraid of losing people if we did away completely with the 1928 liturgies, so we kept them somewhat intact, but added a bunch of contemporary ones because, theologically and linguistically, they were more in tune with the times. And what we ended up with was a tool so schizophrenic and user unfriendly that many, if not most, parishes these days don't even use it because it's too intimidating for both Episcopalians and people who seek out the Episcopal Church from other backgrounds. And we lost people anyway.

Decisions about what to keep and what to put out on the curb are always difficult. My fear about what's happening right now in the Church is that in order to keep the attic from being divested of its ancient treasures, we're willing to put people out in the yard because there isn’t room for them and they're expendable.