I spent the last couple of
days in Auburn, where the Sierra foothills start to rise out of the Central
Valley, east of Sacramento. I was at a
retreat center run by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy, but, while the event
I was attending was called a retreat, it’s purpose wasn’t prayer or meditation. It was a “retreat” more or less in the sense
that corporations or large non-profits use the term—which is to say it was more
like a three-day meeting. Actually, it
was two meetings. From Thursday
afternoon through Friday afternoon I met with the Bishop, and his assisting
priest, whose formal title in Episcopalese is Canon to the Ordinary, and five
of the six other regional deans in our Diocese.
Then, the members of the Diocesan Board of Trustees arrived, and we had
more meetings on Friday evening, and yesterday morning. They were still at it when I left yesterday
after lunch, and in fact, they are meeting again this morning as we speak.
I won’t try to tell you much what
those meetings were about, not because we talked about anything secret, or things
you wouldn’t understand, but because I kind of assume you wouldn’t be all that interested. There were moments over the past couple of
days when I wasn’t interested myself, but not actually that many. I came away tired, because I didn’t sleep
very well, and there wasn’t much time for exercise, and because, as an
introvert, there’s only so much time in meetings I can take. But I also came away feeling lifted up by the
experience of being with people I have come to love and respect, with whom I
can speak and hear about questions that really matter in the work that I do.
This hasn’t always been the
case when I’ve come away from Diocesan meetings. There was a time in the past when I would have
said that the work of governance and oversight in the church is tedious, and
alienating, and dull. When I try to
understand what has changed between then and now, I could certainly relate it
to the people I get to work with now, from the Bishop on down. But, to be honest, I think what has changed
most of all is me. I used to go to those
meetings and feel like an outsider, like someone who wasn’t really part of the
tribe, but now I feel like I belong. I
have a defined and significant role to play.
People want to hear what I have to say—they respect it and take it seriously,
and as a result I can say what I’m really thinking.
Like it or not, we human
beings exist in community. And like it
or not, that means meetings. It means
governance, and decision-making, working through conflict, settling questions
of authority. It means politics. “Politics” has come to be almost a dirty word
in our vocabulary, a word we say with a mixture of cynicism, wariness, and
contempt. But I’m convinced that this is
only because we are alienated from the process.
Politics becomes tedious, and ugly, and draining, and frustrating, when
we don’t feel like we belong, when we feel like no one is listening. It is sad to see this happen in any context, but
it is especially hard to see it happen in the church. Because at least part of what brings people to
church is the need and desire to belong.
And our responsibility is to
show them that they do. Not by telling
them the rules and behaviors they have to adopt, or the things they have to say
they believe, or by spelling out for them what are the steps to formal
membership in our organization. The church
is truly itself when it shows people with actions that speak for themselves that
they belong here, in the broadest possible sense. They belong here in the church, but more than
that they belong here in this world.
They have a place and a purpose, and a voice, and a name that is theirs because
the God who made them and loves them gave it to them.
Our identity as Christians,
and this thing called “church,” is something we belong to, not something that
belongs to us. And one of the basic
teachings of our faith is that we belong only by the grace of God. The teachings of the New Covenant tell us
that, although we are Gentiles, it was God’s will that in Jesus Christ we
should be made fellow-heirs of the promises of God. We are, In other words, honorary Jews. So when the Hebrew scriptures say that we are
a people created by God for his glory, that it is God who formed us and called
us by name, for we are God’s sons and daughters, those words are for us. But the whole history of prophecy in Israel
is a warning to us that this gift is never fixed into a final form. Who we are, as people who are precious in the
sight of God, is an identity that has to be continually renewed by the creating
spirit of God, if it is not to become an idol of our own making.
The story of John the Baptist
sums up that prophetic warning in a powerful way. The baptism that John offered at the Jordan
wasn’t just an individual act of contrition, it was a collective act of
repentance for Israel’s sins, and her helplessness to renew her own identity as
the people of God. What used to work
isn’t working any more. Things that used
to make sense have become absurd, even deadly, because the conditions have
changed. Something new is needed, and we
can’t begin to know what it is unless we first admit that we are at a dead end,
we are stuck and don’t know how to move forward. We need new insight, new energy, new
inspiration, so that together we can find a new way to live. And if that is to be true renewal, and not
just the unconscious repetition of patterns from the past, it has to come from
God—it has to be not simply renewal, but re-creation.
We can’t forget that this is
where Jesus stepped onto the stage of history.
This is where his public ministry began.
Jesus, who had no sins of his own to repent, nevertheless went to
receive John’s baptism of repentance. He
did it, not out of a sense of personal guilt, but because he identifies himself
completely with his people, with their suffering and desperation and longing
for a complete and radical renovation. He
joins in with their collective plea for forgiveness by being baptized in the
Jordan, showing he is right there with them, stuck, at a dead end, sharing
their need for the new beginning that only God can give.
And that is where our own
Christian ministry begins. People often
express outrage or at the least confusion over the idea that their perfect
little babies need cleansing from their sins.
That’s completely reasonable, but is based on a misunderstanding of the
identity that we are baptized into.
Because the starting point of the Christian life is not a sinful
individual made perfect. It is participation
in Jesus’ act of identifying himself with the sin and suffering of the whole
human race. This participation is not a private and
personal experience of grace; it is a public act of incorporation into a body. And this body does not belong to itself, as a
world apart. It belongs to the world
that God has also created, which God also loves, which is also full of God’s
glory.
In his baptism Jesus immersed
himself in the collective predicament of his people, but that is not the whole
story. He got out of the water, Luke
says, and as he was praying, heaven opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon
him in bodily form, like a dove. And a
voice came from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well
pleased.” This baptism of the Holy
Spirit is the gift, not of a collective identity, but of a personal
mission. Belonging to the church does
not only mean belong collectively to the world, it also means belonging personally
to God. It means putting on Christ,
which is a new kind of personhood. It
means being completely and compassionately grounded in the real, concrete forms
of belonging that makes us human, belonging to a mortal body, to a place, to a
people and their history; and at the same time being utterly open to ongoing re-creation
by the spirit of God.
So let’s keep this in mind
when we invite people to church, and when we come here ourselves. We are
not coming here to parcel out what belongs to us, but to pray for a gift. And this gift is deadly serious, but more
than that it is child’s play. It is the
greatest, most universal sense of human responsibility—complete identification
with the suffering of the whole world.
And at the same time it is an invitation to try anything you like to
address that suffering, and to do so fearlessly, because you have complete
permission to fail. Belonging to Christ
is ultimate freedom, the freedom to grow and to learn and to change, to become
what God is eternally creating you to be.
It means sharing the freedom of the children of God.
