How do we think of faith? Is it a set of doctrines that we must accept? Is it certain ideas about the nature of God? Is it certain cultural behaviours? And why have people fallen away?
Let us remember the mission of Jesus who fed the hungry, encouraged the ostracized, who defended the vulnerable. The one statement about God that the good news remembered was that he said that only God was good. Otherwise, he referred his sister and brother Jews back to the expectations of God about how to be a just and healthy community; for example, by loving, serving, sharing, being accountable.
The monks of the early Middle Ages maintained these ideas in their monasteries. In 378, St. Basil instructed, “When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.”
And in terms of how to live out their vocations, in 547 St. Benedict of Nursia said, “The monk should first show them in deeds rather than words all that is good and holy.”
From time to time in the history of Christianity, the church as institution has been challenged by the church as prophet and memory keeper for Jesus. We are in one of those periods now. The church as institution is being forced to rethink our practice and our teaching. This process is aided by rereading our sacred text, by the interfaith conversations that easily travel in our world, by the political and climate crises that threaten the security of people everywhere.
As communities of faith, we need to re-examine our idolatry of buildings over proclaiming the gospel, our sentimentality about the past over our mission to make ourselves open to the stranger. Finally, we need to take our own doubts seriously to see whether we have been missing opportunities to feel the winds of the Spirit in our own hearts and minds.
In a letter to the Ephesians, we read, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Acting as Christians means taking our role as Christ’s body in the world seriously, imagining how we can act for him in love and friendship and peace.
Now is the time for every congregation to ask if we are prepared to sacrifice our desires, our comfort, for the sake of sharing the good news. If we cannot, are we still the church of Christ? Does our church belong with the sheep or goats (Matthew 25:31-46), with the wheat or chaff (Matthew 3:12)?
