November 19, 2006

Clay Nelson

Pentecost 24     
Mark 13:1-8

If you put your hands of the walls of St Matthew's you may still feel trembling reverberations of rock music from last Friday's U2charist. But unlike the stones in the Temple they do not yet lie at our feet in rubble. These walls have not framed an event quite like this one in their 101 year history, which at St Matthew's is saying something quite extraordinary. Coloured lights danced in syncopation with the vital Christian-flavoured music of U2 played appropriately by a local group called The Believers. A combination of graphic arts and video enveloped the band and the altar, from which a Eucharist was celebrated by Glynn that had never been celebrated before. Like those of the first Christians, it was born of experience, but not theirs, ours. Our distinguished pulpit supported a rock band celebrity, Dave Gibson, who describes himself as being on the edge of the church, and liking it that way. He reminded us that we can make a difference in a world blighted by poverty and disease. And then the diverse crowd, united by the music and a commitment to a better world, fed on the gifts of bread and wine.

It has been said that Jesus came to bring us the kingdom and instead we got the church. Friday it finally felt like we got a taste of the kingdom and I think Jesus smiled. I know he was dancing over there in the south aisle.

In today's Gospel he certainly wasn't smiling. In the translation I prefer it says, “He walked away from the Temple.” He then went on to foretell that some day it would be destroyed.

We are coming to the end of our exploration of Mark's Jesus in this church year. We have seen that this Jesus did not shy away from conflict and controversy and was full of surprises. We saw that his ministry was conducted on the margins of power and in the midst of nobodies. He did not trade on the past but was giving us a new vision of ourselves and our relationship with the divine. But what I find most powerful in Mark's Jesus is his rejection of long-accepted authority and his invitation to claim our own. It is this message that brings him to Jerusalem and the political and religious leaders are understandably peeved. Today he is taking the mickey out of the scribes. The Temple was their source of authority, not to mention bread and butter. It had been there centuries, its rituals had been perfected, and its keepers were revered and powerful. They maintained that power with Scripture's purity laws that said who were included and who weren't. It all worked together to make their position as solid as the Temple itself.

And yet Jesus walked away from it and foretold its demise. He was not going to support a system that enslaved a people he came to free.

So what might Jesus think of the Church that replaced the Temple? What future might he predict for it?

Just as the Temple had already been destroyed by the time Mark had Jesus predict it, it wouldn't take a fortune teller to predict the Church's future. The church will continue on its present trend. It will continue shrinking, and becoming more conservative as it does until it fully confirms its irrelevance. Now don't get me wrong, it won't cease to exist. It will continue as a picturesque relic of our heritage. So, while some will continue to worship in the ways of generations past, the Church will make no difference at all to life, and few will take its claims seriously.

When I was beginning my ministry a quarter century ago these trends were suggested but today it is abundantly clear that, as Don Cupitt puts it, “traditional Church-Christianity is well past its sell-by date. Too dualistic, too otherworldly and too disciplinarian. It makes too many inflated claims on its own behalf.” [1] I would add that it is too concerned about preserving itself. It might be able to be preserved like last summer's fruit, but it will still be dead.

I may sound harsh and even pleased by this development. But it's not true. I have a deep fondness for much of what we call the traditional church. I cut my teeth on her ancient liturgies and hymns. I was steeped in its theology and I confess to enjoying many of the perks that come with being part of the hierarchy. The church that was has played an important role in forming who I am and has been the source of much joy. For that I give thanks.

Yet the Church has also been at times the bane of my existence. Every time she shoots herself in the foot, it is my blood that is spilt. When she insists on denying human rights that civil society has already granted to women, gays and lesbians, I bleed. When she persists in using Shakespearean language in a generation that communicates in hyper-abbreviated text on cell phones, I wince. When she rejects as secular music anything that isn't best played on a pipe organ or at least with a string quartet, I limp. When she proclaims a dogma better accepted by those who think the world is flat than by anyone I know, I go into shock. When she ignores the plights of the poor and the destruction of Mother Earth, promising a better life in the one to come, I scream outraged, “No!”

Such a church is crumbling fast. She probably won't breathe her last until after I retire, but I do worry for Glynn. So how did something so vibrant and promising in the person of Jesus come to the point of redundancy as an institution?

I think David Jenkins reflections on becoming Bishop of Durham offer some insights. After being consecrated bishop but before being enthroned as Bishop of Durham he found a carver chiseling his name into the stone wall of Durham Cathedral after a long list of predecessors going back to 995 AD. He was humbled and horrified. Mostly the latter, if this quote is any indication, “A church so determined to enshrine nearly two thousand years of tradition – particularly a tradition that ignores the radical developments of the civilization in which it now resides – is nearly hopelessly weighted down in any attempt to reach out to communicate the Gospel in the twenty-first century and beyond.” [2]

Knowing the past is a good and useful thing. Making it sancrosanct is to be blinded to the present and future possibilities. The Church seems to think everything important has already happened. The coming of Jesus was the end not the beginning. And until he comes again we are on hold. It is in the past the church tells us we will find Eternal Truth. While such a platonic notion that such a truth even exists is generally rejected in our era, the church keeps claiming ownership. I don't think the church was always this way. I think this view is the product of 1000 years of static history often referred to as the Middle Ages or more honestly in the case of the church, the Dark Ages. The first 500 years of the church were vibrant years full of fierce controversy. The creeds we still use, the defining of what was sacred scripture and what was not, doctrinal formulations were all hammered out in that period prior to the fall of Rome to the barbarians. What followed was a culture with an inferiority complex. With little happening of importance the people of this time looked back to the luminaries of the past and saw them as infallible. For more than a thousand years little changed in any area of knowledge. No wonder folks believed with complete integrity what had been believed for centuries and expressed it without reservation in well-used forms. The church, the body of Christ, while now severely arthritic, became a tool of the powerful. Life was hard during this time and little ever changed. The church became the arbiters of hope. She offered the promise of at least a better life after death to those who conformed to the church's authority rather than a living, breathing kingdom now. It certainly wasn't in the church's self-interest to offer the kingdom Jesus was talking about, where the meek would inherit the earth.

This ossified church was hardly prepared for the four hundred years that followed. The church scrambled to deal with Galileo, Darwin and Freud but is still trying unsuccessfully to incorporate the worldview this trio established long ago as the norm. The church hasn't even begun to deal constructively with the last 50 years of knowledge and technological advancements. The present situation begs the question, “What good is owning Eternal Truth when no one considers it worth having?”

In 1996 circumstances in my life forced me to make a choice. Over the strenuous objections of family, friends and my bishop I walked out of the Temple. I left the priesthood when my career was still in its ascendancy, painfully resigned that the church I loved could be neither reformed nor resuscitated. It was better to live than die with it. I grieved bitterly, never expecting to return.

Of course I never expected to immigrate to New Zealand either, or for that matter to find St Matthew's with its persuasive Vicar. When Glynn challenged me to resume my priesthood, I was both drawn and repelled by the notion. In my agreeing to do so, however, was not with any hope of resuming my efforts to save a dying institution from redundancy. The church I was ordained into is rubble at my feet.

St Matthew's, however, is another thing entirely. While few buildings could look more like that poor arthritic church of the middle ages it is a place where the flesh and blood inside her is more concerned about being the kingdom than being the church.

Sure we are still betwixt and between. Our ambivalence shows up in our liturgy which struggles slowly to shed the past so it can move into the present as something both entirely new and yet as old as Jesus. But our intention and direction is clear. These stones don't crumble because they are not about enshrining the past but framing the present.

The lines between sacred and secular are blurring here as seen in Friday's U2charist. We don't proclaim an eternal truth, but a way of being. Our only certainty is that there are none. We are not about giving answers but about struggling with the questions this very complicated world presents us with at an ever increasing rate. We are about freeing ourselves from the past, our prejudices; our guilt, that we might live into the fullest expression of love. We believe that the kingdom can be had now. In fact this is the only time it can be had. We better get cracking if we want it in our lifetime. We reject hierarchical authority, knowing that the only authority that counts is in our own hearts. A priest is a fellow pilgrim with particular knowledge and expertise, but not one who holds authority over you.

Lastly, we don't even think you need stones to build the kingdom, as we seek to build it with megabytes on real estate in cyberspace. Such a kingdom, built on the world wide web, is open 24/7 to everyone everywhere. It becomes a reflection of the kingdom of God. You can walk out of a temple, but not out of God's love. It is everywhere for everyone. There simply is no exit.

[1] Cupitt, Don. The future: A Redundant Church, an address given at St Michaael's Uniting Church, Collins Steet. February 2001.

[2] Jenkins, David, The Calling of a Cuckoo. Continuum: 2002. p. 104.