What is Church?

Yesterday was Ascension Day in the Christian calendar.  It's the day when the church remembers Jesus' return to the Father - 40 days after the resurrection.  Jesus left his follwers with a command to pray as they waited for the promised coming of the Holy Spirit.  That would happen on the day of Pentecost, 10 days later.

In recent years, many Christians have used these 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost to pray 'Thy Kingdom Come.'  This is a prayer that we offer continually, but we are called to pray this prayer especially at this time.

In our congregation in Gloucester, we are praying that we will learn new lessons about what it means to be church at this time of crisis.

We are considering some questions to help us with this prayer:

• what is church to you?  
• what is the spiritual bread you need each day?
• why St Paul and St Stephen's?  why do you come to church here?
• what is it that you cherish about our community?
• what could be different in the days ahead?
• what could we hold onto?
• how is God asking us to reach out to others?
• what are the temptations we need to avoid - as a church?
• how do we allow God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven in this place?

I'm thinking about the first question today.



One model of church (Purpose driven church) has these five priorities: Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Fellowship, Ministry.

(I won't unpack any of those words here)

Others will have other models to describe church ... One that I have found helpful is found in a book by Eugene Peterson: Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work.

He has five - Prayer Directing, Discipleship Making, Community Building, Pain Sharing and Injustice Resisting. (I'm actually paraphrasing his categories, which he describes slightly differently)

Notice the absence of Worship and Mission ....

I think that's because Worship and Mission are not things that we do but more about who we are. Worship is at the heart of all of the five categories above.  As is Mission.  To share the pain of another in works of service and compassion is a missional activity.  To resist injustice is a mission activity.

So I would argue that one of the ways we need to see church is with Mission at its heart, not simply a set of activities.  The famous analogy of fire works well - As a fire only exists through burning, so the Church only exists in mission.

For many churches, this is about changing a mindset.  Having a complete revolution in the way we think, so that we see everything in our lives through a lens of mission.

And at the heart, this mission is not ours to contain and own, but it is the mission of God, expressed most completely in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. And God invites us to be a part of his saving mission to the world, bringing reconciliation through forgiveness and peace through justice.

It's good to remember another recent well used phrase - It is not that the church of God has a mission, but that the God of mission has a church.

It is only when we are people defined by mission as much as worship that we will see the world blessed by the church. Otherwise, we remain behind the doors of our churches, in a different kind of lockdown, unable to be the agents of blessing to the world.

The Moviegoer

I've been thinking quite a bit about the longterm effects of Lockdown.  Some of course are bad news - for families suffering bereavement, for those whose businesses will not survive, for those whose education has been affected.

There will be some good news as well.  But I think we will have to be attentive to what that might be, otherwise we will slip back into old ways.

We have on our shelves a book by Walker Percy - The Moviegoer.  I can't actually remember if I have read it.  I bought it on a recommendation years ago, and I'll have to revisit it.

I was reminded of the book today when I picked a random page (page 73) from 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' by Brennan Manning. He is writing about a moment in the book that helped me make some connections with where we are in Lockdown.

The Moviegoer tells the story of a commuter who has a pretty good life in many ways, but in spite of that feels bad all the time. Every day as he rides the train he is gripped by a nameless despair.

Then, one day, while on the train, he has a heart attack, and is taken from the train to hospital.  he wakes up in a strange place, surrounded by faces he doesn't recognise.  He see a hand on his bedsheet, and not realising it is his own hand, he marvels at the way it can move and open and close.

Percy describes what happens to the man as an awakening, as bit by bit, he encounters himself and his life in ways that he hadn't done for years.  The ordeal restored him to himself.  What he chooses to do now will be the whole burden of his existence ...

His heart attack has liberated him from a meaningless life and set him on a path to a new existence.

Manning writes - "Percy plunges his heroes into disaster and ordeal, only to speak out of the whirlwind about the worst of times being the best of times ... through the catastrophe they discover the freedom to act and to be"

It's as if we have all had that 'heart attack moment' when we suddenly went into lockdown.  For Christians, and those of other faiths, that meant we could no longer meet together.  Our buildings were closed.

For Muslims, this has been a Ramadan like no other.  On a typical night in Ramadan, mosques would be full with hundreds of people, many of them praying all night.  How terrible to not be able to meet together in this way.  Yet out of this catastrophe there may have been new opportunities, new discoveries, new experiences.

Christians too have had to cope with online virtual services, and all that lockdown has meant.

But could this time signal a reawakening ?  As we ask questions about our faith, and the meaning of church, might this lead us as churches to discover a new freedom to act and to be.

More to come, as I ponder on all of this.

Peace be with you.

Some phrases above are quotes from 'The Ragamuffin Gospel'

The Importance of Pruning

Thursday this week - May 14th was the day the church remembers St Matthias.

Judas Iscariot (remember him ?) had come to a sticky end, and the 11 remaining disciples chose a replacement.  There were two possible candiates, Joseph and Matthias.

The disciples drew lots, and Matthias was chosen.

So there were some readings to go with this part of the story of the early church, one of them being from the prophet Isaiah.

Apparently, there was a man of some status, called Shebna, who had come up short.  This is what it says about him. (The Message translation)

God is about to sack you, to throw you to the dogs. He’ll grab you by the hair, swing you round and round dizzyingly, and then let you go, sailing through the air like a ball, until you’re out of sight. Where you’ll land, nobody knows. And there you’ll die, and all the stuff you’ve collected heaped on your grave. You’ve disgraced your master’s house! You’re fired—and good riddance!

Woah! That's harsh.

Then God chooses someone else - Eliakim - to carry on the work. It's all there in chapter 22.

One of the other readings set for this day is from John's Gospel chapter 15, where Jesus tells his followers that they have been chosen, and put in the world to bear fruit.

Now bearing fruit is an interesting thought.  Earlier in the chapter, Jesus had been talking about the importance of pruning a vine so that you get good grapes from it.

We're learing the importance of this - we have two young fruit trees - and apple and a plum.  They are in their second year, and if I pay attention to the experts, I will need to prune all the fuit bearing branches this year, because that will allow the tree to put all its energy into growing strong roots and branches.  If I don't take the fruit off this year, then the fruit I do get this year will be small, and I will be risking not having the best fruit in years to come.

It's a hard thing to do, but necessary if I want the very best for the trees.

So my question is this - where does God's church need pruning at this moment in time ?  I have often heard these verses about pruning applied to the life of an individual, but what about applying it to communities, and to the church in general.

In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, we (the church) are having to find new ways to meet each other - through online platforms, social media etc.  Hopefully this time of crisis is causing us to think about what is really important for the health of the church. (Returning to a growth metaphor)

What might need to be pruned for us to see new growth ?

What are the essentials that make for church ? How can they be nurtured ?




 

Priests etc

In the current (coronoavirus) situation, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the nature of church, and the lessons we might learn for the future for a healthy church.

Sort of related to that, I've been thinking about my own (Anglican) tradition, and the mess I believe we are in, for all sorts of historical reasons, over leadership.

The New Testament has various words for gifts and roles within the early church.  The roles are - Deacon (Diaconos), Elder (Prebyteros) and Bishop or Overseer (Episkopos)

It may be that the roles of Elder and Bishop were pretty much the same thing ?  The Deacon (origin of the role in Acts chapter 6) was different and seems to be to do with meeting practical needs.

In around the 2nd Century, the word priest begins to be used for presbyter, mainly in connection with the eucharist - sharing of bread and wine as commanded by Jesus at the Last Supper.

The origin of the word priest comes from the Old Testament role, (hiereus in Greek), from which we get the word hierarchy.

My point is that churches today that use the word priest as a way of describing an ordained person, are using and Old Testament word for a role that stood between us and God.

The New Testament emphasis is on leadership, rather than on a role connected with a cultic ritual - eg sacrifice.

The Eucharist (Holy Communion) is in some ways a reinterpretation of the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, seeing Jesus death, symbolised in bread and wine, as a sacrifice. But there doesn't seem to be anything in the New Testament that justifies a role of priest, in the same way as the Old Testament role.  To remember Jesus in bread and wine is far removed from that sacrificial system.

I am an ordained person in the church of England, and sadly the word usually used about people like me is priest.  This unfortunately only goes to perpetuate a church that is hierarchical, with an undue degree of authority and power vested in the vicar.

As far as my ordination is concerned, I have always preferred to see myself as Episkopos (overseer) or Presbyteros (elder).

The part of the episkopos word - scope - tells me it's something to do with seeing, so Episkopos is about having an overview of what's going on.

The prebyteros (elder) role tells me that it's to do with experience and maturity.

You might guess by all of this that I'm in a strange place with regard to the church I find myself in!  Yet I believe for sure that this is what God called me to back in the early 90's.  I have no regrets, but have to live with a certain amount of tension.

One way of dealing with the tension is to find voices that are outside traditional Anglican thought, and so I have a connection with the UK Anabaptist Network, where words like priest are seen for what they are - designations that belong to a pre Christian era.

Lord Have Mercy

I have been a part of the Anglican Church (Church of England) for around 35 years, both as a member of congregations, and as a minister (vicar).

One of the distinguishing features of churches like the Church of England is the pattern of the worship, which nearly always includes prayers of confession, a statement of belief (creed), readings from the Bible, a sermon, prayers of intercession, and often communion.

As well as Anglican Churches, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, Lutheran and other denominations all use the same pattern, which gives rise to the description 'Liturgical Churches.'

By the way, the word Liturgy, which is usually used to mean the structure of the worship, actually means 'The Work of the People.' The idea being that worship is the offering of the whole people of God.

This post is about one aspect of the Liturgy - the prayer of confession, or prayer of penitence.

A typical prayer of confession goes something like this:

 Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour

in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name.  Amen.

The starting point for this type of prayer is a confession that we are sinners.  In the Book of Common Prayer, it includes phrases such as "We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness ..."

Marcus Borg, in his book 'Speaking Christian' makes a plea for a wider understanding of the place of public confession in worship.

He argues that prayers of penitence in worship typically focus on sin as thoughts, words and actions that we have committed against God, but that sin needs to be seen in a wider context that includes the idea of sin as - addiction; powers that hold us in bondage; being in exile and needing to return home; sick and wounded and needing healing.

He writes "imagine that our confession of sin was supplemented by images of our predicament as bondage, exile, blindness and infirmity ..... sin matters, but when it and the need for forgiveness become the dominant issue in our lives with God, it reduces and impoverishes the wisom and passion  of the Bible."

In my own prayers, I make use of the Kyrie form of confession, which, rather than taking sin as a starting point, can take some aspect of God's nature and work.

It uses a trinitarian form - Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy.

I was reading today from John 10, Psalm 87, and Acts 11, and wrote this Kyrie confession:

Lord, your grace is enough

Lord, have mercy

You have written our names in your book of life

Christ have mercy

Lord you give us eternal life

Lord have mercy

It might be a good exercise for you to try this - take a reading from scripture and focus on something Gos says or does -  God's mercy, grace, compassion etc.

Here's one take on this subject

https://theopolisinstitute.com/confession-absolution-kyrie/

Bonhoeffer and Mystery

It was a mistake, said Bonhoeffer to think of theology's purpose as being the unveiling of the mystery of God. "to bring it down to the flat ordinary wisdom of experience and reason."  Theology's sole purpose, he said was to defend and glorify God's mystery as mystery.

This mystery is about "Christ taking everyone who really encounters him by the shoulder, turning them round to face their fellow human beings and the world."

Matthew or John ?

A couple of things have come together in the last two days ... our church 'service' on Zoom yesterday, and my continued reading of the biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

In the mid 1930's Bonhoeffer was working on a book that would first be published as 'The Cost of Discipleship' (Later as simply Discipleship').  In it, he describes how he sees the way that the Protestant (Lutheran) Church in Germany had a tendency to portray faith as a purely private thing. For Bonhoeffer this meant that faith had become for many Christians a refuge from obedience to yhe call of Christ, abandoning the public realm for a private sphere in which faith was all about personal salvation.

The events that propel Bonhoeffer to a call for the church to be more active in the public arena were of course the rise of Hitler, and especially the treatment of Jews.

The German title for the book was Nachfolge - Follow me, which points to Bonhoeffer's assertion that the Christian life must be one of concrete acts, integrating private and public, inner life and outer reality, hearing and following.  There was no other way to be a Christian.

By the mid 1930's the vast majority of Protestant Churches were part of the 'German Christian Church' - adhering to the policies of National Socialism, which excluded Jewish Christians from communion and worship - which in Bonhoeffer's eyes challenged the very identity of the church as a Christian Body.

The establishment of the 'Confessing Church,' which stood against Hitler and Nazi rule was one way in which Bonhoeffer was to live out hs faith in the public space.  (Which in the end of course cost him his life).

Now to yesterday's service.  Our services, conducted at the moment through 'Zoom' consist of a readings, prayers, possibly a hymn or song, and some time to reflect together on the Gospel passage for the day. There is no sermon, but each person can bring some thought on the passage.

One of the things that came up yesterday, which went a bit beyond the scope of the passage, was the way in which different gospels treat the same question.

So for example, Matthew's Gospel ends with what Christians call 'The Great Commission' in which Jesus says to the discipes - 'Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit'

This is definitely taking the Chrisain Faith out into the public arena.

By contrast, John's Gospel has Jesus meeting with the disciples after the resurrection and saying “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

If we think about how the Father sent Jesus as described in John's Gospel, it is more to do with Jesus 'being with' us.  There is of course the very public element of Jesus' ministry in John's Gospel, but there are large chunks where Jesus is talking with the disciples, and emphasising the importance of staying close to Jesus. (Remain in me).  

At its extreme, Matthew leads to a Christianity that is focussed on proselytising, making converts, even by force, as history shows.  Whereas John might lead to a quietist faith that is only concerned with nurturing the faith of the believer.

Clearly, neither Gospel is advocating either of these approaches, but we can see how at different times, and in various places, both of these approaches have held sway.

The question I have is this - we need faith that is personal but not private.  But how in today's world, and especially with the current Covid 19 pandemic, do Christians take their faith into the public square.  One way of course is through being active in a wide range of serving roles, through food banks etc.  But while for Christians, those ways of responding would likely arise from a Christian sense of service, there are many people of other faiths responding and people of no faith who are simply acting out of a sense of common humanity.

We also see people of all faiths and none acting in the areas of justice and peace.

But is there something else that Christians might offer in the public space - something that is distinctly Christian ?