(Getting Past Ourselves — Part I & II are based upon II Corinthians, chapters 5, 6)
Covid is fading and from it emerges a significant number of churches whose “reason to be” were swept away in the masked distance. For every community in the process of rediscovering its dna and charting a Missional niche of it’s own, these are days filled with opportunity and dangers.
I enjoyed a well planned and executed gathering of urban-suburban ( zone) churches this last weekend. To my pleasant surprise most gathered had emerged from Covid with a desire to refocus on neighbors—with concrete plans to that end. However, I left the moment thinking we have not learned our lessons well. As the pop song says it: “You can’t please everyone so ya gotta please yourselves.” That, unfortunately, seemed to be the takeaway.
Now anyone at that meeting would have heard the opposite, appreciating as I do a renewed emphasis upon engagement with our neighbors. So how in this or any world can you suggest, Terry, that ‘please ourselves’ was the underlying theme?
Here’s how:
There was agreement that the church in the Seattle area is perceived in a very negative light. To clarify, most Seattlites would say we are anti-science, privileged, homo-phobic, anti-women, irrelevant. Yet the focus of our discussion and congregants perception remained on messaging (Doing works of service so as to get our neighbors to take a second look at us and maybe come).
One church at least had the courage (inside 1/2 true theology) to focus on piety (loving God) even to the point of belittling love of neighbor. To para phrase; “What good is helping parents play with their toddlers if they never get how vital is loving God, We just need to get demonstrably good at Living in The Spirit and the “real gift of the church” will be evident. Those God has prepped will come.”
It was even suggested that loving God had to take precedence over loving others as that is the real gift we offer. The profound tragedy is that it confuses means and ends—not to mention separating what cannot be torn apart (Loving God and humans) unless you want Godly slave owners (as in the past) or private soul saved Christians, blind to injustice.
It is true that we have, as Paul said, “this treasure.” The point that Paul is making is not that the treasure is “how to get others to love God just like us”. Yet that is the underlying assumption behind every mission described in our meeting; to get the attention of our neighbor, over coming their skepticism of the church so that they would come and get what we got.
Can we not see that our underlying assumptions about our mission is the problem, the offense that our neighbors feel. It is the judgment that what I got, you need. We become, “Amway salespersons”, convinced that everyone needs not only Amway but the cult-like loyalty to the movement we prize.
The result is that everything we do is a means to another end; not the actual treasure. Kudo’s to the community that called the rest of us out for ”happy making” in order to get to the real thing—which they “incorrectly” thought was converting or inviting persons into the “really real”—loving God like they do.
I walked away feeling as if we’re trying to build a field of dreams in Iowa, believing that if we just build a little compassion, somehow Seattleites will come.
The question that needs to be asked is this. What is the real treasure and how do we and our neighbors discover it together or give it away or live it away?
In II Corinthian, chapter 5, verse 19 and 15 we are led to understand that “God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation...He died for the sake of all so that those who are alive should live not for themselves but for the one who died for them and was raised.”
What the people of Israel and the Church of Christ seem to miss is that the treasure we cherish is universally given, though not understood and we are those entrusted with “blessing the world” by responding, weak though we are, to this treasure and so fill the earth with a “Living Sign” of its worth.
Indeed, it is our very human weaknesses that gives credibility. That’s what the writer is getting at when he writes “Instead, we reject secrecy and shameful actions. We don’t use deception, and we don’t tamper with God’s word. Instead, we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God by the public announcement of the truth. We don’t preach about ourselves. Instead, we preach about Jesus Christ as Lord, and we describe ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake”
(2 Corinthians 4:2, 5 CEB).
This treasure expands when given away and retracts when hoarded as if an earned possession.
Over centuries this treasure has been fought over, killed for, practiced at a safe distance so as not to contaminate ourselves by too near an approach. As a result the very beautiful breadth of its reach (to all) seems heretical and we who are the most privileged in the earth hoard it’s beauty as a ticket upon death to a Disneyland in the sky. Theologically, we actually come to the place where we care little for the planet and it’s people in favor of “loving God” and being one of the few, relatively, who get the good life here and in the beyond.
And we are surprised the world turns away?
Blessing! Terry
See my Podcast (Visual) developing these themes further, called: “Getting Past Ourselves” —The New Evangelism https://youtu.be/ER5ZIsh3DsE
For more: Check out my book: “Holiness in the 21st Century: A Political Gospel Worth Engaging”
https://www.amazon.com/Holiness-21st-Century-Political-Engaging/dp/1980391092/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3UH84A
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