A Post-Covid Church
Here’s the Church,
Here’s the Steeple.
Open the door and see all the people.
Who among us has not spoken that nursery rhyme, our little hands stretching to dramatize its iconic message—our childlike wonder peaked as though once again surprised at the movement of fingers matching our happy five year old connection between the people and the Church!
Covid 19 lockdowns is the only force of nature to tear our fingers from their place, the door having been largely shut. “Where are all the people?”
i don’t know how many variations of that question I’ve heard since the very beginning of the pandemic. Except for the conspiracy variations a question worthy of any one concerned with the mission and survivability of an institution of human relations interwoven like interlocking fingers. Well, the doors are open. Where are the people?
The truth is, as legitimate a concern as it may be, it’s the wrong question. The wrong concern.
Institutions, evenly Divinely inspired ones, die unless they discover or re-discover the larger human neighbors and neighborhoods from whence they emerge. The Church is a great servant and horrific master. The only churches that will survive Covid19 are those who have careless dis-regard for their institutional needs and reverence for their neighbors snd their needs.
So the real question is this: What in a masked and fear-filled world are the needs, aspirations and wounded spaces? How can we, in whom the Eternal Spirit uniquely lives, offer ourselves as a Loving Presence?
Everyday my hands work the cement and polyurethane sealants to repair the foundation of our church building. It is a satisfying tactile experience of love for the very place that has captured my soul for 27 of my 68 years. There is no day when I’m not reminded that it is a task beyond me and for which I’m I’ll suited—the learning curve, so high.
At the time of this initial writing, I was finishing my first egress well repair. I’m pleased with my masonry work and appalled by my lack of carpentry skills. I’m already thinking about how I’m going to redeem the well cover window I fabricated when done with the whole.
In short I’m removing one scandal—a broken foundation and creating another scandal, an egress well covering that looks horrible.
Such is the task of the church in the next few years; to embrace the scandal at the heart of our mission and stop creating and start repairing the scandals of of our own making, the result of sin and ignorance and prejudice.
The Scandals we should Embrace
Where-ever walks a wounded, marginalized community’s individual, there we walk. That is not a figurative woke ideal. It is a tangible, face to face, skin on skin ideal.
What is difficult and ends up being a scandal to both the right and left is that we really have the privilege of living in relationship with individual humans who are: undocumented immigrants, persons of color, those who have no homes to call their own, the young whose pathway to college is problematic, those addicted to pornography, drugs, the aging vulnerable, racists or at least those holding prejudices close to their heart, sex offenders, those living together with out the benefit of marriage—both heterosexual and same sex, those whose inward experience of their sexual identity is out of phase with their biological identity.
Walking with means two things:
1) We live in reverence of everyone; neither blind to skin deep and soul deep differences nor overly concerned with those differences. Reverence or hallowedness is what we bring to the table for we are part of an ancient tribe that believes:
A) God is Creator and God is good, and;
B) God is reconciled to every human in Jesus and works only for restoration, healing redemption of every daughter of Eve and son of Adam, and;
C) Humans are wounded deeply, sinners, one and all—including ourselves. Every act of love in the universe starts with the cross, with Gods active Presence enabling Christians, Buddhists, Atheists, Socialists, Capitalists, Muslims, Heterosexuals, Honosexuals to live as Jesus lived.
So, depending on whom God sends our way—the leper of God’s choice, we will be a scandal to some, right and left.
The Scandals we should Heal
2) We need to minimize the scandals of our own making; inordinate pride of self, of nation and the wounded places within each of us.
They all come out of pride, of chosen rebellion against the vision of God in what it is to be human. We would do well to pursue holiness of heart snd life; to love God and our neighbors.
That means our time, money and lives are Gods and can be used by God to feed the homeless or be one who is taken advantage of and who responds with love instead of hate.
When we are first American before we are Christian we create a scandal of our making, not God’s. When we cancel someone cause they don’t fulfill our woke expectations we create a scandal of our making, not God’s
That is the church we are called to be.
Blessings! Terry
A visual from one Parrish Community:
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