While recently reading H.W. Brands' newest book, American Dreams, I was struck by a section on the birth of the American suburb. This portion in particular caught my eye:
The suburbs were designed as bedroom communities, havens of rest from the workaday world...The domestic routine of the suburbs tended to block out the rest of the world. "It's not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside," one Levittown woman conceded.
Brands states this simply as a fact, but the description, literally, gave me chills. Not so much as an indictment on what is worst about the American suburb (though I think it is); I was particularly struck by how this mentality has invaded the American church.
Think about it. Would it be unfair to describe most American churches as "havens of rest from the workaday world"? Would it be surprising to hear a pastor say his church is "not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside"?
My decade of experience working in churches has often revealed that a conversation that begins to steer us towards how we might bless those outside of the church quickly begins to backpedal whenever the pursuit of said blessing might put the community at risk. We think first about how a course of action might burden us and then, if it won't, about how it might bless others. Of course, we want to bless others. Of course, we want to tell them about Jesus. But what if they bring their messiness into our midst? What if the demands of being Jesus to people take more of my time, money, and energy than I want to give? What if we bless them but never receive anything in return; no saved souls, no new members, no bigger budget? Usually, these concerns are enough for a church to tone down its mission, to risk less, to ask less, and to do less. We've got a good thing going here; why would we want to put that at risk?
This is where right belief informs right behavior, where principle informs practice and where theology is key; in this case, a theology of the Trinity.
In the Trinity we see 3 separate entities so closely connected that they are all, mysteriously, one. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They share a union unheard of among the closest of human beings. God is, in and of Himself, a community. And the incarnation puts all of that at risk.
In the very act of becoming human, Jesus begins to experience an otherness that had not previously existed. He has to go off to pray, to spend time in the desert, to experience a closeness with the Father and Spirit that may not, in fact, be first nature. Clearly, a bond still exists, but is it like the union that existed before God became man?
Even if the bond remains unchanged upon Jesus' becoming human, it is certainly rendered, in some meaningful way, at the cross. Whatever the Trinity had before Jesus' birth is, in some way, lost in Christ's cry of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
And yet, because of God's love for us, it was a risk that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were willing to take. Instead of simply enjoying their good thing going, they showed great care for what was going on outside.
The good news that is then offered in the resurrection is that, in Christ, communion can be restored. The Trinity is made whole and invites us to be in Jesus and, therefore, in community with God.
The church that is willing to risk its own well-being can offer the same invitation. As long as we fear death, we cannot love, and we cannot offer hope to those going on outside. But if a church will risk its own death for the sake of the world around it, it can experience new life that others may be invited into.
As the church in America, we must ask ourselves if we are truly the Body of Christ; the Christ who so loved the world that he risked death, knowing that even death is not the end, but only a life lived in fear of death; "for he who wishes to save his life will lose it, but he willing to lose his life, for Christ's sake, will save it."
What are the objections voiced when our church talks about mission? Are they objections born of a desire to be faithful or from a stance of fear? Are we a community that is willing to risk for the sake of the world or are we "not a community that thinks much about what's going on outside"?
2 comments:
"God is, in and of Himself, a community. And the incarnation puts all of that at risk."
In a blog post full of quotable bits, these two sentences latched onto me the most. I find that one of the American (suburban) church's most consistent mis-readings of scripture is to deny any real sense of risk for God at any point. Liking the idea of using power ourselves, we tend to construct an image of God that reminds us of unbridled power in action, a God who wouldn't think of living the Incarnation unless he could stack the entire deck in his favor before Christ drew his first human breath in a stable. It is, I think, a kind of unintentional gnostic reading of a Jesus who basically only appeared human (frail, endangered, powerless against so many things). Convincing most Christians comfortably tucked away in religious institutions that serve them (mostly)in the name of serving the world, that God chose to use his power in a risky, selfless way feels, to them, like asking them to believe in a fairy tale that doesn't end the way they want it to. They'd rather keep reading the story where an all-powerful God sent an all-powerful Son to give us access to that power. If I sound a bit frustrated with the current state of most Christian churches I am close to, that's because I am. Sorry if I went too far off the path of your original train of thought.
Not too far off the path. Not off path at all. We like to think that the incarnation and crucifixion cost God something...but not really. Believing this then makes it unreasonable for our incarnation as Christ's body to really cost us anything; so we don't allow it to. Christ, on the other hand, insists that it will cost us something; that it will, in fact, cost us everything. The hope of eschatology is that, even when it costs us everything, "nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
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