I wonder how many of us, despite regular participation in our local congregations, wrestle with this very question: Why Church? Why, given the disorienting state of the world, do we continue to show up?
These are questions that I wrestle with on my own, but they are also questions that others ask me. What is it about the church that makes it worthwhile? At times this question is accompanied by incredulity; other times by deep curiosity. This thing that you do with your time, this place you go, the rituals you participate in, what does it do for you?
These are, of course, the kinds of questions born of our modern age. Ours is a time of self-actualization and self-fulfillment. In our culture, we tend to value more highly those things that contribute to our upward mobility and happiness. For much of the Twentieth Century, the Church attached itself to this same story. At some point in the post-war years, we baptized these metrics, as if this were a reasonable way to measure God’s favour.
But the Church isn’t as it was when we were younger. The stories we told ourselves about success and favour have been proven bankrupt. We’re left wondering how long the church will be around, and if it will be around for us.
So accustomed are we to Church as Institution and Service Provider and Social Circle that we’ve lost touch with some of its core mission: to transform us into the likeness of the Crucified Christ.
Week in and week out we tell the story of a transcendent God taking on human flesh. We tell stories of the God of lost causes, the God who sides with the poor and the rejected against the rich and the powerful. We tell the story of a God who journeys with people through wilderness and desert, and the valley of the shadow of death.
We tell the story of a God who embodies fidelity to Creation by becoming part of it, being influenced by it, telling stories of wheat and vines. We tell the story of a God who loves Creation so much that they’d rather die than see it come to harm. We tell the story of a God so committed to the thriving of Creation that they are willing to do everything in their power to invite others to join in this mission, or die trying.
This disconnect would be funny, if it weren’t also sad.
Each week our churches rehearse the story of a self-denying, self-giving God. Each week we tell the story of the early church and the way these communities wrestled to wholeheartedly embrace the way of Jesus in their worship and the discipleship that necessarily follows.
At Pentecost we marvel at the God who blesses the early church with rapid numerical growth (3000 new members as the result of one sermon!), all the while underplaying the more mundane, yet equally central parts of the story. Sure, God works through Peter’s bold proclamation, but that moment is more tipping point than the moral of the story. I love a good sermon, but more than that, I love a good sermon that provokes us Jesus-followers to love our neighbours in the way of Jesus.
In these early days of the church, the disciples are still desperate, still uncertain what to do. And so they centre themselves in the story of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. They gather around the table, breaking bread, sharing in the joys and sorrows of life together. They commit themselves to prayer with and for one another. They act towards one another and towards their neighbours as Christ’s very hands and feet, seeking justice and joy, compassion and peace in their neighbourhoods. They celebrate their freedom in Christ.
Taking Christ’s example to heart, the place that these early Christians shine is in carrying each others’ burdens. In those early days, the church isn’t primarily a place for self-actualization and the pursuit of happiness (that’s a modern invention). Instead, it is a place of care and compassion. It is a community where people minister to another and to their neighbours through acts of shared suffering.
To modern ears, shared suffering doesn’t seem like the best growth strategy. Yet numerical growth is not the primary goal of the Christian life.
While growth may be a side-effect, it is the ministry entrusted to us in Baptism that is rightly our goal. As St. Paul reminds us, we who died with Christ have been raised with him to new life. Wendell Berry, a more contemporary prophet, suggests that in the face of life’s inevitable suffering, we practice resurrection.
That is to say that our shared ministry is to join Jesus in his cross-shaped healing work.
Not as transaction. Not as strategic plan. As an offering of love. Ask nothing in return, though be not afraid to invite others to bless as they have been blessed. “We love,” reads 1 John, “because Jesus first loved us.”
If ministry (and not growth) is the goal—if the goal of the Christian life is to proclaim and embody God’s love in a hurting world—we don’t have to look far. We don’t have to look far to find those who our world and its dominant story of self-actualization, self-fulfillment, and self-importance has left in its wake.
So many have experienced the pain of being abandoned, of being left behind. So many have suffered loss. So many have experienced loneliness. So many of us have tried to keep up with the ever-accelerating pace of society and found ourselves unable to do so. Those things we thought would satisfy don’t, and yet we’re left feeling shame for our inability to achieve these things on our own.
This is where Christ, and this is where the Church is called to be. We are called to show up at the place where the scales fall away and the illusions fall apart. We are called to walk alongside, offering comfort, compassion, and consolation in the midst of that loss.
This is the proclamation of Christ and his cross: that consolation is to be found at the place of deepest suffering, when Jesus’ body shows up with open arms and wide embrace, ready to welcome us home.
