I attend a congregation that commenced as a mission. B@tch was set up as a non traditional place, deliberately in a school hall — to meet people where they are. Today the leader commented that we have moved from doing mission to being church. He was referring to Paul’s speech to Athenians and his use of a cult of “the unknown God”.
Now there is a need for mission. There is also a need for church. But… there is a need for confidence. I’m repeating an exercise from the sermon for two parts of today’s lectionary: the promises in the text are in bold.
1 Peter 3
13Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.
John 14
15“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. 17This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
18“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
I firmly believe that the Church — which is hidden within various congregations of all kinds of flavours from missional to high church, from radical to conservative — is not ours. It is God’s. And God has preserved us from the abuses we placed on it. There is no difference in this from the promises we have that we will be kept by Christ. For we abuse our own bodies and relationship with Christ.
There is a need for church. We need to meet together, to break bread, and to encourage each other to go out and do good. There is a need for all congregations to evangelise. But most of the work we are called to do is outside of the church. It is in our homes, at work…
… And on the internet. Traffic here is picking up — which (since I do get thing wrong at times) frightens me. But we are commanded not to fear. And we need to be in the marketplace of ideas: the postmodern consensus has fallen apart and there is a great risk we will revert into some form of medieval rigidity (either green/pagan or muslim) and deny the use of reason. The Church was the incubator of the scientific model, and we may end up being (again) the preserver of knowledge.
And the greatest irony is that the Roman and Presbyterian Church are now having to preserve books and words defined as sexist: Even paternoster, qui es in caelum has been criticised as wrong because the prayer is Our father, which art in heaven…
It’s getting ridiculous. The correct response to the baroque demands of the secular state is not fear. It is laughter, and non compliance.