THE CHURCH’S MISTAKE

   My files are full of clippings and articles I have saved over the years in the hope that I might use some of them someday. I suspect that when I retire, I am going to fill several recycle bins with all the paper. But until then I will on occasion rummage through the folders to see if there is some gem there to pass on – as I did recently.

   Bill Willimon, former chaplain at Duke University and now a Methodist Bishop in Alabama (I’m not sure that is a promotion given the plight of bishops these days all over the church), wrote something several years ago in a preaching journal that keeps calling me back to what the church is really all about and reminding me about what and how I should be preaching.

   I have always tried to relate the gospel message to the struggles that we all have in the modern world. Willimon writes: “I have come to believe that that is our weakness rather that our strength. In leaning over backwards to speak to the modern world, I fear we may have fallen in!” In using the old world of the Bible to build a bridge between that world and our world, it seems that it is always the modern world telling the Bible what’s what. He demurs: “The Bible doesn’t want to speak to the modern world. The Bible wants to change, convert the modern world.”

   The mistake we make, the mistake the church makes, is that we sometimes are led to believe that this world of ours, modern, or even postmodern, as many philosophers and theologians are calling it, is the best of all possible worlds. We are more knowledgeable, more sophisticated, more of everything. But we are not necessarily better. A good case could be made that we are no better than our ancestors and may be even worse. Our inhumanity one to another speaks volumes about our inability as a church to change or convert the world to Christian principles.

   It is a mistake to try to speak the world’s language because the world neither understands nor does it listen. Something always gets lost in translation when we do. “Salvation” is not the same as “self-esteem”; “a positive self-image” is not the same as “redemption”; and “the American way of life” is not “the kingdom of God ”, Willimon reminds.

   “Christianity,” he says, “is a distinct culture, with its own vocabulary, grammar, and unique practices, just like any other culture…. That is why the concept of ‘User Friendly Churches’ leads to churches getting used.” There is no short course to learn how to become a Christian and there is no easy path in being one. There is only being born again by being stripped of worldly (modern or post-) ideas, immersed in the waters of baptism, and preaching to the world by living what we preach.

   We preach and try to practice “Matthew 25…and all that jazz”, you and I. That is not a message that the world preaches nor is it practiced in a culture the world understands. But we do both, we as church. Whenever we water down that message or try to acculturate our faith so that the world will accept our message, we make a huge mistake. “Matthew 25…and all that jazz” is not part of the world’s culture; it is counterculture. It is not a modern or postmodern practice. It is biblical.

   “The point is not to speak to the culture. The point is to change it. God’s appointed means of producing change is called church. God’s typical way of producing church is called preaching”, (and I would add) by word and example, by our very lives, yours and mine.             WJP