Then Jesus said, "God's realm is like seed planted in a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows, whether he is awake or asleep, and he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time!
How can we picture God's Realm? What kind of story can we tell? It's like a tiny seed. When it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted it grows into a huge bush with thick branches. Birds nest in it."
With many stories like these, he taught them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. Jesus was never without a story when he spoke. When he was alone with his disciples, he went over everything, explaining and illustrating what his stories had been about.
******************************************************************
“What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today..we are moving toward a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious’. What does that mean for Christianity”? If religion is only a garment of Christianity - and even this garment has looked very different at different times - then what is a religionless Christianity?”
These words were written by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his “Letters and Papers from Prison.” Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and founding member of the Confessing Church. He became known for his resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, strongly opposing Hitler's euthanasia programs and genocide against the Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 and executed in April 1945, 23 days before the Nazis' surrender.
In his role as a theologian and pastor, his view of Christianity's role in the secular world has become very influential. It is significant that even in the 1940's, he was writing about the death of religion. Not the death of faith, but faith without all the church and religious trappings. He predated by twenty years the book “God is Dead”, by Thomas Altizer.
In the past two or three decades, religious pundits of all backgrounds have been bemoaning the decline of so-called mainline churches, and insisting that the more evangelical churches are growing by leaps and bounds. That was true for a brief while following the election of Jimmy Carter, but not any more. Every one is either completely stalled or sliding.
In 2009 Newsweek magazine featured a story about the decline of religion in the United States - and I’d venture to say that could be extrapolated to Canada as well. Author Jon Meacham says “This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but rather that God is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy, and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the population.”
For the last twenty years, historian, theologian and teacher Dr. Diana Butler Bass has followed not only trends in the church, but also the history of what she describes as a complete sea change, regardless of religious faith. People in all religious groups, not just Christian, are becoming more and more disillusioned with what they see as a focus on buildings, people and money - and not the living out of a faith which transcends boundaries.
Dr. Butler Bass talks about ordinary people and stories she hears about their falling away from church. And, she says, it’s not just those who really never came anyway, but people who used to be faithful who have just given up and gone in search of something which feeds them spiritually.
Here’s one story, from a pastor: “People just don’t come to church any more. It doesn’t really matter what we do, how solid our community is. Even those who consider themselves “good” members only come once a month or so now.”
Here’s a story of a funeral - a story which is played out more than we might think:
“At the funeral our pastor said the baby had died because we had not prayed enough. It was our fault, he said, and that our lack of faith killed our son. Well, I walked out of church that day, and I have never returned.”
Dr. Butler Bass says people are tired of “church-as-usual, church-as-club, church-as-entertainment, or church-as-work. Many of my friends, faithful churchgoers for decades, are dropping out because religion is dull, the purview of folks who never want to change, or always want to fight about somebody else’s sex life; they see the traditional denominations as full of Mrs. Grundy’s priggishness.”
Another pastor said “Christianity has become a culture unto itself, and has merely skimmed over what Jesus has said and is saying.”
Here are the words of a person only identified as “Ellen”: “I enjoy reading religious books, blogs and listening to sermon podcasts too. But I feel most churches are way too fixed on self-preservation and preaching the gospel rather than living it. So, for now, my offering goes to Doctors Without Borders and other charities. My work is my ministry as I meet the broken-hearted and lost every day. I quietly encourage the faith of the dispirited, pray for others, and try to walk humbly with my God.”
Several years ago, I had a conversation with Rev. Dr. Peter Wyatt, who was Principal of Emmanuel College, and Theology and Faith staff in the General Council office. He lamented the death of church. I asked him why? Did he not believe in resurrection? His response was “The church will never be the same as it is now, and we need to lament its passing.”. ...and I said “Of course it will never be the way it is now. The church has never, ever, in all its history, been the way it was before. That’s the exciting part! Death is followed by resurrection, in a body that looks nothing like the one before. I believe we are standing on the cusp of a great change, one which can be exciting if we have faith.”
Well, if we let ourselves, we can find this really depressing. Or, we can find it really exciting. I am on the “exciting” end of the scale. I don’t see this as the end of “faith”, but more the end of some things which hold back the possibilities for faith.
I decided to take a look at the Japanese characters which mean faith: there are three things in the word “faith” in Japanese and Chinese: human beings, language, and heart. “Faith” and “religion” are not necessarily the same thing. Faith can exist without religion. Faith is a response of the human heart to the touch of the Spirit, of God. Diana Butler Bass points out, and supports with decades of data, that while more and more people are dropping away from the church, more and more people are also saying they have had a deeply spiritual experience of God.
Jesus was never without a story, and his stories always had a point. The stories today are not even about farming. The farmer in this story doesn't plow, nor have any concern about weather or weeds. This farmer simply sits back and watches.
These two stories are about the seed that becomes something very different than when it was planted. The Realm of God is like a seed planted by God, scattered on the ground wherever, and no one except God knows how it is going to turn out.
Rev. Randy Quinn says that the Realm of God “happens on at least four different levels. It's not a place as much as it is an attitude, an event that happens, an environment. It's what waits for us beyond the grave, it's within our hearts, it's a possibility for the world. And it must be acted out and modelled.”
In John 12:24, Jesus says that the Realm of God is like a seed that must die and be buried for it to have new life. The kicker here is that it not only happens without our help, but it happens despite our best efforts to make it grow the way we want it to.
So while we waste time bemoaning the death of the church or religion, we might be missing the fact that the Spirit is busy scattering seeds, which bloom into faith outside the church, and not necessarily a faith which uses our favourite hymns, or our words, or our structures; not a faith which is focused on buildings and numbers and finances. I think it is becoming a larger kind of faith, a spirituality which says people and their spirituality come first, living out the teaching comes first, trusting in the Spirit comes first. Those people who find no use for church actually find a great use for faith - people, language and heart.
So what does that mean for us? I am not going to say stop what we are doing, but I *am* going to say living out a faith based on unconditional love. The word faith has implicit in it, trust. God’s love for us is unconditional, isn’t it? God asks us to trust, to have faith. The seeds are scattered, only God knows how and where they grow and what they are going to be. Our role is the three words of faith: people, language and heart. May it be so.
Sources:
1. Diana Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. (HarperOne, New York. 2012.)
2. “Sowing, Growing, Reaping” a sermon based on Mark 4:26-34 by Rev. Randy Quinn
3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. (London: Fontana Books, 1959). P. 91.
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer
5. Jon Meacham. “The End of Christian America,” April 2009, www.newsweek.com/2009/04/03/the-end-of-christian-america.html“Spiritual but Not Religious”, a sermon based on Mark 4:26-34. June 17, 2012 Humber United Church
No comments:
Post a Comment