Death is the Church’s Best Friend

The church needs to be teaching her people about death, not life.

Oh, we talk a good game:

We talk about eternal life and the bread of life that Jesus gives. But we talk about that as a time down the road, a time in the future, a time we will see by and by. In the meantime we live in this world and living life in this world, as far as the church seems to be concerned, is about living a life of preservation. Preserving "values." Preserving tradition, doctrine, teachings, whatever you wish to call it. A life that is free of sin, a life that follows the rules, a life that God will be happy with and because of which, ultimately allow us into heaven.

This is a life of fear.

What the church misses here is the one fundamental point that resurrected life cannot begin without a death. Death leads to eternal life and it’s not just the death of the body we wait for. If we truly understand what the church should be teaching, we will understand that in order to live life to the fullest, most fulfilling and generous max we can, we must die to the life we know, here and now, today, at this moment. The church doesn’t teach this. The church thinks that life is about living according to a vision of days gone by, keeping things the way they are, or better, going back to the way things used to be.

What the church is teaching is not death, but deadly.

What the church teaches is how to hold on to what little we have. The church teaches fear of loss and risk reduction. The church teaches comfort and preservation of self. The church teaches threat management. This is deadly stuff. It leads to stagnation, lack of growth, and a life which finds itself increasingly in a narrower and narrower perspective.

If the church truly taught life, it would teach about what it means to put our whole trust in Jesus and the Bread which he offers. Not food for the belly, but food for the soul. The kind of food which nourishes our spirit and opens our eyes to see one another truly as children of God. In order to do this, we must let go of the things upon which we have been feeding ourselves: the comforts we have grown accustomed to, the material things we have acquired, the angers we hold, the divisions and exclusions we cherish. In other words, we have to be willing to lose everything we think we have to go after something we don’t completely understand or can ever really see and touch. As long as we hold on to the status quo and live in our comfort zones, we will be continually on the Good Friday side of the Cross. The church professes its faith in the Cross. But unless the church is willing to risk its existence and give up what it holds near and dear, it denies that which it professes: the death AND resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Cross is the symbol of a resurrected life. Not the life of one man, but the life of all of us. To deny the possibility of resurrection now, in this moment, is to deny the possibility of life-changing renewal in Christ. The church cannot continue to be afraid of losing membership over controversial issues. The church should be immersed in controversy on a regular basis. Controversy is created when people are shown or moved in a different direction from the status quo on the basis of the justice or injustice of an issue. The church is about pointing out those issues and living what it purports to believe: that everyone is created and loved by God, and everyone is called by God to serve. When the church denies that someone is worthy to answer that call, it becomes merely a gatekeeper for the status quo, not a prophet of the Kingdom of Heaven. The reign of God offers eternal, abundant life. It requires only one thing: A genuine love for God and for each other. Through that love comes the ability to include everyone and to listen to differences and to find ways to live peacefully with one another even in disagreement. Most of all it gives us the ability to live with inevitable change and new understandings of God. Noone knows the mind of God. When one is willing to live in that ambiguity, it is possible to begin the journey through death into the resurrected life of the Cross. If we wait for the death of the body before we experience eternal life, we pass up an incredible opportunity to live a life that is fulfilling and service filled, a life which daily can be surprised by the joy of new perspectives of God and people, and a continually deeper spiritual communion, not just a life where we go to work each day and come home and live the same patterns day in and day out. There is more to life than that. It is only through dying that we can come to that realization but the church is too busy trying to stay alive and preserving what it thinks it has to teach us how to get past Good Friday to Easter.

Perhaps that’s why we’re looking elsewhere.

3:52:43 PM
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