Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Church Submission
Matt Anderson writes about our shared death as the beginning of Christian communion. He then moves on to expand how we experience that death:
The parish model is but one way of making this kind of communion happen. The key word is submission - maybe it is to denomination instead of parish, but the idea is to come to look at you serving the church not the other way around. There are also limits to this loyalty. Congregations can fall into distinct immorality and ungodliness. It does not happen as often as claimed, but it does happen, and then it is time to leave.
Second quibble is with the idea that church "does not feed us." It does -- However, that feeding happens in the way that Matt describes submission and community, not by having us give up the desire for feeding. Imagine a wrench that for years was used as a hammer to drive in tacks around the house. One day someone comes along and uses the wrench as a wrench, tightening a nut of some sort. How do you think the wrench would feel? I'm thinking pretty good.
Church should be like that. We are built for precisely the kind of Christian community that Matt here extols. When we are a part of such a community, as opposed to attending the Sunday "service show," We will find genuine sustenance and support. In fact, such community is, of itself, sustenance.
But Matt is absolutely right - submission is the key!
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In my reflections for Ash Wednesday, I claimed that it was “through death—in suffering, in weakness, in solitude—that the communion of saints begins. The brokenness of Jesus’ body is the birth of his people.”Matt then uses some pull quotes to support his thesis and looks at the parish model as a means of enforcing this effect:
While I focused mainly on the experience of solitude and silence as the confrontation with the limitation of death, I could have easily have focused on the experience of the local church.
What is interesting about the parish model is that it makes geography–to which we’re tied by virtue of our corporeality–one of the main determinants of church affiliation. It demands the submission to the limitations of the body–that is, it demands the death of our desires for perfection, for liberty, and for transcendence. In putting to death such desires, we are rewarded with that which we sought–the experience of the Spirit’s indwelling presence, which transforms our local church bodies into communities built upon the Word of God. Only then will community become holy communion.First of all, Matt seriously "gets" what it means to be a Christian here and this is very important stuff. Just a couple of quibbles with the absoluteness of some of his language.
Ultimately, the idea that the local church body is a place that should meet our needs or feed us is misguided, in that it presumes we are free from the injunction to die to our selves while we remain within the confines of the Church. But if we are fellowshipping with Christ’s sufferings, then it is primarily in Church that we must lay aside our desires for theological rigor and precision, aesthetic experience, and close friendships. It is precisely in such broken, failing, and dead areas that we are able to experience the judgmental, impatient, and angry nature of our hearts. It is in such environments that some who care deeply about the Church are most able to experience the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.
The parish model is but one way of making this kind of communion happen. The key word is submission - maybe it is to denomination instead of parish, but the idea is to come to look at you serving the church not the other way around. There are also limits to this loyalty. Congregations can fall into distinct immorality and ungodliness. It does not happen as often as claimed, but it does happen, and then it is time to leave.
Second quibble is with the idea that church "does not feed us." It does -- However, that feeding happens in the way that Matt describes submission and community, not by having us give up the desire for feeding. Imagine a wrench that for years was used as a hammer to drive in tacks around the house. One day someone comes along and uses the wrench as a wrench, tightening a nut of some sort. How do you think the wrench would feel? I'm thinking pretty good.
Church should be like that. We are built for precisely the kind of Christian community that Matt here extols. When we are a part of such a community, as opposed to attending the Sunday "service show," We will find genuine sustenance and support. In fact, such community is, of itself, sustenance.
But Matt is absolutely right - submission is the key!
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