Sunday Morning Reflection—7 September, 2014 A fractured, incomplete view of the world is…a fractured, incomplete view of the world, whether it is nominally Christian, casting one’s eyes only on the eternal and personal at the expense of all things temporal. I am not speaking of the goal of omniscience or an Archimedean point of view. Or am I? I often wonder what the pastor of my church is thinking. From personal experience I know a pastor wishes to present truths to a congregation that hold firm for all people in all times and in all places; but often presents theological points of view in the pulpit valuable only to some people in some places at some times. A pastor wants to be a master of his subject, eschewing all implication of things beyond his or her grasp…yet. Oh my! More to the point, the churches of many denominations are found on many corners of the same town in the USA. Yes, it means religious freedom here. Yes, it points to a uniform faith. Yes, agreeing on that uniformity remains elusive, but somehow in some way can enable some of these churches to work together on such things as local food banks. But Sunday morning rolls around and the congregants really want their pastor to assure them of eternal truths, among them that their church has a better grasp, even the best possible grasp, on the cosmos as recorded in the four gospels. Who wants to attend a second class church? Who wants to believe that other churches in town with different theologies are all equal? No one. And (wink, wink) who would rather attend the rich white Roman Catholic church in town with the magnificent building and campus than the little wooden church where the black people attend on the slum side of town? One can envy the phenomenal growth of charismatic immigrant Nigerian churches in New York City, but unless one is a charismatic immigrant Nigerian one feels quite out of place among them on Sunday morning. I know from experience. I also know from experience that English speaking Puerto Ricans and English speaking North Americans cause one another discomfort in the same worship service. Many want to cryogenically freeze the church. If everybody in the world were Christians then everybody would be like the first century church in Jerusalem or American Baptists in southern New Jersey or Anglicans in Kenya or Roman Catholics in Italy or Russian Orthodox in Ukraine or Coptics in Egypt or Pentecostals in Latin America and Asia. Alas, the varieties of Christianity around the global and various perspectives on the Bible threaten what seems like the pearl of great price—that our particular church and denomination has arrived; that it holds the exclusive franchise; that in this church our personal search for truth is at its journey’s end. To all this I give a threefold hm-m-m-m-m. Not amen. The church is conflict. It is a fleet of rudderless arcs in a hurricane.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 12:34:54 +0000
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