Too Bad We Don't Believe this Whole Death and Resurrection Thing

(as an aside - my brain is constantly at work - but I have to admit that is often because of the conversations I have with many people wiser and more experienced than myself - some of the impetus of my thoughts comes from them - but I do not tell you "Dave said this" because I want to be fully responsible for the upset and ire my blogs create. But I am humbly grateful for those who share their deeper thinking with me)

I am not talking about Jesus.

I am not talking about us.

I am talking about the general philosophical principle that in reality was once the centrepoint of our theology. Things die - things are reborn.

It is at the very beginning of the Bible for God's sake - we get kicked out of the garden and have to start over. The world floods and we have to start over. The prophets are replaced by a monarchy. Deportation and Exile to rebuilding and restoring... Our history, whether written or experienced is one of the old ways dying and the new ways emerging.

To be fair - this often does not go as well as we might hope... just ask Martin Luther - whether you are talking about the medieval or the modern one. When we stand up and admit things have to die, no one wants to hear it. (For that matter, ask Jesus...)

And this is where we find ourselves.

The prophetic voices in the midst of most congregations stand up and say this is a failing enterprise. There are those who admit that our resources are almost depleted and the doors will soon close. And often they are told to hush... that negativity will not win the day... that we should focus on what we have... or some variation of the type of thinking that I fear got us into this mess in the first place.

"What can we do to bring people back into the church" has become our sacred mantra. We invent program, services, music, and outreach based on our belief that the way we do things is not only right but has more meaning than the rest of the world understands.

And I wonder - does all of this mean that we, at our core, do not believe the central tenet of death and resurrection.

See, the whole story of Jesus dying and coming back from the grave on Easter morning was never meant to be about one person - or about supernatural powers - or about heaven... Instead, it was meant to be the philosophical underpinning of kingdom thinking.

Everything Dies - Something New Rises Up

We should all get tattoos of that phrase. We should be required to say it as a mantra. We should come to understand that when Jesus taught us to pray that things on earth would be more like things in heaven - this is what he meant - that we would be able to see that life leads to death leads to resurrection.

And again - it is not about me. It is not about getting into heaven. It is about seeing that everything has a time and place, energy and enthusiasm, an impact and meaning - AND THEN IT DIES.

It is only then that something else comes along to continue on in a different form.

Imagine if this really was our core belief. Imagine if I could say that the people in imaginaryville built this church when the town was founded to give a sense of community and purpose and holiness to the endeavour of creating a town - but that work is finished, it has lived its life, and it is time to die... Let's burn the church and figure out what comes next.

Look around - the modern world does not find meaning in the things it once did. People have changed so quickly and dramatically - the traditional church will not ever come back to life - it has served its purpose....

Now people find meaning in nature. They find meaning in art. They find meaning in online social arguments. They find meaning in the "religious" experiences of a rock concert, or a party, or even a vacation to Disney.

If our goal is to see the Kingdom of Heaven become an accepted reality, why are we holding on to a "kingdom" that was never of heaven and no longer exists? Why are we not looking at the real world and real experiences and saying - how do we find holiness, spirituality, sanctuary, nirvana - however you want to define those thin moments - in the actual day to day reality we face.

What would it be like if we believed that it is possible the local church needs to die in order for something to be reborn from the ashes.

After all - aren't we all about celebrating resurrection?

So Was Marx Right?

It is Holy Week.

A very traditional high holy time where we focus on one or two ideas which force us to equate Jesus with God and, perhaps, limit our understanding to a black and white reality.

To wit, Jesus died for our sins. Or. Jesus rose again to conquer death.

Somewhere along the way, we added layers of dimension which broaden the script somewhat: Death, Suffering, Rebirth. Although psycho-emotionally deeper they still maintain the black and white naivete of people who believe they are bad and believe some external force can save them.

It is this jarring juxtaposition to our understanding of mental and emotional health that really forces me to dig deep in order to do justice to the festival while failing to accept the premise.

Have any of you ever read the poem Bio: Black Baptist/Bastard by George Elliot Clarke?

It is from a book of poems exploring racial identity within Black Canadian - and specifically, Nova Scotian culture... But I am fascinated by the imagery of church that it evokes and essentially blames for the predicament of self-hatred... I present it here in its entirety for your perusal:

 History fell upon us like the lash.

(I am not rash.) Black Baptists wept out prayers—

Passion—to hector tar into nectar,

To harvest undeniable honey,

But our scorched eyes were stooped by white faces,

We sank, stupefied by white capital,

Eating grained self-hatred in our churches,

Gulping Welch's grape juice, bile, and venom,

While chalked Jesus carped at us like a cop,

His sneered face crapping, "God damn your black ass."

Slavery was dead, wasn't it? But blood

Crusted on our rusty-tasting sermons,

A taint of blood for saint-plush lips. We could

Not look at the Adantic and not cry,

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" We knew

The terror of evacuated faith.

The stars had fallen cold where they were stalled—

For no one had believed—loved—for aeons.

The air swerves cold with such calamity.

I chronicle a cold, pockmarked epoch,

Map a county where trains gnaw their way home,

Blackened mummies pitch, gutted by gypsum,

Frail Baptists fall, their crotches worm-eaten,

Debris escalates when black ice sleets in.

I come from Windsor Plains, wine-stained poet,

Choosing not to imbibe William Williams'

Rain in the galvanized pail by the well.

Well, as a child, I spread blackstrap on bread

Between bitter dollops of the Bible.

I had to. I was guilty. I had spied

My sun-skinned mother's glaring skin. (I eyed,

Self-condemned, her shimmering, mixed-race breasts.)

Enough snow has fallen without license.

A Putsch arrests my heart. My life's naked.

Listen closely. I am trying to cry.

That's my condemned blood on the page.

Now - I do not mean to appropriate this poem - it is clearly about Black identity and the way self-hatred is ingrained... But what I do want to point out is that the poet himself feels the church, specifically his black Baptist church with a chalk white Jesus has been complicit in this understanding of self as less than.

Is it not at least worth a second of our consideration that this experience is also part of what has driven the masses from our halls? What if we viewed Easter through this lens?

It was Augustine, not Jesus, who claimed we were so evil that only the sacrifice of the blood of a God would save us. He made that up echoing Jewish traditions of sacrifice and scapegoat he probably never really understood in order to appease his own self-hatred for his lust, adultery, and an illegitimate child. (okay, I am being simplistic and harsh - but it is true)

Years later Marx would famously quip that the church was the opiate of the people - that we used it to feel better about our sorry state knowing we would be rewarded in heaven. What Marx also believed but we do not remember is that the church was complicit in the creation of the said sorry state. 

When we declare people sinful - and then offer a way of salvation - are we not just using the system to perpetuate elitism and classism? 

Perhaps. 

But these are the things we don't preach from the pulpit. These are the things that we don't ponder out loud.

It makes one wonder if we are not the enemy to all that Jesus was trying to accomplish. We are a part of the powers of imperialism - whether capitalistic or monarchist - that enslave the children of God through self-hatred.

Why are we not asking if this is not at least a part of why people are falling away - they no longer see "Good News" in what we say because they are capable of seeing the historic and cultural significance in a way they were not before the information age.

So - back to Holy Week. It is not death as atonement followed by universal salvation through defeat of death and rebirth - that is a cultural layer added by the imperialistic church.

For Jesus I think it was political rebellion followed by execution, leading to a new movement.

Jesus wanted us to stop being led by status, by riches, by grasping - and instead to be led by love and compassion. And he was willing to die for his beleif that if we accomplished this, it would be heaven on earth.

I think if presented this way - more people could get behind Easter. 

Death and the Maiden

My wife just underwent emergency surgery.

She is fine. It is better. The sickness is cut out in the form of a blocked duct and she is one gall bladder lighter and comfortably recuperating at home.

Over the last year and a bit, I had four surgeries.

I am now cancer free - but for a while there, what with a grapefruit-sized tumor that could very well have been stage three by the time it was found - the future was uncertain at best.

Still - the one thing I had to come to grips with really fast was that I was dying. If I was "lucky" I would survive this, but with no guarantee that I was not on a quicker path to demise then others. The survival rate for colorectal cancers in Canada is only 64% at five years.

And then who knows - my body has been proven to degrade to cancer in one place - odds are small, like 3% chance of a second different cancer... but there are odds.

I don't say all this to get sympathy - but rather to tell you about the aftermath... The plan...

You see, when you realize that death is imminent you do everything you can to avoid it. Thus four surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, cannabis, and a change to a whole food plant-based diet. None of which are easy or pleasant to cope with when you are forced to do them (well - that is a lie - cannabis is pretty easy and pleasant ;) )

But when faced with great odds of death and poor odds of continued survival - change seems necessary and most of the arguments against it go out the window.

There is also that moment when you look back and realize - if I had not smoked for 20 years, if I had not continued to dip my arms shoulder deep in a vat of acetone while working as a fibreglass canoe modeler, if I had not have eaten meat for almost every meal, and so many other horrible choices - This may not be where I find myself now.

Ok - so this is a church blog - and this is the thing - Jesus used Parables to explain reality in an acceptable way so that we had religious and spiritual understanding. And the above is my parable... and what I want you to say is this:

Imagine there is a church that discovers it is dying...

Ahhh..... there's the rub. You see. This is exactly what happens to us as an institution.

There comes a moment when our mortality takes centre stage. There comes a moment when we say, the survival rate at five years is 64% at best. There comes a time when we frantically do everything possible to try and prolong that life expectancy.

And how much easier, how much better would it have been if we either did the things from the beginning - or at least had yearly check-ups where we asked ourselves, how can we be healthier? Where are we declining the most?

There is a clear parallel here and for some reason, human nature is all about pretending it won't happen to us. But it will. Or something else will. But mark my words. If we just pretend everything is okay, one day it won't be.

My church has 5,000 set aside to hire a new minister. For advertising, moving expenses, etc. Now - most of them hope I never leave. But wouldn't it be less stressful to have the means to put on a really good job search should that day ever come?

This is the way we need to start thinking about everything. Aging people are going to stop contributing. Population shifts are occurring. There are a hundred little changes happening year over year and we should be proactively looking at them and adapting.

Which is also - if you want to look at it a different way - what Coca Cola or any successful company does. At some point, someone pointed out that people were getting healthier and so the next year coca cola started selling health drinks, then straight up bottled water - changing year after year to meet a different perceived need.

Time for some serious health checks and product evaluation...