Re-visioning

It seems to me that I am hearing the cry for a re-visioning of church in many sectors and certainly in our readings this Lent.  It is not a re-visioning like what is happening in our marketplace as corporations downsize and cut positions.  It is a true re-seeing, re-thinking, and renewing.  

Sometimes I hear the call in the voice of a teenager who finds an inauthenticity to what has been construed as church.  Other times it comes from the voice of a wise elder who realizes that the bells and whistles of the previous generation are no longer heard by the current generation.  Today I saw it in the faces of those grieving the loss of a huge persona in our faith community.

Where do we go from here?  This seems to be the immediate question and one that every generation must ask itself as it wrestles with the Word and our injunction to be disciples in a changing world.

Brennan Manning has written eloquently about this: If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don't find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don't cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God's truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition. 

One of the resounding themes present in our Diocesan Convention was that Christians are to be a people of joy.  I think we struggle with this as we are challenged or even shepherded "beyond our wants, beyond our needs, beyond our fears, from death into life" as the hymn "Shepherd Me" intones.  In order to obtain this joyful and trusting posture in our hearts, perhaps some sense of detachment is involved.

Johannes Eckhart von Hocheim, the medieval Dominican friar and respected theologian and philosopher, was a mystic whose writings and sermons were all centered on God and detachment from all that is not God. He plumbed the depths of his 'spirituality of subtraction' to the point that he wrote in his discourse About Disinterest: Keep in mind: to be full of things is to be empty of God, while to be empty of things is to be full of God.  This is directly related to the Pauline emphasis on the Greek notion of kenosis--the self-emptying conversion of being that comes in the grace of faith, the reality of being made new creation in Christ.

Where is our joy in this Lenten season? Of what do we need to be emptied in order to know this joy? How do we care for it, nurture it and share it with others?

A prayer from Walter Bruggemann:

Light from light

Creation from chaos

Life from death

Joy from sorrow

Hope from despair

Peace from hate

All your gifts, all your love, all your power.

All from your word, fresh from your word, all gifts of your speech.

We give thanks for your world-forming speech.

Thanks as well for our speech back to you,

the speech of mothers and fathers

who dared to speak

in faith and unfaith

in trust and distrust

in grateful memory and in high hurt.

We cherish this speech as we trust yours.

Listen this day for the groans and yearnings of your world,

listen to our own songs of joy and our own drudges of death,

and in the midst of our stammering,

speak your clear word of life

in the name of your word come flesh.

Amen.