Provocations III:  Bringing Christendom back to Christianity

 

Christendom has done away with Christianity, without being quite aware of it. The consequence is that, if anything is to be done, one must try again to introduce Christianity into Christendom.

[Source: quoted in Protestant Thought in the 19th Century by Claude Welch p.295]

 

The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.

[Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard]

 

The established Church is far more dangerous to Christianity than any heresy or schism. We play at Christianity.  We use all the orthodox Christian terminology –but everything, everything without character.  Yes, we are simply not fit to shape a heresy or schism.  There is something frightful in the fact that the most dangerous thing of all, playing at Christianity, is never included in the heresies or schisms.  [Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard]

 

“Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it?

 

The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.

 

Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”

[Source: Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.]

 

The artwork is entitled: ‘The Choice.”  The artist is Lauren Wright Pittman [www.lewpstudio.com].  Kierkegaard and Dillard are challenging us with a choice:  playing at Christianity or following the Christ.  We play at Christianity when our buildings become more important than our mission to serve the marginalized. 

 

In the 21st Century the Church continues to have an ‘edifice complex.’  Just try and ask a congregation to let go of it building and worship with an congregation two blocks away and imagine the feedback!  Why not repurpose one’s building for mission or sell it and use the funds to assist others? 

 

Christendom is the right side of this artwork – the oft opulent institutional Church.  The left side of this artwork is the serving Church willing to pour itself out for the sake of the world.  Christendom often plays at Christianity.  Are we willing during this Lenten Season to take an honest look at our congregations and challenge one another to be Church and not just play at Christianity? 

 

Rev. Kenn Storck, March 9, 2023