“I will pour out a spirit of . . . prayer on th[is] house . . .” (Zech. 12:10) “. . . for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.” (Gal. 3:26) “And Jesus said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” (Lk. 9:20)
There are some Bible texts we’d rather avoid, and this morning’s Gospel is one I hoped I’d never have to preach on at Emmanuel. But this Sunday serves us a grand slam of three texts. If I may briefly paraphrase their combined message, it is this. Faith in Jesus Christ strips away our illusions about ourselves and God. Faith in Jesus Christ is a comforting but challenging gift. It undoes the dominant social and political categories we live by. Only God can do this, and God does it only through our habits of faith and prayer. So have faith in Christ and pray. Have faith and pray.
This flat-footed insistence on Christ, faith, and prayer does not, I think, appeal to the temper of this parish — aesthetic, politically correct, and liberal Protestant — a temper I share. I am as uncomfortable with orthodoxy as many of you. But the timing of these texts is perfect.
As I first grew to love this parish, Emmanuel was growing complacent, even in-your-face, about its unorthodoxy. More recently, Emmanuel landed squarely in front of questions it would rather not ask — questions about its finances, declining membership, organizational structure, its musical traditions, its very survival, and its adherence to the Episcopal church. The parish leadership of these last years has given tirelessly of its energy, generosity, and creativity to face these questions. Those organizational struggles will soon reach a conclusion when the vestry gives us its final report in September.
Looking beyond that, today’s readings are, I think, God’s way of nudging us back toward a question too long avoided. After all, if the parish is worth shoring up, then don’t we owe God and each other some reflection on our corporate faith? If that faith is merely called “spirituality”, it becomes a cipher committing us to nothing in particular. What, then, is our faith and what does it have to do with Christ? Do we pray? If not, what are we doing here?
Three casual episodes have troubled me enough to know we must face these questions or face our own undoing. The first is about faith. A couple of years ago, a vestry member called me about a parish matter. After a sympathetic dialogue, I told her that a certain viewpoint showed a lack of Christian and Episcopal identity. She responded that she didn’t think Christian and Episcopal were categories that would necessarily count with this whole congregation.
The second is about worship. Glenn and I met an Emmanuelite friend at a party who said, “I’m glad to see you because I won’t see you until September.” “Why,” we asked. “Oh,” he responded nonchalantly, “the music stopped. I never go to church after the cantatas stop.” This fellow spoke, I know, for more than a few people who come here. I felt a knot in my stomach: no Bach, so no worship or fellowship?
Finally, about prayer. Some time ago a superb consultant led some parish leaders through exhausting conversations about the future of the parish. About halfway through, someone asked whether the schedule allowed time for shared prayer. The answer was no. The parish might close in a few years, and we’re not praying at meetings?
These episodes trouble me as your friend who wants us to flourish. But it doesn’t take Edward Albee or Eugene O’Neill to dramatize our avoidance of questions at the core of our own and God’s identity. So it makes sense to ask — do we feel the Psalmist’s thirst for God? Do we make room to wonder who Christ is? If not, why worry about the budget?
Let me be extremely clear what I mean. In individual Emmanuelites, you’ll often encounter an openness to God’s healing and the transforming love of Christ. But the step from individuals’ faith to communal faith is hard for us. We are so aware of the shortcomings of the tradition and the perils of exclusivity, that we abdicate any commitment to a shared expression of faith. Look at our website to see what I mean: the words God, Christ, Jesus, and — my personal favorite — the Holy Spirit appear nowhere on the website or in the parish mission statement. Is this a Christian parish or not?
The danger is that when we give up the struggle for a common profession of faith, we slip from the compassion of “wherever” to the complacency of “whatever”. By slow degrees we inch from a community of faith into a culture of irony. In our parish culture of irony, one of our favorite jokes — and I take full responsibility for starting it at Mardi Gras, 2002 — is that when we recite the Nicene Creed, we do it with our fingers crossed. Perhaps that has to happen with such an ancient text. But when we cannot get past the joke to name any other truth, then we lose our reason for being.
Our culture of irony works like this: everyone knows that no one can say what anyone means — so nobody knows what everyone stands for. We may consider it kindly or inclusive, but we don’t all mean what we do all say in liturgy, yet we don’t find ways to say what we do mean. So the last step is embarrassed silence.
Irony also inhibits growth. That’s not my notion: sociologists tell us that churches grow because they have a message to share. Yet at Emmanuel we let people slip in for the cantata. They make no offering. We make no contact. They leave before the end of the service. Nothing gets shared. And we never reckon what a corporate lack of self-respect it all implies. We would never tolerate such repeated behavior from a real community member or party guest.
We might run from this irony, but we cannot hide. The irony confronts us at the heart of Emmanuel’s identity, in the music of Bach. Let there be no mistake. As important as Bach is to this parish, many Emmanuelites reject his world-view. They would be as embarrassed to profess Bach’s faith as they would be to follow his royalist politics. Bach believed stoutly that Christ’s sacrificial death was needed for us to stand in right relation to God and each other. He pinned his hope on our baptism into the atoning salvation of the God-man. He trusted that our sinfulness could not be overcome but only forgiven through our Savior’s unique action.
Exclusive, sacrificial atonement — the parish labored to remove all references to those things in its own worship, yet they are at the core of Bach’s belief and Bach is at the core of our life. So as we notice contradictions in our political and church leaders, let us be honest about our own. This profound paradox demands we give a clearer account of our corporate faith.
Please do not misunderstand me — and don’t oversimplify my point. These questions are hard ones and I do not think there are simple answers, nor am I calling for a test of orthodoxy. You know me too well for that. I am urging you this morning to prepare for the time after the vestry’s organizational report in September. I believe God may be inviting you to look once again at your corporate faith.
This does not mean to come up with a formula. When Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?”, he asks not for a correct reply but for a clear relationship. Jesus does not expect you to answer in the words of the creed — he probably wouldn’t have understood them if you did. He asks you to engage in dialogue with him, to tell his stories among yourselves, to discover him beneath his disguises — and then to name what you see and hear.
There was a strong sign that Christ may mean more to us than we know how to say. When the Eucharist was removed from the main Sunday service in 2003, the parish leadership insisted that the change would last for at least one year, but the parishioners called fast and loud for its return. Communion was back in three months. Have we talked about what this means about us and Christ and the world? Talking about it would be the beginning of sharing our faith. Broadening our Bible study, resuming our Prayer Team, reviving adult education would all be ways to engage the search for our corporate faith.
Two last ironies in closing. First, I am completely aware of the irony that I am preaching to the choir. If you show up for cantata-free worship on a summer Sunday, you are likely the people ready to share faith and practice prayer. Can you creatively invite others to join in that sharing in September?
The final irony is: I hope I am wrong about what I’ve said. If so, let my exaggerations unleash something like a shared search to express what we do mean when we go through these rituals week after week. Who do you say Christ is? What is the faith that you share?
Pray for this parish lest it fail. For without prayer, God may not be able to give you what God wants to give you.
Let us pray. Gentle Christ, you gaze into our hearts and you put us the question: “Who do you say that I am?” Let us feel the gentleness of that question, the intimacy of your invitation. Let us know that by putting the question so directly, you are already helping us to answer it. Amen.