PASTOR BETHANY: About church clutter | Lost coastal outpost

‘In God we trust’

In greed we trust.

We rely on power.

We have confidence in politics.

But Allah? Not so much.

I am desperate for a change in the religious winds. I was recently asked why I think so many people in America have left the church. “Oh my friend,” I said, “the list is like a Venn diagram with circles overlapping and connecting. It’s hard to say what the catalyst is.”

Maybe sex abuse scandals of church leaders. Perhaps evangelicals will gleefully support a master manipulator for the presidency. Maybe the pandemic took Church away and replaced it with hobbies and laundry. Maybe people can’t stand another sermon about hell if it feels like their life is hell. Perhaps the obsession with women’s bodies and the culture of shame that circulates through them. Maybe the “love” they have for LGBTQ people feels a lot more like rejection. Perhaps the search for Christian nationalism in a country founded on religious freedom feels more like controlling chains.

I am desperate for a change in the religious winds – a groaning wind of peace from the Holy Spirit – and I believe it is possible.

The late church historian Phyllis Tickle wrote about some markers in church history. About every 500 years, the Church holds a “big flea market” of all the extra junk collected to figure out what should stay and go regarding doctrines, traditions, rituals and practices. Decades of theological disagreements can pass, causing instability in systems and institutions, until the last straw falls and leaders come under pressure to determine the Church’s future. With painful and sometimes violent outcomes, the Church splits, relationships become serious, hearts break, and modes of religious practice die out.

But God tends to go through dead things to bring about life. And life cannot exist without death.

(A word about ‘rummage sales’; I understand how limiting this phrase is. Junk sales are intended to sell what is no longer wanted, but much of what needs to go should REALLY not be given anywhere else. Maybe dumpster fire is a better term, but for consistency’s sake, we’ll stick with ‘rummage sale’.)

A first flea market took place about 500 years after the birth of the Church and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (Obviously the birth of Jesus was a major historical shift, and about 500 years before that there was another major historical shift with the last prophetic writing – Malachi). During this time, the Roman Empire was dismantled. Christianity had become an accepted religion without much pastoral oversight or doctrine, so it had to be done to define what it meant to be a Christian and follow Jesus.

Phyllis Tickle wrote in her book The Great Emergence: “During the long decline of civil government, the population of Rome increasingly consisted of illiterate barbarians who had grown tired of plundering the Eternal City and decided instead to settle and live there to stay. a while. Since Christianity was the religion of the empire, many, many of these new raiders-turned-citizens adopted it; but they also inevitably adapted it.”

About 500 years after that, in 1054, the Great Schism occurred. In the most simplistic terms, after years of arguing and debating certain beliefs, such as whether or not there should be yeast in the communion bread, and after wondering whether the Pope had ultimate authority over the Western and Eastern Church, they went their own way. . The Western Roman Catholic Church insisted on unleavened bread and papal authority, while the Eastern Church broke away and continued as the Greek/Eastern Orthodox Church with a different structure.

500 years later, a flea market broke out again with the Great Reformation. The German Catholic monk Martin Luther (along with others) began to deeply question some practices of the Roman Catholic Church, such as indulgences, in which Christians could pay the church money for relief and forgiveness of sins or for a deceased loved one to die. purgatory would move to heaven. Because most people were illiterate and could not study the scriptures for themselves, they believed that what the Church ordained was what God ordained. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther wrote down 95 things that needed to be done in the Roman Catholic Church and implored people to strip away everything extra and simply focus on Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, and Sola Fide – only Scripture, only grace, faith alone. .

In the Bible book of Acts we find this early church community. They met in the temple courts. They met in each other’s houses. They broke bread, ate together, listened to Bible teachings, and prayed together. They made sure that everyone had enough and that there was equality and equality among them. Perhaps this is idealistic today, but it certainly sounds nice (although when we read Acts we see that there was strife and strife then). But how have we come so far from this early example? From this early church, simple and inclusive, to an empirical church, to a split and another split and now thousands of Christian denominations split, begin to argue and die.

The printing press had recently been invented before Luther broke away. People were given access to Bibles written in their own language. These variables, plus an increase in literacy, created more Protestant denominations based on different interpretations

In the 500 years since the Reformation, the Church (Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant…) has picked up some good things along the way. But some of what we’ve collected is embarrassing.

Colonialism. Indigenous boarding schools. Slavery. Purity culture. Patriarchy. Christian nationalism.

I believe it’s time for a new flea market! (Or dumpster fire!)

Statement of faith pages on church websites or denominational books on disciplines are long and thick, making sure to list every little thing so that no one misunderstands God. We argue about what we think it means that “God so loves the world” instead of simply believing that God so loves the world! We are more focused on upholding what we believe is the “right theology” than on loving people.

I believe we are on the cusp of new movements of Love, but we live in a fearful world. Church leaders are concerned about the number of people leaving, and in a post-pandemic world, so many people have never returned. We don’t know what the future of the church will look like if more churches close than open. Fear-based questions cause Christians to give up or become aggressive: What if our generation is the last Christian generation and this ends with us? What does this mean for our children and grandchildren? What do we leave behind for them? Dilapidated buildings and religious trauma?

I think there’s a lot of good old religion getting in the way of new Holy Spirit movements.

So I wonder: What needs to be done in the flea market to create spaces for the Holy Spirit to breathe into our lives, to hover over our human hopelessness, to determine the way forward with more love, awe, and curiosity? What needs to be removed, stripped and what needs to stay? You might say, “Burn it all down.” And I get the feeling that I want to see everything thrown into the proverbial dumpster. But I ask you: Have you been to Mass lately or praying the Lord’s Prayer with others? Have you attended to your precious soul and recognized the beloved value of yourself and your neighbor? Have you been challenged to love your enemy and forgive others as you have been forgiven?

I don’t believe the answer is to burn it all down, but I do believe that if the church courageously sifts through all the old, good, and useful stuff, is honest about what is no longer useful or even good, and humbly releases that which then we can let go. What remains is Jesus and I believe there is nothing better in the whole world than Him. The constant in each of these profound historical movements is Jesus. So, my friends, when your faith feels strained, when hope feels bleak, when it’s hard to be faithful along the way, know that God is faithful to you. God will make a way forward and it’s probably not the way we imagined, but there’s nothing to be afraid of.

May we let go of the religious grip of vice.

We trust in God.

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Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church.