The Contemplative Crisis

Extreme ascetic practices have thankfully moved to the margins of church life. Some continue to exist, such as the re-enactment of the crucifixion in the Philippines and self flaguation. There are some who do not eat meat during Lent within even my own congregation. I am impressed by their commitment but prefer to offer prayer and praise to God from a full heart rather than an empty stomach. (Michael Casey, Toward God, p. 107) Others postpone breakfast on Sunday morning until they have come to church to receive holy communion. The relationship the disciple of Christ has with their body has been a complex one as Church history highlights. My interest is in how our bodies relate to our life of prayer because our bodies are intimately connected with our prayer life, helping or hindering it.

For much of my life I didn’t pay much attention to my body, or how it was employed in prayer and worship. I was typical of many men, focused on the outward world, the world of action, who saw their body as an instrument which did the bidding of the mind. What we thought we had to do, the body would obligingly carry it out. It was our obedient servant to our will. The body was distanced from the ‘real us’, the head and mind. This is a dualism which has a very long history in Western culture, one which we have inherited from the Greeks and baptised into the Church.

This separation came to an abrupt end about 10 years ago. In midlife my body began to make little protests and noises to get my attention. At first I ignored its bleating. Then I developed a trifecta of Coeliac Disease, high blood pressure and Fructose intolerance. I could no longer ignore my body or treat it with disdain; a machine which would obey my plans, my will and faithfully carry out my wishes. My daily liturgy has become to holdout my hand to receive two tablets to control my blood pressure and a third to help protect my esophagus damaged by the undiagnosed Coeliac Disease.

My ‘labora’, the daily work of the Benedictine monk, is to swim twice a week to control my weight and to help my cardio-vascular system remain at least at a functional level. Walking regularly is required to keep my back from developing painful muscle spasm. I have had to wean myself from the Western diet of high fat and sugar, or else I will undoubtedly develop Type 2 diabetes and my doctor has whispered that my cholesterol level is dangerously high and I risk needing another tablet a day to control it.

Now the temptations I battle with are not found in the desert where Anthony wrested with the demons, but in the suburbs, where the daily temptation is offered by the innocent coffee or the sugary soft drink, especially those with caffeine added. I find them addictive and when the sugar and caffeine are combined together, they produce a high as tangible as the effect of a good glass of wine on my brain – or any other mind altering pharmacology. Chemicals I would have formerly ignored, I now see are seeping into my body and poisoning it. I have finally had to come to grips with this thing, my body. There is no other I can trade this one in for. It is like our earth, sustaining our human race, yet we are destroying it. There is no other planet we can get to replace it; there is no other body available to replace this one, the one I have, so I had better care for it as God has given it to me as a gift. I need to be a steward of God’s grace, extending this ‘grace’ toward even my body.

We, the majority who comprise our local churches, are paralysised from doing anything which will deliver us from the vicious grip of over eating, our slothfulness, our self indulgence and the excessive consumption of food. Our apathy about the starving poor mirrors our short sightedness of our own over consumption, We seem indifferent to the powerful cultural messages which keep us trapped; that it is no accident that there are advertisements for fast food on our television at tea time; or that the shopping mall would be incomplete without luxurious coffee shops, cake shops and other food providers. Our churches are not havens from our bodily passions, but subtly continue to support them with many of our events and meetings centered around – food.  Often its not good food either. It’s like inviting a recovering alcoholic to a meeting at the local pub.

No, we cannot separate our bodies from our prayer lives. If they are sick, overweight or tired, our prayer life suffers. If we are suffering sleep apnoea, we will be incapable of praying without falling asleep. The common cold affects both our bodies, our minds and our emotional lives, so how can we be so blind not to see that the condition of our bodies will affect our prayer lives? A new askesis (Gk for discipline), which seems to be lacking in the ‘New Monasticism’ movement, must include the discipline of our bodies and weaning it from our Western culture’s unhealthy food habits.

The intimate link between our bodies and our worship and prayer is seen in our worship services where we kneel for prayer and at the communion rail to receive the sacrament of holy communion. It is the posture of humility and dependence upon God. We stand in the liturgical traditions of the Church, to listen to the gospel reading and for the holy communion thanksgiving prayer, a sign of our respect. In some churches and during the daily office, we bow in respect to the altar in the church and to each other because we all bear the image of God. We prostrate our bodies, as a sign of reverence, abasement and plea for mercy.  We lift our hands to express our praise. We shake hands to express our welcome of the other, the stranger and our neighbour who is forgiven and reconciled on the same basis as me at the greeting of the peace. We lay hands on children to bless them and to pray for people, a sign of our identification with them and their setting apart (consecration). We make the sign of the cross at the invocation of the Holy Trinity and prior to receiving the body and blood of Christ. Pilgrimages unite heart, body and spirit in the action of walking. Our bodies are intimately tied to our worship, our life of prayer. Church worship is kinesthetic. To have a healthy prayer life will require some attention to our body, especially a healthy body.

However, when the Reformation was underway, this union of body and prayer began to separate. The emphasis shifted away from a focus on the eucharist to a focus on the sermon and the receptacle for the sermon was the mind. Worship became more static and the amount of area allocated to allow physical movement in a church decreased. The sensory elements were purified from the churches; just white and black would do, mirroring the doctrinal precision of its churches leaders. Either you were right (white) in your doctrine or wrong (black). In the Presbyterian, Baptist and later Church of Christ congregations, the people were now served communion, and this too resulted in less bodily movement around the church. The body was confined to tight pews; it was in the mind where the worship now took place. (In the Georgian Churches here in Australia (which were constructed in New South Wales and Tasmania), the pews even have doors on them, preventing movement.) Thank God for the Charismatic Renewal which helped get the Church in touch with their bodies again and helped get them moving.

My body is the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) It was this truth that Paul appealed to as one of several arguments to stop the Corinthian Christians from indulging in promiscuous sex or intercourse with the temple prostitute. The sins committed by the human body could not be separated from realm of the spirit or soul because we are a psycho-sexual pneumatic being, clothed in flesh; just like the Incarnation of Christ, but we forget this too often. Irresponsible sexual expression will pollute our spirituality, sever our relationship with God and lead to a divided self. I am accustomed to thinking that my body belongs to me; but it’s not my own, it belongs to God; it is in this body that Christ now dwells, and in which the Father has come to live. Our sexuality is not just a bodily desire, but interconnects with our need for intimacy, touch and love. To treat it negatively is to fall again, into dualism with catastrophic results. A lack of awareness of how our sexuality interacts with who we are and our behaviour has led to tragic consequences for sexual abuse victims. But flirting, the dress by men and women in provocative clothing and the ‘projection’ by men of a persona of confidence and strength are more subtle ways our sexuality might be displayed, even within our local congregation.  The common reaction to the awareness that we are sexually endowed people with desires is repression, if not denial. This is simple legalism, usually imposed by those who are least comfortable with who they are. A better way than repression or denial of our sexuality is to call our desire the ‘sacred flame’, which needs protection from burning others when expressed inappropriately or by exploitation. This sacred flame needs tending when our bodies and relationships are tired and frayed and is a gift too, with all the other things which make us who we are in God’s image.

The church history record of the treatment of the body has been by and large, negative.  The monastic movement has certainly contributed to this portrayal. However, what we need is integration, not separation, if our contemplation is to grow and deepen. The following example taken from the Desert Fathers (200-450 AD) highlights this integration and the need to pay attention to the body and to treat it with respect, or else our life of prayer will be effected. And its taken from the very body of work which has traditionally eschewed our sexuality.

“They said of one monk that he had lived in the world and had turned to God, but was still goaded by desire for his wife; and he told this to the monks. When they saw him to be a man of prayer and one who did more than his duty, they laid on him a course of discipline which so weakened his body that he could not even stand up. By God’s providence another monk came to visit Scetis. When he came to this man’s cell he saw it open, and he passed on, surprised that no one came to meet him. But then he thought that perhaps the brother inside was ill, and returned, and knocked on the door. After knocking, he went in, and found the monk gravely ill. He said, ‘What’s the matter, abba?’ He explained, ‘I used to live in the world, and the enemy still troubles me because of my wife. I told the monks, and they laid on me various burdens to discipline my life. In trying to carry them out obediently, I have fallen ill and yet the temptation is worse.‘  When the visiting hermit heard this, he was vexed, and said, ‘These monks are powerful men, and meant well in laying these burdens upon you. But if you will listen to me who am but a child in these matters, stop all this discipline, take a little food at the proper times, recover your strength, join in the worship of God for a little, and turn your mind to the Lord. This desire is something you can’t conquer by your own efforts. The human body is like a coat. If you treat it carefully, it will last a long time. If you neglect it, it will fall to pieces.’ The sick man did as he was told, and in a few days the incitement to lust vanished. “ (The Desert Fathers (Translated by Benedicta Ward, Penguin Books, London: 2003; p. 49.)

Contemplative prayer by its very nature, is to bring a unity between God and ourselves through an unmediated experience. To lapse into some expression of dualism is to impose a separation and division between what is an integrated whole (body, mind and spirit) which is against the very expression or theology of contemplation. Contemplative prayer I’ve noticed, has helped me to locate myself in God (‘Your life is hidden in Christ’ as Paul writes in Col 3:3) and can help us to become reconciled to our bodies, to listen to them and treat them with respect. As I grow older, I am increasingly reconciled to the fact, that my body will in the end, determine much of what I am able to do and where I am able to go. (The prophecy by Jesus to Peter about his lack of freedom in his old age is one which can take note for our own old age. [Jn 21:18-19])

Eventually this body will be like all of the things I struggle with to relinquish to God, be overcome by death but also resurrection. The offering (oblation) of my body earlier in my life to God (Rom 12:1-3), to remain chaste until married, and even now to remain chaste from all other things which will pollute my body, will one day be fully realised. In between its nourished by the oblation of Christ’s body through our participation in the body and blood of our communion with Christ. (Here I am remembering the words from the Prayer Book for Australia, the Words of Consecration, p. 112.)  That God regards our bodies as something important is seen by the way he will resurrect them. This fact  and its power casts its shadow back from beyond the end of time, into this age where death and destruction reign.  Together with all the creation, our bodies, a microcosm of the greater creation, will with it be transformed by the resurrection power of Christ, because our bodies are not independent of this creation. For God to transform one will by necessity of its intimate connection to the other require both to be transformed; and that as both are injured by sin, both will be redeemed by Christ (Rom 8:18-25). The gift of the Spirit by God himself, is his promise and confirmation to strengthen our hope that what we hope for will be given, if not in this age, then certainly in the age to come.

Our prayer to God, involves our body. Our life in God and participation in the life of the trinity incorporates (in corporal – Latin to embody) the totality of ‘us’. If our bodies are neglected, afflicted or poisoned with modern food additives,  we will be affected and this will also affect our prayer life too. Christianity is not a disembodied religion as the incarnation of Christ attests, but a religion which should be able to integrate body, soul, spirit and mind into a unified whole in God, who gives us life. Contemplative prayer then, should not be seen to be against the body, ignoring the body, or disparaging the body but helping us intregrate our body into our union with Christ himself.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the day which marks the commencement of Lent, the forty days of preparation for Easter Sunday. This period is commonly associated with abstaining or fasting from something as a spiritual discipline to internalise  our commitment to Christ and to strengthen our resolve to live a life of continual repentance. Although I have regarded Ash Wednesday as a quaint ritual which is quite foreign to my Evangelical heritage  (one which does not normally observe any of the Church’s major festivals except Christmas, Good Friday and Easter Sunday), it is nevertheless, a practice which surprises me as being still deeply relevant to every Christian.  Leaving aside the big fear that the practice of this ritual will lead us to slide into doing good works to justify myself (the unforgivable sin to Puritan Protestants), Ash Wednesday and the period of Lent which follows, integrate our belief to our behaviour in a very practical way. Please allow me to explain how. 

The Scripture readings for this year were from Joel 2:1-2; 12-18 and Matthew 6:1-18. These readings draw our attention to the need to commence Lent with repentance and to begin practicing acts of piety with sincerity (unlike the hypocrites with whom Jesus contrasts his teaching).  What I found surprising was that these  Ash Wednesday Scripture readings, the prayers  and various confessions confront us with two disturbing truths: we are hopelessly prone to falling back into habitual sins (which we must overcome), and that we are mortal. Every person attending the service receives the mark of a cross on their forehead in ashes, a symbol of lament (drawn from the Old Testament) and of our mortality.  As the thumb of the priest applies the ashes, the words: “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return “(Genesis 3:9) and “Repent and believe the gospel”, accompany the action.  Both the ministers and laity; both the old and the young; both men and women receive the mark of the cross.  All of us without exception, are called to live a life of repentance and to be aware that we will all eventually die.   

Another surprise is that Ash Wednesday raises our awareness of the sin within us. This is not a popular emphasis in many churches where even if sin is talked about, it is within the terms of something Jesus has dealt with and so it’s not my problem now. Ash Wednesday says it is my problem now, particularly the drift toward subtle hypocrisy and indifference to actually doing acts of righteousness in both our private and public life. Our awareness of sin is raised by Joel’s booming  voice calling for our repentance and then Matthew, ever the teacher, highlighting three acts of piety which Jesus considered to be the most common religious acts flaunted by the hypocrites.  Then through the confessions and the prayers of the liturgy, each which emphasise in their own way the darkness which lives within all of us, we are brought into a place where we notice a darkness within us;  we want to turn away and deny that it is within us; that it is truly a part of us.  I have noticed that it is a characteristic of unhealthy churches, to deny this darkness within us. At one church where I had become the minister, I noticed the absence of the word ‘sin’ in any form so I waited to see how long it would be before I heard it mentioned. (Even at communion, the person presiding would not make the connection between the sacrificial death of Christ and our sins. There would be talk about the offering of his life or the love of Christ, but nothing about what the theologians term, ‘substitutionary  atonement’.) It was about nine months before I heard the word used.  I also noticed in this unhealthy church an over emphasis on God’s love that seem to explain and excuse every abhorrent behaviour by its  members, such as gossip, spite, party spirit  and the past paedophilia by one of its  members. Ash Wednesday is the reboot button in our church year that says: we have to take this stuff sin seriously.  

Even if we were wanting to deny the evil and darkness within us, we cannot hide from this truth because the daily news exposes the existence and pervasive nature of this darkness within all sections of our society. Good old sin (as Kathleen Norris puts it in her book, Amazing Grace), sells newspapers. The stabbing death of a 13 yr old boy by the hand of another student at his school in Brisbane on Monday this week exposed  the reality of the darkness which lives in our hearts, minds and corrupts our will and emotions. The easy response to make is to blame the environment, the child’s upbringing, or his psychological state.  But it is not the result of a poor upbringing or ignorance that causes us to sin. It is due to the nature of sin itself which we still bear in the paradoxical tension between the fact of being ‘saved’ and yet our salvation is not fully realised until death or the return of Christ.  This nature of corruption does not begin in adulthood (implying that children are innocent), or even in the pubescent school boy, or even at birth, but from the time of our conception as Ps 51:5 highlights: “Surely I was sinful at my birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Our very nature is corrupted by sin from the beginning, but it does not show its  fruits until sometime later – usually by the time the two year old toddler throws a tantrum. This is what the old theologians called, total depravity. It is not that we are totally immoral or corrupt, with no trace of the image of God left, but totally incapable of doing what God desires perfectly. 

But although this darkness is pervasive and powerful, John’s gospel highlights that the darkness has not overcome the light revealed in the face and scarred hands of Jesus Christ. It stalked Jesus throughout his ministry, yet was unable to defeat him.  This darkness is collectively seen on the faces of the masses who were seduced by the hated of Nazism; it is seen on the faces of the men who went out to lynch African Americans and then to church on Sunday morning. It is seen in the conformity and fear on the faces of the masses shuffling under the oppression of Stalinism. This darkness is seen in every expression of oppression, be it by a tyrannical leader or an oppressive religious state run by zealots, even those making the claim to be acting in God’s name.   But what will be our response to our own awareness of  the darkness lodged within our own hearts, a darkness which blinds our minds, corrupts our best intentions and poisons our words? What will be our response when our own government is overcome by the darkness as we saw with their treatment of refugees and asylum seekers who were mistreated and denied basic human rights during the first decade of this century (even when they have every right under the United Nation Convention on Refugees to apply for asylum)?  We can hide; we can blame others, our parents, our environment, our past histories, poor examples, in fact anything to keep us from seeing what and who we are. I am reminded of the quotation from Alexander Solzenitzen, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”. (The Gulag Archipelago)

We can reclassify our darkness within psychological categories, relieving us of the need to confront something that is spiritually wrong within us that expresses itself in pathological disturbance. To do this is to make it safe; to domestic the inner demons and de-sacralise yet another area of our life. We can then outsource the treatment of this darkness to the secular professionals. Ash Wednesday re-introduces what Modernism sought to remove from our society: that a theological perspective on the condition and causes of  human pathos is valid; that a theological perspective is just as true as any scientific theory particularly in the area of accounting  for the evil within us. 

When we are exhausted from seeking solutions from the ‘god who failed’ (Modernism and its child, rationalism), (to borrow the title of a book  from the early 1960’s which described Communism as a god who failed), we can look up and listen to what God offers us as the solution on Ash Wednesday. Our reading from Joel calls for repentance, a heart rendering rejection of all that is evil, a gut wrenching hatred of sin; an abhorrence of all that is false and insincere. But is enough to have a revulsion toward sin, this darkness within? No. It is tempting to pull out the guitars and begin to strum and sing songs of celebration, but we must not (yet). There must be a corresponding turning to God for healing, restoration and forgiveness. I have met many a man in tears, deeply aware of their own interior darkness, ashamed of what they have done, full of remorse for the mess they have made of their lives and the lives of those they love, but unwilling to turn to Christ to seek the solution and deliverance from their sin. No, repentance will not be enough. We must begin to practice the righteousness that God has graciously given us when we turn to him as the only solution to our problem. This is what Jesus is on about in Matthew’s reading. In Matthew 5 the disciples have all ready received the eschatological gift of righteousness when Jesus says: ‘Blessed  are  the poor . . .’  or ‘You are salt . . . you are the light . . . ‘ (A point carefully made by Joachim Jeremias in his book, The Sermon on the Mount, 1963.) The declaration that you are forgiven and set free from the penalty of this darkness within because of the death of Christ, is also an invitation by God to begin doing the works which show our repentance (= John the Baptist, Lk 3:8-14). These works, such as those in Matthew’s gospel ch 6,  support and strengthen our resolve to stay on the path which leads to eternal life.

The darkness within is demonically strong, but with God’s grace and taking up the weapons of good religious habits, such as those we read in Matthew’s gospel, we are able to defend ourselves from attack and overcome the powers of darkness.  Jesus himself said we must work while we have the light, because darkness was coming, when no person would be able to work  (Jn 9:4). We are expected to practice the behaviours which Christ would want us to evidence as his brothers and sisters, until they become ingrained, good habits  which mark us as Christians as clearly as any cross we might wear around our neck.   These good religious habits and new attitudes which are released by the forgiveness of our sin, must also be expressed in the civil society, the government, the places in which we work. They must be seen in the way we vote in elections, by what we spend our time and money on. They must be seen in a counter cultural life of authenticity which seeks to do the works of righteousness in daily life. Lent and its attendant works are not a private, individual action of piety, or something to be trivialized as they are unfortunately when people speak of giving up salt or chocolate for Lent. The period of Lent  calls forth from us a political and social response which is expressed in the public life of the believer by his works of righteousness.  

I have often been disappointed by Christians for their shallowness which has been exposed when confronted by the ethical choices they have made in their daily life. Expressions of racism; sexual infidelity, greed and unquestioning service to the god of materialism and their work; the denial of justice to the oppressed and disadvantaged in our society; silence and sullenness as they have gone along with the crowd over the treatment of asylum seekers under the previous government; and finally, questioning whether government policies to help the poor should be made.  Not only are we thankful for receiving God’s righteousness as a gift, but it must be expressed in our daily life including our public life and behaviour. In short, we must incarnate (an overworked word), the very values and attitudes of God himself. Lent is the time to practice these works of righteousness so that they become second nature to us throughout the remainder of the year. Ash Wednesday, marking the commencement of Lent, brings into focus the need for deep repentance and that we are going to die. The gift of this awareness is that a new perspective is given to us: the trivialities and temptations of life must be dealt with immediately and seriously by turning away from them. We alone have been given the secret of the kingdom which the powers of darkness would want us to forget – that the Kingdom and its  values are to take priority over everything else. 

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the journey toward Easter Sunday when we will celebrate the new life expressed and evidenced in the resurrection of Jesus when sin and death were overcome. We begin this journey of forty days with an awareness of the darkness within and the awareness that physical death will eventually claim all of us. These are two powers which we are unable to resist or overcome, unless we are wholly given to Christ, to be his alone, so that his life is ours. Let us resolve to practice new behaviours, to take up new attitudes to strengthen our repentance which by God’s grace, will transform us.  Let us resolve then, to allow Ash Wednesday to mark the beginning of putting the trivialities of life and temptations which arise from the darkness within, behind us through the daily practice of works of righteousness. Yes, Ash Wednesday and works of righteousness do sound rather quaint. You might be wondering when hair shirts will make a comeback, given this talk, but Ash Wednesday and then Lent do deal with a reality which has too often been ignored even by sections of our church – the darkness within our hearts and the need to make real our righteousness by religious works and civic righteousness. (This is a modified sermon I delivered on Ash Wednesday.)

Going  to church is not something I have much choice in, being a minister of religion. I’m expected to turn up each week as part of the job description, but this is not why I attend worship each week. In fact, it’s the other way around. It’s because I find worship something which is not what I would expect it to be, that I’m a minister in a church. Going to church for me is like the experience of climbing up a terribly high slide as a child and letting go. There is a suppressed squeal of ‘weeeeee’ as I let go (I’m a boy remember). These slides are often found in the local park but the best examples can be seen at the local agricultural show where they are extremely high with cascading polished steel bumps. Going to church and more particularly participating in public worship (which sounds terribly serious, formal and drab), is not something which we expect to be so different, but it is.

In recent years however, going to church has become more casual and for some Christians, an optional extra.  Our lifestyles have changed significantly from the era of the sixties and seventies (as in the last century, the 1960’s and 1970’s), when the husband was the sole bread winner and the shops closed on Saturday morning at midday, leaving the suburbs eerily silent except for the sound of the droning lawnmower or the roar of the crowd at the local football ground.  Saturdays are now taken up with shopping because for two parents working full time, there is little time during the week to do this essential task. But for some, shopping has also become a recreational activity and for others, the need to work on Saturdays has become a reality due to the deregulation of our working conditions and greater liberalisation in the trading hours of shops. As a consequence, Sundays have become the day for traditional family celebrations such as birthday parties or simply to get together.  Even the traditional sporting activities such as football, tennis and basketball which would be attended on Saturday mornings have been shifted into Sunday morning in recognition of this change in our working and consuming lives. What time is left over is given to the church. Going to church has become a discretionary leisure activity which is rated in its  importance alongside of going to the extended family’s birthday for a relative, or time to garden, attend to housing renovations or maintenance or simply rest.  Some choose not to go at all because church and more particularly, their experience of worship, has been disappointing. I notice that there are now many who are ‘post-Christian’, particularly from a younger age range who were once engaged with what I find a life giving experience (going to church), but are now hurt and disillusioned and have left. The causes of their pain and disillusionment are complex and varied. However, this aspect will need to be left to another time and place.

Why do you attend church? I was exploring this question with someone recently and in our conversation it emerged that there were two reasons why they had attended church regularly but no longer do so. The first was when their children were young, they attended so that their children would receive a Christian education. The second reason was due to their feelings of guilt if they failed to. Not so much a guilt about offending God, but a guilt induced by not fulfilling their parents’ expectations.  A third reason many attend church is the uplifting social time they experience.  Apart from the first reason, the other two are not particularly important, although the social dimension is very important in affirming our religious experience.  When this person’s children had grown up (and were now attending church of their own volition), this person’s relationship with God was seriously damaged due to significant trauma in their lives. As a result, the reasons for attending had vanished because God had disappeared.  There is a fourth reason why some attend worship. It provides them with an outlet to give something back to God.  There are so many opportunities offered in the morning worship for service that it’s simply irresistible for the Christian driven by a sense of obligation to pass by the opportunity.  In my conversation with my friend, this emerged as a hidden motivation for my friend to attend church, so in fact, they had a fourth reason. Churches buzz with so much activity that its  members can become addicted to the adrenalin rush of serving.  I too became consumed by the church’s activities and a casualty of the adrenalin it released. Both contributed to may own need to leave ministry for an extended period when I became exhausted.

But going to church is not what I expected it could be, and that’s what keeps me coming back. They don’t have to be a place where I am expected to give or contribute, but a place where I receive from God. Protestants spoke so much about ‘grace’ in the past, they often forgot how to experience it and shifted from an ongoing experience of God’s grace into one of justifying their worth and status by  their religious works. They then passed this distorted view of grace onto the next generation like my friend.  What is worse is that today’s churches seem to speak little of grace and more about Jesus being my friend which is all very well, but I would like a flesh and blood God rather than a nice Jesus. So why do we go to church then? We go to put ourselves in a place where it’s more likely that God will turn up. It’s the one time in our week when it’s most likely that we will encounter God if we’re there looking, vigil like for him. Or to use another metaphor, coming to church for me is a wayside stop on the pilgrimage of looking for God and seeking God as we pass through a terrain with which we are unfamiliar with.  There I find bread and wine, fellowship and tender care which binds up the wounds and abrasions I have incurred during the week as I have trudged along the road.  There is no sense of coming to church with the overwhelming sense that I need to give something except myself, which is empty in any case whether I can recognise it or not. I come, because for so many like my friend, we have ‘gived out’ and have nothing left to give (to use my friend’s words).

I go because it is the prayers which give voice to the deep and unspoken things which have remained forgotten, hidden or simply neglected. These words provide a bridge for faith, giving shape to what is formless within, our inarticulated longings, expressing what we can’t express as we move between a place of faith and unfaith, because we are damaged, empty and seeking. We do not believe in words as magic; we wish we could, but we are now adults, our eyes are open knowing good and evil, but we believe in their ability to give form to what is formless within and this is the work of God’s Spirit within (Rom 8:26).

The church building itself is another reason I go in preference to trying worship at home. As a former builder, buildings are very important to me, particularly the ability of a building to enhance or detract from our day to day quality of life. The church itself is like a giant lens which acts to focus God’s presence into a focal point. Not all Protestants would agree, preferring to see the church building as either a lecture hall with the sermon the principle means in which we encounter God (in the mind) or the more extreme position, that the building is irrelevant; the people are the most important means by which God is mediated to us. The rented gym or school hall is therefore perfectly acceptable to this group.  For these brave souls in our suburbs, mission is the focus, not church buildings (which imply for them, a static view of God ), and the use of a public space provides the neutral ground for those outside the church to meet God half way. I am not comfortable with this position however, because in declaring everything holy and every place holy, the result is that everything becomes common and there is no singular place left, set aside to be declared holy and wholly for God’s use, and it is in the holy that God turns up, whether they are burning bushes, mountains, crypts, or beside the bed as children are born and parents die.

I often look at the building as being like a boat, as something that holds the congregation for the service of the liturgy. We are all one, even in our doubts, lack of understanding or lack of experience (of God) but this lack of understanding is not an issue because we have a shared liturgy (whatever tradition you use). The liturgy is the work of God’s people performed corporately; it is not just running through a set of empty words. Anglicans it has been noted, do not have so much a creed, but a prayer book which gives shape to their beliefs and a common voice of what they offer in faith to God.  I am just a prompter for their lines. But I digress a little. The congregation are like the rowers in the boat, this building.  And on the one side I stand and dip my oar in the water and pull with the words: ‘The Lord be with you’. And then they respond by dipping their oar in and pulling together with the words: ‘And also with you’. And so we begin to pull the boat forward together, toward God.  And it is in this boat that we are all carried, them and I. We are carried through the service by the songs, hymns, prayers, communion and released with a final blessing.  Going to church for me is an experience of letting go  like the child letting go of the sides on the slide, allowing himself to be carried by the gravity to the end and to land with the urge to do it all again. And at the end of the service just like the slide, we pick ourselves up again and return home. Going to church is to take myself of to a place where I think it likely that God will turn up, to sit in God’s boat in the company of other seekers and pilgrims as we row together with the aid of the liturgy, united by the one Spirit.