Where Does God Happen?

At the top of the list of things Josh wrestles with in his own life is my uneasiness within myself as I relate to other people. Whether it's because I was raised in a loving-yet-high-expectation environment, mocked throughout my school years for my nerdiness (evidence of which has always been in abundance!), or my own conviction within myself that I have a major role to play in this world...I can't help but be anxious about how I relate to others.

My own knowledge of myself is remarkably limited...self-awareness is not one of my strong suits, and I've never been good socially. And, of course, this is intimately related to how well I can relate to and understand another human being. How this relates to our salvation, witness, and life in the Spirit is the concern of Rowan Williams' excellent Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another.

This litle book is actually a reflection upon the contemporary state of society and the church through the lens of the Desert Fathers & Mothers, and he relies heavily upon Benedicta Ward's excellent translation of the Sayings, for it is liberally sprinkled with statements and anecdotes illuminating a monastic vocation both dramatically different from our common life and remarkably desirable. Williams begins with the father of desert monasticism, St Anthony, and his interlinked concern with salvation and communal relationships:

Our life and death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ. (13)

And this theme of life & death & the neighbor doesn't just frame the opening chapter but the entire book. Self-examination, righting our broken relationships with God & neighbor, the balance between justice and mercy, and sitting in judgement (or accountability!) are all radically re-framed by Williams' exegesis of Scripture and the exemplary desert monastics. He then describes becoming a person (rather than individual or mindless automaton) before taking on the central tension between flight and stability in the last two chapters. An appendix contains some relevant selections from the sayings themselves.

The question that Where God Happens raised for me throughout has to do with the relationship between the type of faith encouraged by Williams and his monastic forbears and the current communities of faith most of us find ourselves in. To say that this type of reflection, action, and comprehension would be alien to the churches I'm associated with is an understatement. I'm forced to wonder: "Does this presume a more rigorous community that is throughly familiar with and committed to a Biblical/gospel faith?"

Or is this putting the cart before the horse? Perhaps all it takes is a St Anthony figure who is willing to live life with others, yet in isolation, to begin the transformative work in a local church or community. Williams proposes that we consider not a casuistic approach to ethics (in which you have a certain scenario, and then a set of responses) but a virtue-ethics approach which focuses on shaping character rather than outcomes. This is why Williams understands the church's blessing on life-long commitments such as marriage and ordination vows (and monastic vows): those who take them "are bound to the patient, long-term discovery of what grace will do with them" (67).

So I am not surprised that Williams, despite his position as Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, observes that "the church is always renewed from the edges rather than from the center. There is a limit to what the institutional church can do" (111). The priorities of being church as Jesus calls his disciples to be church are always at least in danger of being displaced (if it's not already happening) by the values of being a self-perserving, continuing institution. If anyone understands this better than Williams, their address must have Vatican City in it. So we return to the need for Church (whether local or global) to have renewal elements which call us back to the dirty here-and-now, the unpolished enfleshed existence which is but our raw material--not the end product.

Where God Happens is a difficult and challenging read, despite its lack of theological insider-language and brevity. It is precisely the kind of book which will haunt me for a long time after its reading, for its incisive description of human nature (my nature) as well as its insistence on the basic shape of the Kingdom of God and salvation. Williams reminds us that in the Christian life, "the goal is reconcilation with God by way of this combination of truth and mercy...to heal by solidarity, not condemnation" (19, 20).

New Year, Old Problems

Today wasn't supposed to be this way.

Actually, neither was yesterday. But here I am, 3 in the afternoon, with nary a thing done at work. You know, the work of God. That stuff I'm totally and completely responsible for.

I'm fooling myself if I think what I call work is really opus Dei. Churning out emails, program creation, and the like. Administration, but not the heart of ministry. And so when I don't get to do that in the way and on the schedule upon which I've decided things should get done, then I'm not a happy camper. I need to make sure these things happen, I need to be in this place by this time, I need to...well, you get the picture. In the pressure-cooker of accountable ministry, I turn into Alexander in the middle of his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day.

In short, I hate letting other people down. I want to be, with Paul, all things to all people. I've come to discover Paul either had no life, or he was fudging the truth a bit. Probably some of both. I struggle to find the right balance between church, campus ministry, connectional responsibilities, and--oh yeah--family. Not to mention time for myself to read, think, create, and simply be.

So, I grab drive-thru for lunch and conveniently forget the banquet feast prepared for me. I run around like a chicken with my head cut off...and still sign all my emails with "grace and peace." Is this an area of life where we believe, "Yes, we can"? Or is this an area where human initiative and bootstrap-pulling-up is fundamentally flawed?

So I'm realizing a few things (and have been for some time now): it's not my ministry to make work, it's God's; and trusting in God means letting some things go or giving them away. It's not hard for me to be chief technician manipulating the religious machinery. It is hard to trust in a transcendent God who is willing to share ministry with me, though not on my terms.

Christie and I were talking last night about something else entirely when I made the point that the work of mending our own deep brokenness is work that takes a lifetime (and that's when God's doing the mending). Talk about preaching the sermon you need to hear the most!

The lectionary this week is an invitation to the vocation of disciple. May the living, life-giving God grant me, and you, and the entire church the grace and peace to be shaped by the Spirit into true disciples of Jesus Christ. Amen.