What do we expect from Church?
What do you expect from Church?
…
I really can’t speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself and I suspect I hold this in common with many others.
What I expect from Church is a vision of God. I long for a vision of God that sustains, guides and challenges, a vision of God that makes me fall in love with God and with being alive, a vision that brings meaning to life, a vision of God that strengthens me to face death.
You know, the vision thing.
I do not think this is a universal desire, but it is a desire that many hold in common: the desire to see the creator, a seeing that restores us as the creatures we are intended to be.
This desire brought me to Christ and it called me to the priesthood and in most ways it determines the way I go about filling my days. It is my vocation to attend to this vision, to search it out and to proclaim it and apply it to this community.
To “write the vision” as Habakkuk says.
To write it in large letters easy to see.
Without that vision “the people perish” says Proverbs.
As Saint Irenaeus said, “the vision of God is the life of humanity, and that life in us displays God’s glory.” Our living humanity is the glory of God.
That our living humanity blaze with God’s glory, that’s all I expect of Church.
Not much.
“Show us the Father”, Phillip says to Jesus.
And Jesus answers, “What do you think I’ve been doing the past 14 chapters?!”
The vision of God was right there in front of Philip, he was talking to the vision of God, and he still couldn’t see it. Jesus is that vision of God made clear as day and Philip says, “Where, I don’t see it.”
Isn’t that the human condition? We long for the vision of God that is right there before us but we still miss it because it isn’t what we expect. We are looking for something very particular; we just don’t know how to recognize it.
Stephen, just before he was stoned to death, he saw the vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father, a vision that he yelled out, “Look, I see!” a vision that got him killed, a vision that sustained him in death, a vision that strengthened him to stand against the power of death at war with God’s creation.
Philip and Stephen both saw Jesus, the vision of God revealed in humanity, the vision that is the food and drink of living humanity.
The Christian life revolves around always renewing that vision in our lives as individuals and as a community. Sometimes it is good to state the obvious.
But the less obvious thing is how exactly do we go about seeing that vision of Jesus who shows us the Father? How do we renew that resuscitating, healing, waking, resurrecting, enlivening, transfiguring and humanizing vision of God?
What feeds our souls?
We each need to be aware of what does and doesn’t provide life. Sometimes the difficult and uncomfortable things are what feed us most. This applies to us as Christian community as well as individuals.
What renews the vision of God for Grace Church?
It is all of our responsibility to make that happen; this is The Christian vocation of free will and exercising choice that we may finally be able to say, “Look, I see.”
Let’s fill our days with searching out and writing in large letters this vision that transforms and reveals ordinary human life as the blazing glory of God.