Sarx

REW Made a cool post today over at BuffaloRising, talking about the Kingdom of God and wondering how it’s possible or practical in the world that we live in. It tripped me up (as I tweeted to him, post haste) because it seems to assume that we’re supposed to be working on the world.

The historic teaching of the undivided Church is that the Church is the Kingdom of God on Earth, active, pluperfect and acting like God’s leaven in the world. (One of the saints said, “As the soul is to the body, so the Church is to the world.”) And the progressive sorts of Christians even claim this in the way they see the Eucharistic Feast as a sign of the Kingdom. Not being (largely) sacramentalists, they fail to see it as the kingdom – only a sign. But it’s a start, at least.

As an Anglo-Catholic priest once reminded me, it is from the Eucharistic table – from the Holy Mystery itself – that our actions for Peace and Justice in the world spring. It’s not enough to work for peace, per se. If we are not working in the Kingdom the only peace we’ll get is a temporary cessation of war, not God’s Shalom of the Spirit. Not that a temporary cessation of war is bad… but it’s not real peace. If we’re not seeing Christ in the other person (a gift granted by the Holy Spirit) then the only Justice we’ll get is the sort crafted at the end of a gun by whomever is in power. This week it’s us. Next week… who knows?

The only problem with this is us.

Christians.

Now.

We can not. Can not. Can not turn to our neighbours and say, “Here is the Body of CHrist, the Bread of Heaven…” when we refuse to say it to each other.

As long as Presbyterians or Anglicans or Indy folks can not stand with the Pope or with the Orthodox or even with each other, fully, in the mystery of the Lord’s communion: we – Christians – are unable to work for the healing of the world.

Period.

We can do little works here and there, like bandages on open heart surgery; but we can not be the Kingdom of God breaking forth if we want to beat each other up first.

The mirror is shattered. Each local shard or fragment claims to be the whole. We embarrass our Lord. This is not a doctrinal issue, either. If it is, the Church was broken that first night, that first Eucharist, when Jesus gave communion to Judas and everything fell apart.

But the Church lets Judas commune. It’s other Christians we deny.

Until we can eat together we can not feed the world.
Until we can pray together under one roof we can not house the world.
Until we can great each other in the peace of Christ all we can offer the world is a cessation of war, not God’s Shalom.
Until we can see Jesus in that denomination over there – the conservatives, the liberals, the heretics, the schismatics, the mainliners, the emergents, the protestants, the uberfrum… until we can see Jesus there we won’t see him anywhere else and the only Justice we’ll get is a worldly Justice, a broken meted out at the end of a Gun.