Sarx

NE OF MY Favourite lines is from St Maria of Paris. To paraphrase, she said God one ask her about her ritual or her prayers. God will, rather, ask her if she fed the poor he sent her way.

This is rightfully read as a claim that those who show the trappings of religiosity but fail to do the actual work of healing the world are no where as near the Kingdom of God as those who do the work but don’t show up at services on Sunday and have never even cracked open a Bible. But it is not a claim that doing those things makes them Christian. We are not kept out of hell because of the things we do as if we could buy our way into heaven but rather we are living in the Kingdom now by the very act of doing them. Living in the Kingdom now is the best way to prepare for living in the Kingdom for eternity.

But these acts do not make one a Christian: rather they prove that one is participating in the healing Grace of God.

I believe it is entirely possible for one to get to heaven without ever darkening the footsteps of a church. Further, I think it is possible for this to happen exactly because of the Grace of God present in the actions we call (in the 60s, at least) “the Christ Event”. Likewise I think it’s possible to do all the works of redemption for all the wrong reasons (selfish gain, greed, pride, public acclaim, guilt, tax write-offs) and fail to get any of the benefits of them: “they already have their reward”.

But to be a Christian does not mean to do these things – any more than it means to simply say a little prayer and “get saved”. Christianity is a remoulding of one’s entire life and person in humility into not only a reflection of Jesus, but into the very presence of Jesus again on the earth. A Christian (“little Christ”) becomes the living presence of Christ where she is: humble, grace-filled and radiating that to the thousands around her.

As I said in the previous post, you don’t get that way alone.

You can’t tell a Christian by what they are doing or not doing. And, although the world might want to judge all of us (or most of us, or, for the more charitable, certain flavours of us) because of the actions of a few who get a lot of media attention, the truth is we won’t get judged by the world. I’m quite used to being told by non-Christians that I’m doing it wrong. Unlike Christians of other stripes, who usually want to engage in some theological discussion about why they are right and I’m wrong, the ex-Christians usually have to be convinced that the way they were raised – and against which they are usually reacting – is not the only right way. Those who were not raised in any Christian tradition need to learn that the guys on TV (Falwells, Popes and Grahams) are not the only way to do this. Even in my most devoutly and theologically conservative days of Orthodoxy, my non-Christian friends just didn’t get it: this isn’t the SBC plus icons.

In her post that sparked this series, Pastor Candace Chellew-Hodge pulled out the old saw, “Being in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than being in a garage makes you a car.” Actually… yes, it does. It is precisely one’s willingness to gather with others in the name of Jesus that makes one a Christian. What it does not make one is a good Christian. There are Christian who are deep sinners: I am the chief of these. But there are Christians who are also very pious. There are Christians who are engaged in the making-whole of the world in all the ways one might expect: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, making peace, etc. But there are also those who are engaged in the making-whole of the world in ways that I do not know or understand. The man I think of as a money-grubbing business man may be putting men through seminary. The woman in her skimpy dress that looks like a “tramp” may have cooked food for the shelter this week. The family that shows up only once a month may, in fact, live too far away and be profoundly dedicated to the “little church” (as St John referred to the home).

Who am I to judge?

Pastor Chellew-Hodge asks if President Obama “needs” to go to Church to be a Christian.

I think the problem is that it *seems* that she is equating “be a Christian” with the evangelical understanding of “being saved”. The answer is no, given that understanding. But that is not the understanding of the historic faith. The evangelical movement makes the entirety of the faith out to be “getting saved” and they mean by that only “getting out of hell and into heaven”. For this you only need a “personal relationship with Christ” – a phrase found nowhere in the scriptures or in the historic creeds of the Church (even the historic Protestant creeds). A college classmate once explained it (sarcastically) as “his personal business interview with Jesus”. They do not mean the life-long (and beyond) transformation of the human being into the localised presence of Christ, of the world into the kingdom of God. But for that you need a church.

None of this means that Obama is better or worse than his predecessors or that his policies are better or worse. While I think it is possible for one’s faith (or lack thereof) to influence the policies one makes whilst in office, I do not think there are “Christian policies” in government or “Christian laws” to pass. Such things only make Christians feel better by legalising (or legally enforcing) what is already incumbent upon the Christian. Such things to do not make a nation Christian. Nor do they make the non-Christians in a nation out to be Christians. They only make Christians feel better about supporting the gov’t – and thus different Christians can disagree about which laws and policies should or should not be. But it matters not one whit if those laws happen. A nation can not be “Christian”. Only persons can be – and they only in community, in communion, in Church.