I’m reading through the lectionary readings for this Sunday (Proper 5). I find in them a theme of profound change – the two sons being raised from the dead – profound change physically. Paul describing his profound spiritual change. Whenever we come into contact with God wantingly and willingly, there will be profound change – that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Within that gentle and often slowing transformation caused by the Holy Spirit, people begin to perceive the transformation (if we allow ourselves to be changed). Some react positively and some react negatively (to some we become the smell of life, to some the smell of death – as Paul describes).
The problem we have in this Church (and the problem infecting American Christianity in general) is that we don’t understand God’s ways of things. We cop the world’s ways and attempt to make them our own. The politics being played out in our Church and Communion these days are straight from the World’s playbook, not from God’s. We may attempt to justify our politicking, our misrepresentation of the facts – spin, our hatred, our conniving and scheming in holy, godly, or standing-up-for-the-truth kind of language, but our methods and attitudes are the world’s. We try to justify to the world (and ourselves) our methods and means of dealing with our differences and pressing issues and concerning how we deal with one another, but the non-Christians and the world look at us and say, “How are you any different than politics in Washington or the hatred of other people we see in so many parts of the world?” They aren’t stupid. They see through our self-deception and lies and know that we are hypocrites in our relating to sinners of the world.
They are right. In this case, the world’s critique of us is right on target. We act no different than worldlings as they try to get their way, force their political or social perspective upon everyone else, or justify their brutality. This is an attitude and behavior irregardless of political or social persuasion, and we have aquiesed to it rather than being transformed into a different way of being and doing – one in which the world cannot deny that there is something profoundly different than what they commonly see in the world.
Take the reaction and attitudes of the Amish in Pennsylvania when their school was attacked and their children killed. The world took notice and was amazed – this is a profound example of the transformation that the Gospel of Christ should cause within us as we respond and react to situations of life and belief. To act and understand in ways that the world simply cannot understand, but to which they are drawn. Instead, within the Episcopal Church and within much of Christian American, we just play politics and fight and call one another often vile names.
The world is not impressed, because we are just like them. Too bad we are not more like the Amish, who are so much further along in understanding how to love God with everything, love their neighbor, and even love their enemy, at least as demonstrated in the recent tragedy.