Back and Forth, Back and Forth

Here I am again – perhaps you are, too – going this way and that about the Church, about women and all genders and the Church, about…well, you know the drill.

I hear the stories all the time about people, especially the young people we so desperately need, finding “church” elsewhere. This is particularly true when “The Church” says one thing about welcoming all, about love thy neighbor, all thy neighbors, about doing good in the world – and then does the exact opposite.

Along with so many of the rest of us, young people seem especially fed up, tired of the Church using the sacraments against people, tired of the exclusion, injustice, cover-up. And so, if they cannot find a way to lead and minister within the Church, they find other places to use their gifts and talents and treasures.

I’ve heard so many of them, like so many of us say things like: “The community I serve is my church now,” or “Maybe leaving is not so bad; it gives me the opportunity to be church elsewhere” or, even more radically, “I’ll find community and church by other means until the present Church is burnt down (or implodes) and is rebuilt in the image of Jesus and God.”

Well, those are some of the forth ways of back and forth which with I sympathize. But part of me is always drawn to go back a bit, too, in order to go forth and plumb for the gems in the depths before I race into the new. One of those gems, although it has quite a deservedly negative connotation these days, is institution. I cannot help but think we do need a unifying place, one that has some standing in the world, to gather our voices, albeit the voices of all genders, races, economic statuses, lifestyles, so that we can have a truly powerful impact in the world. As exciting, meaningful, inspirational, forward-thinking, justice-promoting as small communities are, as much as they nourish us and enhance our lives, we also need a big place like an institution to make sure the ideas, issues, insights coming out of the small places are heard and have an impact world-wide.

Well, that’s my case for Church renewal rather than abandonment, I guess.

One last thought: I am reading Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming. At one point, she describes herself as a child learning to play piano from a particularly strict, autocratic, and demanding teacher, her own aunt. The piano she learned on was in her aunt’s parlor, and she could always find middle C on it – the place she must always know in order to play anything her aunt commanded and demanded – because of the way that particular key was chipped. When it came time for her recital at a large hall, however, despite having practiced and knowing the music inside and out, she found herself frozen before the perfectly formed and shiny keys of the sparkling grand piano. She waited. The audience waited. The tension grew. And then her aunt came forward and showed her where middle C was. Michelle began to play and completed the piece flawlessly.

Sometimes, I think, we need the Church, our strict, demanding, autocratic, frustrating aunt, to point out middle C so that we can use what it just showed us in order to move on.