Some Further Thoughts

As you may have noticed, my most recent blog entry gave rise to a comment that raised a number of questions. I’d like to take time to address them here.

1. I'd like to know more about how you view the relationship between Christ and the Church. I don't think even the worst examples of the Church without Jesus thought of themselves as being without Jesus. So how does one tell?

Frankly, it’s not easy. I’m sure that the Church without Jesus, at least initially, never thinks of itself as being without Jesus, any more than the crew of a ship that’s off course initially thinks that the ship is off course. But, as the ship drifts, subtle things begin to emerge that are noticed by those attending to the ships navigation. And if, for whatever reason, they don’t make the necessary corrections, not so subtle things will begin to become apparent to others. Eventually everyone who’s paying attention will begin to notice disturbing signs that things are not as they should be. Whole islands might appear in unexpected places, and icebergs where palm trees are anticipated.

This is a process we have seen throughout history. A cabin boy named Francis, from Assisi, heads off to the Crusades, gets wounded, and during his convalescence begins to ask embarrassing questions about where the Church is headed. Perhaps he didn’t question the Crusades quite the way we might, but he did begin to notice that the church was off course. Or a young deckhand named Martin Luther begins to take an interest in the charts and sextant and, in the course of practicing his new craft, begins to wonder how the maps and stars got quite so misaligned.

Please forgive the analogy, but I really think it’s all about navigation, a mysterious and sometimes quite debatable art which, in the end, produces results that are neither mysterious nor debatable. The cabin boy might not know the north star from Jupiter, but when he steps off the ship in Greenland he will know immediately that he’s not in Jamaica.

If we could go back and examine the church that, in hindsight, we see was far off course, I expect we would find a leadership that was both failing and refusing to listen to it’s prophets. The pilot can’t get utterly off course without silencing a few voices.

2. Is the Church the Body of Christ? And what does this mean exactly?

I would not pretend to be able to say what it means exactly but surely it must have something to do with being the most tangible and historical, ongoing presence of Christ in the world; the continuation of the incarnation. But, perhaps, the “visible” church would be better thought of as more or less the Church depending on the extent to which it is about the business of being the Body of Christ. Jesus told his disciples to make disciples, i.e., reasonable facsimiles of Jesus, and Paul talks of us being “conformed to the image of Christ”. If the Church stops doing this, however, and begins to seek to make good citizens, or Christians, or church members, or people who’ve prayed the “sinners prayer” and gained a free pass to heaven when they die, surely it will drift from it’s focus upon Jesus and become less and less the Body of Christ.

3. Is access to this Christ through the Bible only? Through historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus? Through the Holy Spirit? The sacraments? Or through an intuition of "What Jesus would do?"

It seems to me that all these have a place in keeping the Church Christ centred. The Bible is foundational because it is the text that the entire church has agreed upon, what we call the canon. When we work the soil of the scriptures we work our common ground. The Holy Spirit and the sacraments are also our common inheritance; one table, one baptism, one Spirit, one Body.

Historical reconstructions of the life of Jesus and intuitions of what Jesus would do are both necessary and inevitable in the project of being Christ centred. Surely every disciple who takes the Bible, the Spirit and the sacraments seriously, either formally of informally develops historical reconstructions of the life of Jesus and intuitions of what he would do in particular situations. But our reconstructions and intuitions are derived from the operation of Bible, Spirit and sacraments in the life of the church, so they can never have the authority of these first three. They are the necessary contextual responses of the Church, and of disciples, but the very thing that makes them useful (their contextual nature) also makes them suspect.

4. I think you could say more about how Jesus can act as a brake on human tendencies towards violence.

I must confess that I have not really been a fan of the recent WWJD? (What Would Jesus Do?) movement. It seems to me that it’s predicated upon the naïve assumption that if you simply ask the question the answer will be obvious. In my reading of scripture, however, Jesus almost never does what I would expect him to do in any given situation. And yet, in the context of the events of 9/11, this movement has served as a catalyst in the process of formulating another question, WWJB? (Who Would Jesus Bomb?). This, I believe, is an instance of the Church’s healthy struggle to keep Jesus in focus.

As the Church immerses each new generation of disciples the story, particularly the life, ministry, teachings, actions, sufferings and exaltations of Jesus, the parables, the Sermon of the Mount, and his example as he went to the cross without resistance, we see people, and a community being transformed into the image of Christ. We find people and a Church who are not driven by fear or the need to hold onto what is theirs. Such a Church becomes a great influence for peace, even in this world, by virtue of its continuing witness against those things that make for war. But when we leave off seeking the extension of the kingdom of heaven in this way, and take up the task of protecting ourselves and trying to make the world work, we leave off being the Body of Christ. The Church, then, not only loses its witness for peace, but may well become an instrument of violence. The corruption of the best becomes the worst.

This was a long blog entry. I hope at least something in it has been helpful.