Going Back to Church

Since retiring a few years ago, I’ve been adrift from congregational life. I’ve followed the mandate that you separate yourself from the last congregation to which you’ve been appointed. That gives the new pastor the opportunity to form relationships that are important for pastoral duties.

In this outside-church period, I’ve discovered how difficult it is to get involved in a congregation if you’re retired clergy. There’s a rethinking of your place within a fellowship, since you now reside in pew instead of pulpit. And there’s the sense that you’re attempting to break into a group of people who have their own history and culture. Given all this, it’s been easier worshipping online or occasionally with a neighboring congregation.

However, it’s time to go back to church. That reality hit me when I read a column by Aisha Sultan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In her article, “What Will Our Resistance Look Like?”, she reflected on the last election and came to this conclusion: “For those of us used to looking for silver linings and seeing the good in everyone, we need to be prepared to see and accept another truth: You can’t make people care about others.”

I was one of those people believing in the natural goodness residing in the human heart. If people saw the pain of others, empathy would take over and the world would become a better place. I still believe that, but I’m now a bit more realistic as to how hard-hearts are softened. Butter melts best in a pan on the stove, not on a countertop.

I can’t think of a better place to turn up the heat than a congregation professing to take Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount seriously. It’s where people learn, embody, then pass to future generations the values of justice, compassion, sacrifice, and mercy. Such folks dare connect with others who aren’t like themselves–politically, societally, ethnically, culturally, lifestyle-ly–and have their perspectives widened, accordingly. They bond together to confront injustice. They work to show how the world can be a warm and not cold, tender and not brutal, place.

There is no other institution on earth that can marshal the power for good than a group of such people. They are bound to one another by devotion to a God whose vision for humanity includes caring concretely for the “widow, orphan, and immigrant.” And for those who do have the ability to care for others, there is perhaps no greater abdication than not becoming involved in some fashion.

Maybe there is a silver lining behind that election after all. It’s realizing that church-going isn’t just something you do for your soul, but a witness you make to the world.