Sam Portaro, author of "Daysprings: Meditations for the weekdays of Advent, Lent and Easter," wrote the following in a Lenten entry: "Only by placing our selves in service to God and neighbor do we restore authority to our religion. Only by placing ourselves in service to truth do we restore authority to our prophetic judgment and the authority of our teaching. Only by placing ourselves in service to one another do we restore the authority of the Christ we proclaim." (Cowley Publications, 2001)
The most significant change in culture has been the systematic undermining of all of the former pillars of authoritative certitude: government, the educational institution, the medical profession, and the Church, over the last 50 years. My mother, who is in her 80's, still relies, with complete and unquestioning trust, in her doctor's word. She would not consider even taking a daily vitamin without his or her permission to do so. Those of us, of a later generation, are not nearly so trusting; not least of all due to the insurance companies who now have the power to overrule a doctor's order for treatment, severely shorten a hospital stay, and determine which medication you will be prescribed based on what they are willing to pay. Confidence in a voice of authority that once went unquestioned has been undermined severely as the sick are forced to become far more self-reliant on a variety of alternative healing options which are rapidly growing to meet a tsunami of demand.
A different set of circumstances has corrupted the foundations of the Church's voice of authority, but the result is the same. We lost our right to claim authority the moment we put our own survival as the priority. Fear is what motivates us now; fear that the Church is irrelevant (and in many cases it is), fear that the Church is indifferent (guilty, as charged - more times than it or we would wish to admit), we fear that the world has passed us by (it has). The Church's attempts to be relevant and meaningful with loud and arrogant boasts of ultimate truth result only in greater and greater reductions of credibility. Alternative sources of spiritual nourishment are readily available and are being lapped up by hungry and hurting people who, in another time, crowded into church pews. The Church wrings its hands and desperately puts its energy into saving itself, secretly worrying that perhaps God has abandoned his bride.
But as is the nature of grace, the Church's derailed sense of purpose, has not obstructed God's ability to function in faith communities truly willing to die in order to live. The fruits of their labors are wholesome examples of what Christianity is meant to do and be. This way forward is hardly perfect; it is the untrod, unmarked road; difficult to navigate and filled with uncertainty, soul searching discernment that determine painful decisions of change.
Even the most cursory reading of Exodus reminds us of the perils of the journey as well as the temptation to give up, or worse, turn back. The theme of trust in God's faithfulness and not our own is central. God has not abandoned the Church. God is alive and well in vibrant faith communities all over the world who have given away their authority in order to reclaim it. In them can be seen the purity of God's purpose in the purity of the motivations of God's people. But this is not yet the norm for the larger Church who remains primarily focused on self-survival, spawning internal division, scarcity-motivated actions and attitudes, and competition for resources. Under such conditions what do we expect God to do?
Ironically, the authority the Church claims is and has never been ours to possess. It is the Word spoken when we follow God out into the world, a world that is now a stranger to the Church. The true voice of authority speaks in syllables of surrender: surrender to the possibility that the structures that once served us well no longer work and must be dismantled, surrender to visions of doing and being the body of Christ in ways we do not imagine to be viable vehicles for doing Godly work, surrender to the possibility of abject failure, surrendering our will to a God we can't control or manage while devoting our energy first and foremost to the care and well-being of complete strangers, surrender to the risk of losing all we presently know as 'the Church' and allowing God to reign over it, at last.
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