Sermons

November 2005

Renewed Faith, Renewed Churches
Conference Talk

Reverend Dr Cheri DiNovo

What is, who is or should be the Church of Jesus Christ? Why should any of us be concerned about its survival?

While I speak I invite you to engage with the eyes you see.[ A slide show of faces from the congregation accompanied this talk.] They are the eyes of a few members of our congregation, the eyes of the poor and the middle class, the less queer in a sexual sense and the more queer, the young and the old, the faces of colour and the white faces. They are the faces of the Church but in a more profound sense they are the manifestations of the face of Christ risen, the faces of the ones we are called to love. They are faces crafted in the image of God. They are the faces of transsexuals, lesbians, gays, prostitutes, crack addicts, brokers, seminary students and the children of transsexuals, lesbians, gays, crack addicts, alcoholics, brokers and seminary students. They are, finally, our faces. Attend to the dignity of their eyes.
When we engage with the question of the future of the Church, we should think these eyes, these faces, for they and you and I, are the Church.

The question for us is a question not of the survival of the Roman Institution or the United Church Institution, or the Presbyterian Institution or the Lutheran Institution or the Baptist Institution or the Orthodox Institution or any other institution that organizes and purports to be Christian. Do we really think God cares at all, if any of our institutions survive? The question of the future of the Church is the question of the future of sanctuary for the foundation stone that builders everywhere have rejected. It is the question of a new family, one not based on genetics but on the centrality of Christ and Christ’s call to love one another, and not just any ‘other’ but the poor, the imprisoned, ill, the hated ‘other’, the queer ‘other’. It is a question of the faith of our ancestors, a fearless faith that has overturned empires, that has at its center, a hated, despised, God/man, dead/alive, Jew who was the worst evangelist of all times, if evangelism means ‘growing’ an institutional Church. After all, Jesus took 5000 at the Sermon on the Mount and within three short years of ministry, preached them down to a mere handful, women mainly, the rejected of their day (and this day still), this arch pacifist Jesus who without lifting a sword, defeated and liberated, a world.

These are the Church, look at them.

Church are those who carried the message of radical acceptance not only of one’s friends but of one’s foes, and were hunted, beaten, and martyred for the affirmation, "Jesus is Lord", not Caesar, not comfort, not longevity, not safety, not housing allowances not pension plans, not what might now pass as happiness, not stability, not growth, not a fine choir, not stunning architecture, not great preaching, not the sacraments, but of revolutionary welcoming of those who are not welcomed anywhere else. Karl Barth wrote, "It is important to note that the Church is not formed by a human gathering of people in the world who would have the same opinions, but by a divine convocation that constitutes into a corps of individuals until then scattered at the mercy of their opinions."(1)

Church is a place for them and they are the ones, we all know who they are, in our communities who are seen and treated as unclean, often by those who call themselves Christian. Those addicts, queers, brokers or seminary students depending on our communities, who are hated the most. Church is a home for them. Church meets their gaze and does not turn away. It is the gaze of the one crucified. It is the very promise and reality of resurrection. Do we really think God cares if we have comfortable or uncomfortable pews to sit in, if we do not let "…justice surge like water and goodness like an unfailing stream"? If our buildings and our institutions have any value, then it is that they stand as a symbol of this, Christ’s mission, and that they might come in useful for a barricade against the ravages of the world for the poor, the anawim, that these buildings might be a place to run to in case of war, or insurrection, or natural disaster, or more simply, fear. Are our buildings places to run to in case of fear? Every face you see here has found the Church to be a sanctuary from the world because they needed one. This Church is their home, not in a metaphoric sense, but really, their home. Most of their week is spent here. They live at Church and if they had to, they could sleep at Church as well.

Church is a gathering of the humble and the humbled. Aware of our distance from God, called ‘sin’, aware that the bible is a crèche within which our Christ is laid, to quote Luther, and is not Christ. Aware that when it comes to truly understanding what Christ would have us do, or what the Bible actually suggests we do, we are left with more questions than answers, we turn again and again, to the one over arching commandment that Jesus left us with, "To love the Lord our God with all our hearts, minds and souls and our neighbour as ourselves" We know that historians and theologians exist and postulate because we will never ‘know’ for sure. That is why we ‘believe’. We live in a world where physicists speak of the illusory basis of all so-called knowledge. We replace surety with faith. We are never disappointed. Whenever we admit that we are powerless and that God alone ‘knows’ and has power, our faith is increased and our courage to answer the call strengthens. We are powerless but we are not hopeless. We are powerless but we are not helpless. In fact there is nothing we cannot accomplish as long as we follow the call of Christ. We learn this through experience in Church.

Church is a communion of the saints. Saints are those, like Cindy, our transsexual bookkeeper, who described to a woman’s meeting, that Christ and her relationship to Christ, kept her alive. Church is the other women who did not correct her for sounding too evangelical. Christ is Sue who doesn’t know if she believes in God at all. Church is the women who let her statement be and did not try to change her. Church is meeting in the home of Ann who has a stepchild with leukemia and a new baby. Saints all. The living room transformed into sacred space because of the presence of Christ and the communion of saints. Saints are Danny the crack addict who goes without crack one day a week to offer that money to the Church. Saints are David Morriseau, native artist, son of Norval Morriseau great Canadian artist and also alcoholic, who sobered up long enough to paint a few canvasses for our large meeting room. Saints are Toby and Jenny, both dead in the last few years, both raised in toxic religious institutions, not Churches, who were frightened to walk into the sanctuary, who had been trained that Church would condemn in the same way that the world condemns. Jenny died in jail but she learned to live in Church. She learned that though a trans person, a prostitute, Jesus welcomed prostitutes. She learned that though everyone was frightened of her, she was the most frightened of all. She learned there was somewhere that was home and someone who wanted to be her family. Toby learned that the gifts she possessed could be shared. Trans person as well, Toby became our music director for the evening service and now is immortalized in a stained glass window in the chancel. The only other trans person so immortalized in our sanctuary is the disciple John in the classic rendition of the last supper. Toby’s death filled the Church with true family. Their communion around a common table of dinner, sausages and vegetables, or of blood and body, our blood and our body as Church, where ever that blood and body is found, is the communion of saints, our Church, the Church of Christ. Where the body is, that is where Jesus is also. We glorify the body, we sing ‘the body electric’ to quote that American mystic Walt Whitman, as Church. Church is where we finally understand how holy our bodies are, how by ingesting the divine, we too become, as it were, biologically family, real heirs to the promise of life.

Church is where revolution begins. Where the civil rights movement in America began, where the resistance to state totalitarianism in Eastern Europe began, where our universal health care and publicly funded education began, where the resistance to state-organized homophobia began. Church is resistance to power on behalf of the faces in these pictures. This has nothing to do with marketing techniques, or small group ministry, or organizational structure. The early Church grew to around a half million Christians by the second century before Constantine’s conversion because we love to be treated as equals. We need food and shelter. We will risk to be treated with dignity, to be treated as if we are one body. In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, man or woman, slave or free. We all of us, need a place that practices that, need a community that practices that radical inclusion. If you want to fill your Church, feed and house people there. That is what filled the early household Churches. Church speaks of the promised land, the new Jerusalem where everyone is equal, no matter which face of God they were born with. Church models the promised land and practices the promised land, and fails and tries again. Church shows world that we can live in peace, equality and joy, because that is what happens at Church. Church gathers as waiting community, waiting for Christ to come again, and like the first appearance, perhaps in an unexpected body. There are no clues. Perhaps Christ will be a woman this time, or a Buddhist this time, or a Muslim this time, or an atheist, to see if we really are Church, if we really love our neighbour, whoever our neighbour is. It is not what we do that allows us at the sacrament of communion. it is what Christ did for us. Who are we to keep anyone away? Church models that those who disagree can keep coming back simply because they are called to do so. Church is what communism tried to be but failed. Church shares and feeds, houses and educates, heals and is healed. Where else do we congregate simply to learn to love our neighbour and our God and for no other reason?

Of course Church will survive and thrive. It is where God is. It is where Christ is. it is where we find the presence of the Holy Spirit. It is resident always with the poor, the
hated, the queer. Visit prisons, hospitals, drop in centers, find Church, so says Matthew, so says Jesus. Are our Churches homes for the prisoners, the ill, the poor? Do we say yes to the request for baptism, for inclusion, from the Ethiopian eunuch, the sexually ‘unclean’ as Philip did or to Saul, the murderer, as Ananias did, then find Jesus also resident in our institutional Churches. Christ will always live. Are our Churches really Churches? Is Christ alive in them? The question for evangelism, for angels, of proclaiming the good news, is a question of listening to the prophet at the door, the unclean one, the poor one, the imprisoned one. These days the question is put to our institutions and many have refused. We have picked up the rock and hurled it at the woman. We are self righteous and moralist. We run judgment clubs where we set ourselves up as Gods and see ourselves as holy in near perfect renditions of the Pharisees of biblical times. Yet the message before us is ever the same. The call from the street to the doors of our buildings is ever the same. Will you love me? Will you welcome me? Christ answers yes, do we answer yes to Christ? God doesn’t care if we have 10,000 people in a building on Sunday morning or 10. Christ is listening for our answer. Look at those eyes. Do you love them? Do you welcome them? Faith says yes. Faith always answers yes. Faith has no room for fear. Faith knows that no powers, nor principalities, nor presbyteries, will keep us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are the Church. Will we, can we, have the faith to resurrect?

We, at Emmanuel Howard Park United, who have tripled in size and taken a dying institution and transformed it into a Church, ran an advertising campaign designed not to market to people but to welcome people who didn’t think they were welcomed at Church. We used our own congregants, these faces, and asked them why they came. We used their answers. One of the most moving answers of all was, "I come because I’m loved there." Are we loved in our institutions or are we tolerated? Are ‘they’ whoever they may be, loved in our Institutions? The answer will tell you whether your Institution is a Church and whether it will survive, thrive or die.

We didn’t do it willingly. We were forced in to it by the sheer pressures of history and change. We did it with pain. Many left but we persisted. We were persecuted and are persecuted for it. "Blessed are you when they persecute you." said a homeless, hungry, rendition of Christ as I stewed in resentment the other day. When you open the doors of your Institution to the Church you will suffer. We have lost many in what is a true war on the poor. Yet we rejoice more than I can tell you. Our Halloween dance saw dozens of folk who have not danced in years, who have no homes, who want for food, who are hated everywhere, dancing with the middle class, and the dozens of children who populate everything we do. Crack addicts and children dancing together, brokers and prostitutes dancing together, accountants and Marxists dancing together. The scriptures had come to life. Don’t tell me Christ also wasn’t kicking up his heels in that room.

The Church as the body of Christ in the world is more alive than ever. It is stunningly, vibrantly, exquisitely alive. It beckons to us, sings to us, dances before us, preaches to us, celebrates us, delights in us, needs us, begs us, cries to us, beseeches us. It is universal and it is filled with the Spirit. We don’t need to fear about it. We don’t need to help it along. We are the blessed ones who have been invited to join it around the table.

The table is already set. There is a place for each one of us. Will we welcome the Church of Christ in to our religious institutions? Will we share in the kingdom/queendom of God? What needs to change so that Christ, that homeless criminal, friend of prostitutes and thieves, interrupter of sermons and destroyer of institutional property, challenger of family values, would be at home in our buildings? At our council meetings? In our worship? On our Outreach committees? Do we do charity or do we challenge empire? Do we risk or do we comfort each other? Do we mirror the kingdom/queendom or do we mirror the world? Do we live our faith or do we live our faith on Sundays? Do we give our lives or do we give an offering? If we have not been persecuted for following Christ, why not? What is it that we are afraid of? Fear not, said Jesus, way before Kennedy. We were created to be God’s delight. Will we allow ourselves to be that joyous and that delighted, that sad and that suffering? How will we answer the question in those eyes. The eyes of the Church. Look in its eyes. Look in these eyes. What would you say?

1) Karl Barth, The Faith of the Church, ( NewYork:Meriden Books, 1959 136