Beloved, I am confessing to you today that I am (according
to the prophet Elijah): “limping with two different opinions.” For at least the past 35 years, I have been
limping along between these two opinions: I want to be skinny, but I don’t want
to change my eating habits or lifestyle.
Instead, I continue to hope that some doctor or doctors will
create a magic pill that I can swallow once a day---and bingo! I’ll be skinny. No matter what I eat or how much (or little)
I exercise! In fact, just this week I
heard about a pill you can swallow and then a balloon inflates in your stomach
so you feel full and eat less….and voila!
(Sigh.) I don’t
think I’m willing to actually swallow a balloon.
Anyone else feeling my pain? Limping with two different opinions?
In the leadership world, this is known as treating an
adaptive challenge as if it were a technical challenge. An adaptive challenge is a problem that
requires the learning of new ways (yes, that is code for having to change), and
an adaptive challenge can only be solved by the people with the problem.
A technical challenge is a problem that simply requires
current know-how and is resolved by authorities (doctors using science to make
a magic pill!)
Applying a technical fix to an adaptive challenge never
works; it never provides a sustainable, long-term solution.
I think the church, our Intercession community but also the
greater Episcopal Church, is limping along with two different opinions as
well. It’s hard to miss the shrinking
numbers of people who belong to a church, the growing number of people who
think church and Christianity are not relevant or necessary in their lives, the
shrinking budgets and the growing headaches.
In response to these realities, the church--both our local
Intercession community, and the greater Episcopal Church---says: We want to
grow! We want to flourish! Yet at the same time, we resist change: “This is how
we have always done it! This is who we are!”
We want to keep the status quo but somehow get a different outcome.
We’ve grasped onto all sorts of solutions, I too have been
tempted by them: better marketing, just the right Sunday school program, choose
the most exciting priest, provide the coolest worship service, bring in some
drums and a projector screen.
Friends, these are all technical fixes to an adaptive
challenge. The challenge that lies
before us as the Intercession Faith community AND the greater Episcopal church
is a challenge that requires new ways of being and only the people with the
problem can meet the challenge. There is
no authority (priest or Bishop) with the current know-how (worship style,
program, or marketing) who can bring about the transformation needed for the
Church to achieve its mission to restore all people to unity with God and each
other in Christ.
And I get it. This
requires real, life-altering change in Gospel proportions. But, I am not
convinced it is actually change that we are afraid of. I believe it is the loss that goes along with
change. Because change always requires a
loss, a death if you will, of something.
We have to behave differently, think differently, live differently; this
means we have to let go of ways we behave now, let go of ways we think now, let
go of ways we live now. And for most of
us, the status quo is working---at least for us it is. And if we are concerned
only with self—what works for us—then there is no urgency to change. But if God’s mission to restore ALL people to
unity with God and each other in Christ is our first priority, our highest command,
then the urgency to change heats up quite a bit and we are empowered to move
into action.
As members of the Living Body of Christ, agents of God’s
mission, we are not allowed to consider our faith to be a private matter. The
Gospel tells us and shows us that we are each other’s business, and that we
have much to learn from “outsiders,” like today’s Centurion. This is communal work, not private. Yes, our faith is personal, but never private. The true freedom that Jesus’ life and
sacrifice has granted us is the freedom to move out of our self-centered prisons
and instead, to live lives that are other-centered, focused on the good of all,
not first and foremost on our private benefit.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said: “When every one does better, than everyone
does better.” This is Gospel.
But’s it’s not the message of our society. Our culture tells
us that we have to look out for ourselves; our society tells us national
borders matter more than God’s call to restore all people to unity with God and
each other in Christ. Our culture does
its best to convince us that, of course, we must be pragmatic and sensible; we
only have so many resources---even if it means people go without shelter, food,
clean water or medicine. We are led to
believe that somehow our pragmatism is to have a greater value than Jesus
saying to us: Feed my sheep, Tend my flock, whatever you do (or don’t do) for
the least of these, you do unto me.
How long will we go about limping with two different
opinions? The two limping opinions we hear
in the Old Testament story are: believe
in society’s “gods,” society’s values OR trust in God’s commands. Today it might be heard as: follow the
American Prosperity Gospel or follow the Good News of Jesus. Often, not always but often, it is impossible
to follow both. This leaves us with an
adaptive challenge---a challenge where only learning new ways by the people who
have the challenge placed before them can resolve the problem.
I believe that together, as the people of Intercession
Episcopal, we can rise to meet this adaptive challenge. We can learn new ways. We can live in ways that fulfill God’s
mission to restore all people to unity to God and each other in Christ. But not
by living the ways we are already living.
Intercession and the Episcopal Church have a rich history of being
faithful and of having flourished in the past. But if we are painfully honest
with ourselves, we are no longer fulfilling God’s mission to restore all people
to unity with God and each other in Christ.
Not for a lack of desire. Not for
a lack of wanting to be faithful. But,
we cannot fix this adaptive challenge by asking the authorities to use their
current know how to resolve the problem.
We are the
church. We are God’s people who are called to learn new ways in order for
God’s mission of the restoration and reconciliation of all people to
flourish. Because the truth is: if the ways we have known and trusted are the
path we are called to continue to follow, we wouldn’t have the challenge that
lies before us. We would, indeed, be
flourishing. If we are willing to
recognize and name the truth that we are not flourishing, and if we are willing
to actually learn new ways in order to flourish, then God’s mission for God’s
people can be lived out here—amongst us---restoring the lives of all those with
whom we are connected.
Of course, not without loss. Not without cost. Not without
sacrifice. Not without commitment. Not without desire. Not without heart. Not
without participation. No priest can fix
this. No program will save us.
But God can. And God will.
God is giving us all we need to live into abundance and wholeness. Either
we believe in resurrection---that death can, and does, blossom into new
life---or we choose to live and move from the fear of loss that new life
inevitably requires.
Let us choose Resurrection. Let us choose the Truth that
Love Wins. Let us choose the Gospel message that death and loss cannot, and
will not, defeat us. It is time to quit limping. It is time to follow God and
God’s mission----whatever the cost.
