The
God Who Will Not Be Boxed In
In
recent weeks our newspapers have carried the usual stories of scams,
corruption and ineptness. However, in my own life experience I have
encountered repeated islands of extraordinary goodness. I have experienced
the helpers, nurses and doctors at the provincial hospital, by and
large, as a most dedicated group of people serving the poorest of
the poor in spite of the additional curtailment of resources that
has resulted from the devolution of powers to the local government.
I have encountered groups of government and non government people
working to help mendicants, the mentally disturbed, the hearing impaired
and the malnourished. In the nearby jail there is a sincere effort
to make the detention process as humane as possible.
As
a church person, these experiences make me ask the question who is
serving God most. We priests, sisters and brothers committed to give
service in the "Church of the Poor"; yet, often, those who
made no such commitment seem to be more committed than us. It becomes
very clear that no group has a monopoly of goodness. I think this
is what Jesus is getting at in today's parable about the man who had
two sons. He went and said to the first, "My boy, you go and
work in the vineyard today." He answered, "I will not go."
but afterwards he thought better of it and went. The man went and
said the same thing to the second who answered, "Certainly, sir."
but did not go. Sometimes those professionally and religiously committed
to community service do less than those who are only voluntary in
that service.
This
reflection was further enforced by M. Scott Peck in his book A World
Waiting to Be Born, (p. 351). Much of the book is about recovering
civility in society through better community processes. "When
we began we assumed that the church would be a natural market for
our services. Christians generally knew that the early church seemed
to have had an extraordinary amount of community and that the notion
of 'Christian community' although largely lost, remained an ideal.
Many clergy and lay people bemoaned the lack of community within their
churches. As an individual, Jesus had clearly transcended local culture,
and the first major decision of his church was to go peacefully international.
In recent years, the church in the United States has increasingly
become involved in the peace movement. And what organization could
possibly be more interested in welcoming the presence of God into
its midst?
"Conversely,
we assumed that, with its competitive secular orientation and hierarchical
structure, business would be the last place we would ever penetrate
with our intimacy-demanding culture. What has emerged over the past
six years, however, has been an astonishing lack of interest on the
part of the church in our community building services and
an equally astonishing and bludgeoning interest on the part of business.
"The
resistance on the part of the church has been so dramatic that a large
and active volunteer 'Task force on Community and the Christian Church'
sprang up to analyze the reasons for that resistance and, it is hoped,
to develop effective strategies for overcoming it. The outcome is
still unknown, but as I have thought about it, the emerging trend
actually makes a lot of sense. Community actually demands a good deal
of time and work. The work place is the center of most people's lives.
Next comes the family. Church, if it comes in at all, is usually a
poor third or fourth. Most churchgoers simply do not have the time
to 'do' community at church. Nor do they want to do the often painful
work of emotionally stretching at church that community requires.
They want the worship service to be pleasantly uplifting, and if they
do not like the pretentiousness of the social hour they are at least
willing to put up with it in order to keep everything nice. Most want
church to be pseudo-community, and despite any protestations to the
contrary, they have no real desire to see the boat, and their lives,
rocked in the least. The minority who do invest their volunteer time
more extensively in the church often do so out of their own leadership
needs - that is, they use the church as a sphere of influence in which
they can, at times, play very personal power games. The few who make
attempts to actualize the church as a place of the Kingdom of God
on earth may find themselves silenced by the congregation with an
enormously powerful, subtle effectiveness.
"Business
is another matter. It is no one-or-two-hour-a-week affair. Church
is not where people's lives are on the line, but their workplace is.
Here is where a single decision can cost them their employment, their
livelihood. Here is where missions of dollars may be in play every
day - sums of money a thousand times greater than their entire annual
church budget. These decisions count. Here, therefore of necessity,
people may be willing to spend the time and effort to ensure that
their decisions are the right ones. It is in business that they will
be willing to pay the price of community...
"At
first, the dramatic, relative lack of interest on the part of the
church and relative interest on the part of business distressed me.
I had hoped the church would serve as a place where the Kingdom would
be practiced and people would learn the skills of forging a planetary
civility. But then, as it occurred to me that God had possibly largely
left the church and gone into business, I was struck with its appropriateness.
What better place for God to work than in the marketplace."
Jesus
tells us in the Gospel today, "I tell you solemnly, tax collectors
and prostitutes are making their way into the kingdom of God before
you. John came to you, a pattern of righteousness, but you did not
believe him, and yet the tax collectors and prostitutes did. Even
after seeing that, you refused to think better of it and believe him."
We
can never predict or confine where the seed of God's work will take
root. We often find true altruistic self sacrifice in the much criticized
government services. We find more serious concern for community and
democratic process in the business world than in the churches. So,
too, one of the characteristics of the movement toward interiority,
the contemplative renewal in the church today, is that it is coming
from the laity rather than from religious and the clergy. Most of
the 500 meditation groups around the world, meditating in the tradition
of John Main, are composed of and run by lay people. In giving retreats
to groups in different parts of the world the laity are the ones that
I have found most enthusiastic and committed. And this is how it should
be. It is one of the clearest biblical truths that God has never allowed
himself to be boxed in by any nation or group. God's Spirit blows
where it wills.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
