Living churches

Simplicity was a keynote of the Christian Brethren churches I attended when was younger. On Sunday mornings the members of the assembly gathered together in an unadorned room for worship and prayer around bread and wine on a simple table.

Each church was independent, with no national governing body. The Brethren movement began in the mid-19^th century in a desire to recover the very earliest ways of doing church and in conscious contrast to the complex structures of other Churches.

In contrast, no Church seems more complex that the Roman Catholic Church, a Church much in the news just now as the process to select a new Pope, and the shock-waves following Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s resignation continue.

One of the drawbacks of big church structures is, as the early Brethren were aware, that it’s human nature for those in leadership to be fearful of change, to seek to shore up the structure rather than reform it, and to preserve their roles in the process.

The New Testament describes how some of Jesus’ friends had a mountaintop revelation of his divine identity as they saw emanating from him a powerful light of supernatural origin. Their reaction was to suggest building a shrine, to freeze-frame the moment rather than returning to the everyday better equipped through what they had seen to make a difference.

Be it simple or complex in structure, a living church must not focus so much on preserving an institution as on seeking on-going transformation through relationship with a self-revealing God.

Many Roman Catholics recognise the need of changes in their Church – in structure, in accountability, in vision. In the house of Roman Catholicism there are undoubtedly dark corners which need swept clean.

Thus George Weigel, author of Evangelical Catholicism says he hopes the new Pope will be ‘A man of profound, transparent and charismatic faith, who conveys the adventure of Christian discipleship through his person as well as by his words…a man who can reform the church’s central bureaucracy and make it an instrument of the New Evangelisation, not an impediment to it.’

Media reports from Rome on the papal election suggest a complex political process with secret meetings and wheeling and dealing. We don’t know the hearts of the Cardinals. But we hope and pray that they will listen to the voice within reminding them that their role is not to further personal or group interests, or to preserve the status quo. Through this voice God shapes and focuses their choice prompting them to select not the powerful man who seeks to be more powerful, but the humble, yet resilient man who only seeks to serve.

Power, its misuse, and the struggle to preserve it through covering up dark truths led to Cardinal O’Brien’s downfall. One of those who made allegations against him said that your bishop ‘has immense power over you – he controls every aspect of your life.’

The misuse of authority, everywhere, but especially in church leadership is a scandal. Leadership is not about power, but about service as we follow on our knees the foot-washing Jesus seeking the good of those we minister to. The misuse of power must be one of the darkest sins.

This was key element in the tragedy of the Cardinal’s fall, along with hypocrisy, and the strident criticism of others for expressing something which lies buried within himself. We don’t know the details, but we trust the Cardinal is sincerely repenting, and seeking to make such amends as are possible to those he has wounded.

And we trust that as he finds himself in the ‘fraternity of the fallen’ (a phrase used by Jonathan Aitken in a Daily Mail column advising Chris Huhne on how to cope in prison) he will find both forgiveness and healing.

But frankly people in all Churches, big or small, independent or denominational, simple or complex are tempted to preserve structures rather than following God’s vision, to elect leaders by political processes rather than in recognition of humble service, to misuse power, to sin in attitude and action.

One way or another we have all sinned. To say this is not to minimise the abuses in the Catholic Church but to concentrate our unflinching attention on our own hearts.  Which of us does not belong in that ‘fraternity of the fallen’ to which, amazingly, God offers forgiveness and hope?

We need our too-human imaginings of Jesus to be transformed by the light of insight so that we see the wonder of him, the love, the forgiveness, the transforming power, and then not seek to freeze-frame the moment but rather bear into everyday life the wonder of what we are seeing.

For all Christians are, as Weigel says of Roman Catholics ‘witnesses, inviting others into friendship with Jesus Christ.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 14th March 2013)