Last week I wrote about a radio commercial for Mother’s Day flowers, honoring a variety of ways that we are mothered or nurtured by others. I noted that the language of the commercial was similar to the kind of expansive language that many of us in the church have been trying to cultivate over the years with the language and direction of our liturgy. At the end of last week’s “Extra,” I mentioned that the commercial raises the question of the relationship between the church and the culture in which we are embedded. Does the flower commercial show that the church has been quite effective in all of our laborious cultivation of capacious language? I’m not suggesting that the church is the only institution that has been engaged in this cultivation, but it has indeed been a real goal of the church to expand the sense of what Mother’s Day means. Let me offer another example of how the church’s efforts have made a difference.
In Thursday’s L.A. Times this week there is a marvelous article about “microfarms” that are being cultivated in the city. It is part of a trend among African American communities to combat the maldistribution of grocery stores among less affluent neighborhoods by replacing decorative grass yards with small community gardens. You can read the article itself here. At the center of the article is Jamiah Hargins, a winsome and inspiring proponent of microfarming, described at one point as having “the easygoing but determined disposition of a youth minister.” When asked about his commitment to setting aside 10% of his produce for needy families, Hargins said, “It’s a community tithe. That’s what I’ve been calling it. I guess it comes from my church days.”
I can’t say for sure, but the reference, “from my church days,” seems to imply that Hargins no longer attends church. For the sake of this essay, let’s just assume that Hargins does not currently attend church. If that’s the case, Mr. Hargins would be numbered among those who are often called the “nones,” or “Spiritual, but not religious,” or the “dones” – all of which are ways of naming folks who have “left” the church. It means that he, and folks like him, are the ones to whom people point when they say that the church is “losing its relevance” or that the country is “no longer religious.” It’s what makes church proponents purse their lips and church critics nod their heads. But, let me ask this: Could it mean that Mr. Hargins has “graduated?”
It’s not unheard of. The Apostle Paul referred to “the law” – the primary religious structure in his own religious upbringing – as a “tutor,” or a “disciplinarian,” which served a purpose for a time, but was never intended to be the permanent structure of faith. Is it possible that the church’s whole purpose is to “Christianize the social order” (a phrase from the Social Gospel prophet, Walter Rauschenbusch), and to make its own institutional structure irrelevant? To be sure, the naïve optimism of the late 19th century about the extent to which the social order in the west had been “Christianized” was devasted by two world wars, a depression, and the technological threat of atomic weaponry. But, on a much smaller scale, would Mr. Hargins present us with someone whose religious training in church was quite successful and whose work in the world is, in fact, one way of seeing “the church,” even if he no longer “belongs to” or attends a church?
I see the inherent danger in raising this question, especially as a pastor whose own “success” is often measured in how adroitly I am able to draw people to the church that I serve. But, ever since Jeremiah described the “new covenant” as one in which it would no longer be necessary for people like me to say, “Know the Lord!” because everyone would know the Lord, we pastors have always seen our best “success” lies in working our way out of a job. And perhaps that is true of the church also.
On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons to suggest that, even if the church’s role is to produce disciples like Mr. Hargins and send them out of the church doors into the community garden, the church itself would remain necessary. That’s the thread where I’ll pick up this topic next week. I think there is a better way than the either/or of church.
Mark of St. Mark
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