KNOCK, KNOCK.
It’s no secret that churches have lost their luster and that the bringing of the ‘good news’ has become an almost impossible task. It’s no secret that churches have run stuck. It’s no secret that the most prominent buildings in the country are basically useless, except for the occasional concert.
And they are not the only ones. It’s also happening in other branches of society. Take office buildings. Suddenly, almost overnight, these emblems of the economy, these gold-cladded towers, silhouetting against the horizons, defining the contours of the urban landscapes, are also partly occupied, and thus their value have plummeted. The same with shopping centres and all of retail: empty stores galore. Sit-down restaurants? Perhaps a thing of the past as well?
Of course, church buildings for a long time were grossly underutilized, were built centuries ago, when society had no TV, no radio, no telephone, no internet, and were then more social centres than religious ones. Then church membership also meant business contacts, and, especially in rural area, market information, weather tips, ideas for buying and selling, while, during the week, the different societies, including young people, offered a ready opportunity to find the right spouse. All that is history, has been the case for decades, but, due to the pandemic, the brutal reality has finally come out in the open: I believe that God is knocking at the church’s doors to wake the people up from their lethargy: change or die!
Actually, the early focus of the church – heaven and hell – has already been found wanting. Hell disappeared a long time ago. Heaven is still in focus, but decreasingly so. Good riddance! Yet, one look at the typical hymnbook confirms that the songs are almost all from the 19th and 20thCenturies, many of them ‘heaven-oriented’ and depicting a society far removed from present-day reality.
Reality is found in the Bible: look at Genesis 9. There today’s reality is depicted. One of the advantages of today is that we see matters more clearly. God is knocking some common sense in us. True, we still see everything ‘as through a dark and distorted mirror’, but, nevertheless, some of the obscurity is being wiped away and we slowly gain a clearer perspective of what has happened and what is to come: God is knocking some reality in our reluctant brains.
Oh yes, Genesis 9.
After Noah and his family left the ark, he saw life from a new angle: weeks and months living within a real, not a virtual zoo, made him see all of life differently: he had become an animal activist. God always works historically: he used Noah’s new insight to make a comprehensive covenant with that family and, consequently with us, you and me. Through the Ark, and their close contact with animal life, God prepared the Ark dwellers for a new phase in their life, a life that included all living matter. The inapproachable God came down from his heavenly habitat and sought out Noah, representing the New Human race, and treated him and his family as equals by making a binding treaty with them, just as I did with my late spouse 68 years ago, as marriage too is a covenant between two equals. He made this covenant not only between Him and the Noah clan, but also with ALL living creatures, with all animals and plants. In that solemn treaty God included all living items as equals.
The covenant, that binding eternal contract between God and ALL living creatures, we have forgotten. Now Climate Change is knocking to remind us of that treaty God made with us. This current, universal phenomenon also called Global Warming, our direct experience with the natural elements, is warning us to live closer to nature by making us aware of our destructive lifestyle. God, in his grace, is giving us this experience so that we can learn the lesson that “Climate Change is US”.
The church too needs to change.
The same change is happening with the church. Through the Pandemic God is knocking at those solid church doors, telling us that the old model has become outdated, that the church has reached a state of serenity resembling a cathedral in the moonlight where all new thinking had stopped: the stillness of death. God is telling us that monologues and preaching is 19th Century stuff, an era when people were hungry for information. The onus now is on us: from placid pew occupiers, we all have to become active, positive participants through prayer and probing. Away with sermons: they only lead to more boredom and ignorance, a holdover from the Middle Ages. Thanks to God’s grace for giving us the Pandemic, we are on our own. No more vicarious believing. Never mind the numbers: they are irrelevant. The Bible tells us that they are meaningless. Gideon and his 400 soldiers defeated an army 50 times their size.
So then, what are we to do?
As always, the Bible gives directions. Philippians 2: 12 tells us: “to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.” That is a totally personal matter. Fear here means “in awe of God and his creation”; trembling indicates the awesome personal responsibility we have for doing that. All this goes back to that Covenant Noah – and we – made with the Creator.
Fortunately, many are struggling: there is change in the air! We instinctively know that the old way of doing things no longer works. That gives us a splendid opportunity to do things differently. The Fiddler on the Roof sang “Tradition, tradition” but tradition has no longer any trade-in value. Away with it. Be radical. Back to basics.
Micah 6: 8 defines those basics: (1) Act justly, (2) Love mercy and (3) Walk humbly with the Lord.
(1) Act justly. The Genesis 9 Covenant is all-inclusive. Acting justly goes far beyond loving one’s neighbor and enforcing criminal laws. It is all-encompassing, all-inclusive, all embracing, involves trees and soil and air. Away with anthropocentric living: we share God’s good creation with ‘all things now living’. Not doing that, has given us our present predicament, sorry to say, now too advanced to stop, so penitence and lament is in order. “Forgive us our trespasses” as we duly recite in The Lord’s Prayer is mainly aimed at our environmental ‘sins’.
(2) Love mercy. The 215 graves found at the Kamloops School for indigenous youngsters display a callous disregard for loving mercy. It displays the arrogance of a faith-system that has lost all perspective, only relying on human interpretations of what constitutes ‘religion’. Away with religion that bred ‘inquisition’ and ‘excommunication’ and ‘religious wars’, instead of realizing that we all have a very rudimentary idea what God requires of us.
(3) Walk humbly with the Lord. The more we learn about creation, the more we realize that we know nothing. The more we abuse it, the steeper the price to pay later, that ‘later’ is advancing with exponential speed. Walking humbly means adoring the Creator who offered his beloved Son’s life to buy it back – redeem – his creation so that his children may dwell for ever – eternally – on a planet renewed and beautified, making John 3: 16 the most important text in the Scriptures for our day and age.
God loves us.
God loves us, that’s why God is knocking at our door. That door leads to the New Creation: it is our ultimate task in life to prepare ourselves for that final event, which is approaching with incredible speed.
Our constant prayer should be MARANATHA, LORD COME QUICKLY.