Shayne Looper: Faith: It is not to be taken lightly
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard once asked, “Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.”
I cannot think of anyone but Annie Dillard who could have written those lines, but I can think of many people whom she might have been describing. I have been one of them myself on more occasions than I care to admit.
People of faith routinely underestimate the seriousness of what they do. We say things like, “A person’s immortal soul hangs in the balance,” yet we cast the Creator in the role of heaven’s bellboy, whose purpose is to escort people to their eternal inheritance. We “blithely invoke” a power we have not begun to understand.
Dillard’s “children playing on the floor,” turn the incarnation of Christ into an occasion for schmaltzy movies and white elephant gifts. Few people apprehend the fact that Christmas marks the divine invasion of planet earth and the beginning of a campaign to wrest control from hostile powers.
In the hands of us “cheerful, brainless tourists,” Easter is an opportunity to dress our daughters in pastel-colored dresses and send our kids to hunt for colored eggs. St. Paul, however, saw it as nothing less than the overthrow of death — nothing less, and certainly a great deal more.
People who come to Jesus are not joining a religious club or a theological society. They’re joining the Resistance. They are ordinary men and women who know that things are not the way they are supposed to be in the world and, more importantly, in themselves. They are willing to change, and yet their commitment is not so much to change as it is to their King. They have sworn allegiance to his kingdom.
These men and women are Christ’s operatives in the world. Their role is not to set up a kingdom; Christ will do that. Their job is simple: always keep communication lines with headquarters open and, when a communication is received, follow orders. The Resistance gathers regularly to send communications to headquarters, to receive instructions, and to be encouraged. When they leave their gatherings, they do not leave the Resistance.
They go into their schools, into their workplaces, into public settings and private homes and work for the Resistance; that is, they obey their leader. They make car parts and study history and teach elementary school and drive trucks and wait tables. They do what everyone else does but, unlike everyone else, they are always awaiting instructions from their leader.
The people of the Resistance have confessed their leader Jesus to be the Lord, the rightful king, and have given him their unconditional allegiance. They have entered an agreement with him, an agreement of greatest consequence. In the Bible and in other ancient documents, such agreements are known as covenants. There are numerous covenants in the Bible, but the one that is most important to the Resistance is known simply as “The New Covenant.”
A standard component of such agreements was the covenant meal. After entering into a covenant, the parties would share a meal — the reception dinner that follows a covenant of marriage ceremony is one example. The church participates in the New Covenant meal whenever it takes Holy Communion, also known as The Lord’s Supper, and the Eucharist.
Do those who participate in this ritual understand what they are doing? Are they aware that they are affirming their covenant with the true king? Do they acknowledge those who eat the meal with them as brothers and sisters in the Company of the Committed?
Or are they just mixing up another batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning? But even that would be better than playing with “a form of godliness but denying its power.” Sacred things are powerful things, but they are not, as Annie Dillard wants us to understand, playthings.
— Find this and other articles by Shayne Looper at shaynelooper.com.
This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Shayne Looper: Faith: It is not to be taken lightly
