In
the year 313 AD, with the Edict of Milan, the Roman Emperor Constantine made
Christianity the state religion and forbad persecution. No doubt he assumed the Christians would be
grateful. Father Richard Rohr says it
may have been the single most unfortunate thing that ever happened to
Christianity. We moved from the margins
of society, from maybe 2½
centuries of living at the limits, to the centre, to the place of power. A lot of the church would have celebrated
this – calamitously missing the point. But
Fr Richard says we developed a film over the eyes… After that, we couldn’t
read anything that showed Jesus in confrontation with the establishment,
because we were the establishment, and usually egregiously so. Clear teaching (by
Jesus) on issues of greed, powerlessness, nonviolence, non-control, and
simplicity were moved to the sidelines, if not actually countermanded.
And
so, one of the astonishing facts of Christian history, many believers, not grateful
at all, began to migrate from the cities to remoter parts of Egypt, Syria,
Palestine, Cappadocia… the Desert Fathers and Mothers of the 4th
and 5th centuries. We will
come to them later, and we will mention others in history who disestablished
themselves in order (as Bishop Richard of Chichester put it) to see thee
more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly, day by day.[1] Richard of Albuquerque states simply that in
the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes, we see that Jesus assumed
his followers would be at the margins… otherwise these scriptures don’t make
sense. It is our habitat, it is where we
are called to be.
If
we reflect on our own experiences of church and discipleship over the years, is
it not possible that God has been speaking God’s word to us in what we assumed
were the negativities… the uninvited guilt-laden doubts; the times we
interiorly disagreed or disliked; the times we went home feeling angry, sad,
alienated; the times when something that should have happened didn’t; the church
leaders, movers, shakers, who let us down in some way… but also the realisation
that the church we knew actually had little to offer the people we knew, out towards
the margins; our sense that something was wrong but we didn’t know what it was;
the realisation that what was once a comfort zone isn’t any more; our
instinctive distrust of certainty and any whiff of hypocrisy, or
self-righteousness, or the smug hymns of the saved and safe…? This, in all its variations, degrees and
nuances, reflects life and discipleship at the edge of the inside, where the
view… is better, wider, but we could do at times with a bit of reassurance. The good news is, in all this we are hearing
the Word of God who speaks in our circumstances. It is not primarily about why the young
people are not going to church – it is about why we are not, or why at times we
wish we hadn’t. It is about us, at our
age and stage. And I am suggesting that
we are indeed hearing God’s Word, where we are, and how we are – and that the
primary task, the initial and essential task
at present, is to know how to be still, and wait, pay attention and listen.
At
the margins moreover we face our questions.
This may be costly and brave. Things
are not right simply because Bible or Church Authority says they are, but because
we find it so in silence and solitude, humility and love… measuring by the way
of Christ. We learn to discern things
differently, out towards the margins…
[1]
Prayer attributed to Richard, Bishop of Chichester (1197-1253). When King Henry III denied him access to the
cathedral and to the bishop’s palace, Richard spent two years wandering
barefoot through his diocese, living very simply on the charity of his flock.
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