What’s Out There?
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Road Home
Madison, Wisconsin
It is 276 miles from our apartment to the nursing home where my parents heal. I leave Minneapolis in the late afternoon, knowing I’ll arrive in Madison long after sun has set. There is a rhythm to these drives. As the sun sets National Public Radio rounds out the day. Then I switch stations, wondering who else inhabits the night air.
The answer is that religious broadcasters own the night. They are “so pleased,” to bring us the word, and would we please send a donation to keep them on the air. In some ways, there isn’t much difference between them and NPR. The later it gets, the more fervent their voices, the more urgent their call. I could, of course, listen only to those with whom I agree, but curiosity will not allow it. And besides, these strange but random broadcasts invite me to filter once again what I do, and do not believe.
I’d been thinking Sunday about just what a church is. What differentiates it from a club or a political party (either right, or left)? Is it because life rather than opinion is our gathering call? Is it because birth and death are the bookends of our conversations? Is it weaving worship with scripture, is it communion? Or is there more than that?
A hundred miles from Madison a radio preacher earnestly addresses the congregation. Don’t think there’s one thing you can do to be saved, he says. If you are to be saved it is all God’s doing. It seems to be a sermon about grace. I didn’t expect that on such a station.
He then tells a story. Turns out that after Gandhi read the New Testament he considered becoming a Christian. So he went to church. Once there the usher refused to sit him, and told him to go back with “his kind.” Well, said Gandhi, since the Christians have their own caste system there’s no reason for me to change. That’s sin, the preacher said. I agree. When church becomes exclusive it has moved away from God, or so it seems to me.
But then, the preacher’s tone becomes more urgent than ever. He wants us to know with absolute certainty that every single thought, every intention, every action, every sin, every misdeed, every fib, every failure we’ve ever had in our lives will be judged by God when we die. We must strive to be perfect. Oh, he says, the shame, the despair, the fear of that judgment day. Very few will survive this judgment, he says. I recoil. If he’s right, there is no such thing as grace or the forgiveness of sin. There goes hope. Indeed, there goes life.
Its no wonder the words “church,” “Bible,” and “Jesus” no longer serve as the common threads of church. They can become toxic. Just where will the church Gandhi expected to find be found?
I pull into the lane I’ve driven up to the farm house a thousand times. It is too late to go to the nursing home. Tomorrow.
The night is quiet. I look into the sky making out a handful of constellations. Whatever they say, I’ll take it.