Searching for Why
In her book 2018 The Great Convergence, Phyllis Tickle said "every 500 years the holy spirit has a rummage sale." Tickle made the argument that we were in a new reformation in the history of the church and challenged us to think about what things the spirit might be putting a price tag on this time around.
How I long for the wisdom of Tickle today as we emerge from a year and a half of challenges to our faith and the various structures that contain it.
It really feels like we're right in the middle of another reformation.
The pandemic has caused many of us, myself included, to ask a lot of questions about the church.
What does it mean to be the church?
What does it mean to gather?
Do buildings matter?
What does it mean to be incarnational, and can we be incarnational on different screens?
What does our faith have to say during a time of communal trauma like a global pandemic?
Right in the midst of asking some of these questions, I joined a small group of creatives working through Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way." One of the key components of Cameron's work is challenging artists to consider why we create. Is it possible, she asked, to create for nothing else but the sake of creating? Not for followers or publishing or notoriety or fame or fortune, but simply because you are meant to create?
Add this to the question from Phyllis Tickle, and then also add the recent slew of lectionary texts from Acts and you have a recipe for a stirring pot inside of me.
We are, in the church, very, very good at asking "what" and "how" questions.
What can we do to get more people here?
How can we encourage people to attend this program or give more money?
What new thing do we need to do?
How can we attract visitors?
What how what how.
None of these tell anyone anything about what we believe. They don't answer the why.
Why do we have church?
Why do we follow Jesus?
Why does this matter?
Can we worship simply for the sake of worshipping?
Can we follow Jesus simply for the sake of following Jesus?
Would that change anything we do and how we do it?
I think so. I think right now the Spirit is asking us to search for our why. And she is putting price tags on everything that is a "what" and a "how." Those things matter less.
In a 2009 TED Talk, Simon Sinek said that "what you do simply serves as the proof of what you believe." To that I'd add, what you do and even how you do it simply serves as the proof of what you believe.
You have to search for your why.
Our lectionary texts since Easter have placed us again in Acts. But I wonder if this year we can hear these familiar stories of the early church as not a blueprint but what happens when we really solidify our why.
When the why is following Jesus, then what happens is Acts 4. We love radically, seek justice, tear down systems of oppression and exclusion. And the church grows as a result.
When the why is following Jesus, then what happens is Acts 8. When the Ethiopian Eunuch asks Phillip, the church insider, "what is to prevent me from being baptized?" Phillip could have said any number of things: "You haven't taken a baptism class yet," "you need to be taught the right way to do things," "you aren't Jewish," "you aren't one of us," etc. But instead the answer was nothing. There was nothing to prevent anyone from being baptized. Phillip got out of his own way and let the spirit do her work.
The church grew as a result.
On Pentecost we celebrate the Spirit coming in and blowing the doors open and removing all barriers and getting to work.
There is no controlling her, no setting boundaries or making sure it's done the right way.
The spirit is at work in our churches right now and things are scary and unfamiliar and we are being asked to move into a place we can't imagine. Our tendency is to find safety and control in the how and what questions:
What program can we start?
What kind of music should we have in worship?
How can we make more money?
How can we bring in more people?
But I believe that these are the wrong questions.
Why do we gather?
Why do we follow Jesus?
Why does this matter here and now?
So that's what I think these next few months are going to be about — our why.
Meta Herrick Carlson was a guest on my podcast Cafeteria Christian this past week, and in our conversation she reminded us that we have all changed, but the systems we are in have not caught up yet. These systems are going to do their best to move us back. Back to where we were, back to what is familiar, back to the way we've always done it.
The church can be one of these stuck systems, prioritizing it's own survival over the call to follow Jesus. Moving away from what is to come in favor of what was and what used to be.
But the spirit isn't asking us to do that. The spirit is calling us forward. Into something new.
I wonder if we have the imagination to clear our minds of the what and the how and search for our why?
And when we can articulate and believe in our why, can we then let the spirit dictate the how and the what and can we hear what she is saying in the rushing wind and refining fire?
Can we let her move us into what is next?
It will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young shall see visions,
and your old shall dream dreams. (Acts 2:17)
