Rummage Sale

It is no secret to anybody who knows me remotely well that I have been battling intense disillusionment with the Church. In the past few years there have been times when I have felt like giving up on it altogether. Some people find my admission offensive...and get defensive. But alas! I am what I am and my experience is what it is.

I do have a theory that the Highly Sensitive Person (its a thing, really, I'm one of them) struggles more with Church. We notice more. We sense more. We feel more intensely. Things don't just roll off our backs.

This morning I was worried. I was beginning to despair that perhaps there was no place for me in the Church when my husband shared with me this reading from New Monasticism As Fresh Expression of Church.

"Discontentment is a gift to the Church. If you are one of those people who has the ability to see things that are wrong in the Church and in the world you should thank God for that perception; not everyone has the eyes to see, or to notice, or to care. But we must also see that our discontent is not a reason to disengage from the Church but to engage. Ghandi said, 'Be the change you want to see in the world' -- our invitation is to 'be the change we want to see in the Church.' There are things worth protesting - in fact 'protest' is half the word Protestant - but we also have to be people who 'protestify.' For too long Christians have been known by what they are against than by what they are for. We have often been known by what we hate rather than by what we love. But Church history is filled with holy dissenters, rabble-rousers and prophets. It has been said that every generation of Christians needs a new reformation, that every age needs a revolution. As some Church historians have pointed out, every few hundred years the Church gets cluttered and infected with the materialism and militarism of the world around it. We begin to forget who we are. One historian has said that the Church needs a rummage sale every few hundred years to get rid of the clutter and to cling to the treasures of our faith. "

It is amazing how in the matter of a few words God could pull me from the brink of total disillusionment to a desire to engage and to gave me to courage to work for the change I think the Church so desperately needs. And I am all for a rummage sale.

It is high time we got rid of the crap we have accumulated along the way. The materialism and militarism. The cultural particulars that we are so convinced are biblical mandates that we load them onto the broken backs of weary souls. It is high time we got rid of the racism. The nationalism. The sexism. The elitism. The Christian perfectionism. The my-theological-formula-will-fix-you-ism. The institution-is-more-important-than-the-person-ism. The circle-the-wagons-ism. The looking-out-for-my-own-ism. The church-as-social-club-ism. The health-and-wealth-gospel-ism. The my-way-of-doing-things-is-better-than-yours-ism. The you-only-fit-in-here-if-you-pretend-to-have-your-shit-together-ism.

We have to get back to the basics...do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with our God...and embrace the rummage sale concept and offload all that other crap. Then again, maybe we should just take it to the dump instead. I have a truck.

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