Church of the Holy Nativity

Two days before the Thanksgiving holiday and I’m convinced that I’m loosing my mind. Actually, my mind is relatively secure; I’m mostly losing everything else. This afternoon I spent 90 minutes searching for my “to-do list” that covered everything I needed to do before December 15th. I could have re-created the list in 5 minutes … but that would have missed the point: I needed to find the index card and all its attached Post-it notes. Without them, I am aimless.

We’re doing a 4-week adult education series at Church of the Holy Nativity called “Setting Our Hearts: An Introduction to Sacred Community.” This evening’s session was on Authority and how we navigate life using sources of authority and influence (and yes, our parishioners saw a huge difference between “authority” and “influence” — maybe I’m too much of a Disciple … I definitely equate the two). We had people organize several sources: Christ, Mass Media, Nature, Law, Family, Bible, Church, Self, Clergy, Money, Education/Academy/Theologians. The end goal was to realize that there’s always a tension in our sources of authority and that it’s possible to have both individual autonomy and an external order. Because of this tension, diversity is to be expected and even encouraged. We don’t need to all have identical arrangements of our “bedrock foundations” in order to be a community together.

My still-forming thoughts on Authority:

“[Choosing who rules over you] offers finite coordinates for Christian existence. … In any case, to be very modest, this helps us to explain ambiguities or even tensions or even inconceivable opposites in Pauline theology.” This quote by Hans-Josef Klauck is precisely how we need to view authority (even though this isn’t exactly how he applied it when he lectured on the end of Romans 6:19-23). We face a paradox: how can our own human weakness fit with God’s plan of salvation?; we are unworthy and yet God still lets nothing separate us from Love. God can bless our lives even in our broken states. Authority, when healthy, offers the needed freedom with the proper limitations. Healthy authority gives us markers on our journey without creating walls that separate us from living authentically as ourselves; authority should never make us into people we don’t recognize. And yet, we can still hold opposites in tension with one another: we maintain our freedom while also submitting ourselves to God’s order.

So it was a rich night with some good reflection. But what led up to it showed me a new side of CHN that I’ve NEVER seen in a congregation. People at CHN leave things alone — literally — and this says something about their ecclesiology and how they view authority!Last Tuesday I brought a book for a parishioner. Marjorie Suchocki wrote an analysis of prayer from a ‘process theology’ perspective that I thought he’d reasonate with. I knew I’d left the book at church, but when Sunday came around, I couldn’t find it. So I told the parishioner that I’d bring it this Tuesday. After scouring my room (even after having no luck finding my to-do list), I still couldn’t find the book before I left to church.

I showed up at CHN this afternoon and Aimée saw me wandering lost in thought. “Did you lose something, Adam?” she asked. “Yeah, I thought I’d left a book here, but I can’t remember where I put it; I couldn’t find it in my room at home, so hopefully it’s still here somewhere.” “Check where you last left it; this congregation leaves things where they are.” she commented.Sure enough, I went upstairs to our fellowship hall and the book was sitting on top of the piano where I’d left it the last Tuesday. It was so bizarre to see a small part of the world unchanged. Even though over 150 people had gone through the room, the book hadn’t moved at any point. They didn’t move it to a “lost and found.” They didn’t discard it to a wasteful pile of trash. They simply left it.

Church of the Holy Nativity is full of people who don’t want to intrude. They expect the same from their authorities. I can’t imagine a worse situation than someone from the Diocese ordering them to do something … their response would probably resemble: “leave us alone, we’ll still show up when you need us!” Internal struggles as a community can remain on the shelf for years; they don’t go out of their way to resolve things until there’s a perceived urgency. My book could remain without interference until there was some more important use for that space. And yet, people will still gather around the Table in spite of each others’ shortcomings; they’ll go out of their way since they know that connection is necessary. Such a tension between passivity and active engagement is the church’s blessing and frustration.At least I know that if I’m looking for something at CHN … it’s probably still there!?!