Re-opening the Church

The meme world maintains that the Church is never closed. The building is closed. The ministry continues. These nice sentiments aside, we know our church closed, temporarily. Many ministries were suspended. We know the virtual worship services were not the same. The usual worshiping community did not all log on at the same time. We want to see the church re-opening. The central question for all of us is this. Are we re-opening the same Church?

What Was Our Church Like Before?

Were we really being the Church before it closed due to the pandemic? Your church may have been a friendly place. It may have been an attractive group of people to whom others were drawn. Your church may have been involved in many different ministries that were crucial to the community. Still, for many people inside and outside the congregation there was something missing. Should anything have been missing?

I attend a good church. It is a small worshiping community. We share a lot as a group. During the passing of the peace, we greet each other with holy hugs. Before the building closed, we stopped hugging and touched elbows. We smiled and chuckled about it. Many of the attributes we would put on a checklist for the church were done. We served the community, were open to the community, and were loving to each other. What was missing?

Religious Angst

Perhaps nothing was missing. We only felt like something was missing. If we did then we not only felt something was missing, we felt guilty about it. American Christians place a lot of emphasis on how we feel individually. We often equate busy-ness with godliness. The message that most lay members of congregations believe they hear from their pastor is that they are not doing enough. Many of the pastors have unwittingly done this. Others (and here I point to me), gave sermons meant to motivate that only brought guilt.

The religious angst is related to a spiritual condition called acedia. When people suffer from acedia, they feel lethargic and sometimes apathetic spiritually. The term originates in an ancient description of the feeling one gets in the middle of the afternoon when most people need either a nap or some sort of “pick- me-up.” Acedia is a loss of connection to the transcendent. Religious angst is feeling the loss of connection to the divine. Will re-opening the churches help that?

What We Want To Believe

Recently I read comparative definitions of Humanism and Progressive Christianity. Humanists believe that love should be the guiding force in human society. Progressive Christians know that love is the guiding force of the moral universe. What we want to believe matters. Human beings act on their beliefs. We develop our moral compass on what we believe. If we are honest these choices are based on the desire to believe what we do matters.

The religious angst we feel, the missing part of spiritual life, is because we forgot this point. The purpose of all we do as believers living, working, and worshiping together is to glorify God. Bringing glory to God involves all the living, working, and worshiping. It also means our spiritual development individually is involved. We become responsible for maintaining and enhancing the Good. It is scary. We are called to seek the Good for all even when doing so is in conflict with what the rest of the world wants. Are we re-opening the churches to do that?

Being At Peace

It is about you. And me. And them.

God gives grace. Whatever we need or think we need is part of divine grace. We may be working our hind ends off to feed, clothe, and shelter our selves and families. We are still to regard it all as grace. Love is behind this grace. We each have whatever grace we need to live life. It allows us be grateful and serene. If any thing is missing in our spiritual lives it is this understanding of life.

We will soon re-open the churches. It is going to require a lot of creative thinking and effort. We are going to rely heavily on grace. Are we ready to seek peace in the re-opened church? Then now is the time to prepare. Let go of the feeling that something is missing. What’s missing is the knowledge that we have the grace we need for life. We may never fully realize the Good in this life. We will be able to say we did our best to love.