Why The Church, The Churchy, The Theological and the Personal

Presumably, to answer, “Why the Church?” one must also answer what the purpose of the Church is.  Turns out that answer has helpfully been given us in The Book of Common Prayer: “Q.  What is the mission of the Church?  A.  The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (page 855).  Why the Church?  The Church is how all people in their diversity rediscover their unity as creatures of God whom Jesus Christ loves and died for.  That’s the churchy answer.

The more theological answer comes from the Old Testament scholar Walter Breuggemann, who IMHO has given the best justification for the worship of the Church: “This means that liturgy makes it possible for Israel in such circumstances [exile] to practice the poetic presentation of an alternative.  This liturgical activity is a stubborn refusal to accept the notion that the world is an unalterable given.  It insists that the world can be alternatively reconstructed.”*

In those two paragraphs, I’ve done exactly what one member of my parish discernment committee wished I wouldn’t do so much, quote others instead of speaking for myself.  So here goes.  When I was 17, my mother died in way that was both tragic and freakish.  My older brother continued to drown his sorrows in drugs.  My father, desperate to ease his loneliness, remarried seven months later.  To say that I felt alone in this world would be an understatement.  As we both grew older, and mellowed out in our own ways, my father and I became closer, and fully reconciled by the time he died when I was 39.

But to be honest, I have little family of shared blood in this world.  But in truth I have a huge family of those who have loved me over the years and helped me when I needed help.  That family stretches from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia to the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, and now to the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.  As my son said when he graduated from high school, at our church’s Senior Sunday, I have a family reunion every Sunday.

And since I do like to quote, forgive me one more:

‘What about us?’ said Peter.  ‘We have left everything to follow you.’  Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you: there is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father or children, or land, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive in this age a hundred times as much – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and land – and persecutions besides; and in the age to come eternal life.’ (Mark 10:28-30).

Substitute “lost” for “given up,” and you have my answer to the question: Why the Church?

*David’s Truth in Israel’s Imagination and Memory, 2d ed., Fortress Press, p.89