Tuesday, May 31, 2011

No clever title

I'm off today for two days of clergy conference on mission. I've completed the five week Diocese of Connecticut Eastertide study on mission. I've read, in preparation for these next two days, an article in Christian Century on Gen Y, "The Church and Gen Y: Missing the signs" by Bradley N. Hill.

Through it all I can see Christianity as I have known it and been raised in it and was included in it crumbling away. In its place I see - what? A big question mark.

And I ask myself this question: What does Christianity offer the world today?

When Jesus walked this earth, he brought life to those in his time who were counted as nothing. He took outcasts and made them insiders. He took insiders and made them see what it would be like to be outsiders - the first shall be last, the last shall be first. He brought truly good news to people who were starving for a word of life from God for them, in a time when those words were only for those who were insiders.

In the "christendom" years, the end of which has already come, leaving us in limbo, the message of Christianity was if you are saved, you will go to heaven, and everyone else - especially the people you don't like - will go to hell. For a long time this was sufficient.

Now it is not. Now the old good news - be baptized and be saved from being like everyone else - is not good news. We see it for what it is - the desire to be insiders over and against those who will be cast out. This is not good news.

So the question I am left with this week is: What would be good news in this time in the life of the world?

1 comment:

Barbara said...

SOooo, we are back to your inside out orange. MY dream is that there is NO inside or outside. I don't know how we do this, I just know that is the way it has to be.