As I go about the daily business of being a priest, I quite often have the chance to meet and talk to people who don’t usually go to Church. That gives me the opportunity to find out both what they think about the Church and the Christian faith and also what some of the prevailing attitudes towards the Church and the Christian faith are in society generally. Perhaps one of the most surprising things about this is that I never have to bring the subject up. Invariably, it’s the people I’m speaking to who want to talk about the Church and the faith.
Usually these conversations start in one of two ways. Sometimes they start when the person I’m speaking to tells me that they used to go to Church. People who start the conversation in this way usually then go on to tell me what the Christian faith is all about and they often end when I tell them that being a Christian is about a bit more than they’re saying it is. (These are the people who often use that old chestnut ‘You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian’ which they often do to end the conversation). Or the conversations start when people ask how things are in the church? By that, people almost inevitably mean how many people are going to a particular church. When I tell them, I usually get a response that goes something along the lines of how much the world has changed and quite often something about how the Church needs to change its ideas and ways to fit in with the world. Another thing people who start conversations in this way often say is how many other things people can do on Sundays now that they couldn’t do in years gone by when going to Church was pretty much all you could do on Sundays. The implication being, it seems, that people only ever went to Church because there was nothing else they could do on Sundays.
I know, that in the vast majority of cases, the people I have these conversations with are very well intentioned. Occasionally I do come across people who have some kind of issue with the Church and who want to have a bit of a rant and rave at a vicar about it, but those people are few, and far between. Some people who tell me what they think being a Christian is all about are perhaps trying to excuse the fact that they don’t come to Church, or don’t come anymore, by saying that they’re good, nice people, nonetheless. But most people I have these conversations with, I’m sure, mean well and are perhaps even trying to be helpful. But, in the vast majority of cases, they’re also quite wrong in much of what they say.
One way in which people get things wrong is in believing, as many seem to do, that being a Christian is about having good morals, about doing right, doing good, and, as many also say, about being nice. But what are good morals? What is right? What is good? What does being nice entail? The problem with trying to express the Christian faith, and especially the Christian life, in these terms is that they’re far too subjective to be of any use at all. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.
At the moment, the coronavirus pandemic has been ousted from the news headlines by events in Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban. From our western, democratic and at least nominally Christian outlook, the Taliban are seen as wrong, bad, perhaps immoral, and certainly not very nice. But I’m equally sure that to the Taliban and people of a similar outlook to them, it’s us in the west who are wrong, bad, immoral and not nice. And if that example is too extreme, then simply look at it this way: if we were to come across anyone doing something that we thought was immoral, or wrong, or bad, or just not very nice, and especially if what was happening was hurtful and causing harm to someone else, we would probably think the moral, right, good and nice thing to do would be to stop what was going on. Those we were looking to help or protect would probably agree, but would those whose actions we’d interfered with or stopped agree? I’m sure they wouldn’t and that they’d rather see us as interfering busybodies, at least, and to them we’d be the ones who were in the wrong and they’d hardly be likely to regard us as nice people.
As the saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and so morality, right and wrong, good and bad and perhaps especially niceness, are far too subjective to be the basis of faith. Those things are far too closely linked to the society we live in, the way we were brought up and the people we associate with to be of any use to us in describing how to live as Christians. In fact, being a Christian, living out the Christian faith, is about one thing and one thing alone; it’s about following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. And if you think that’s all about being moral, right, good and nice, then just look at a crucifix. The priests, Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day sincerely believed themselves to be moral, right, good, and probably very nice people too. So if you’re ever tempted to think that being a Christian is about these things, look at a crucifix and see just what moral, right, good, nice people can actually be, and do.
Another way in which I think people get what they say and think about the Church wrong is in attributing the low number of people who go to Church nowadays, to the fact that there is much more to do on Sunday now than there used to be in the past. There’s no doubting that the world has changed nor that, as part of that change, people can do much more on Sundays now than they could in years gone by. But whilst that has had a negative impact on Church attendance, I don’t think that’s all there is to it. The world has changed but so has people’s attitude to life, and I think that has had just as much, and perhaps even more impact on Church attendances than the increase in what we can now do on Sundays.
When I took some time out from full-time ministry and returned to the secular workplace, one thing I found very noticeable, and very different, about the workplace to that I’d known before I was ordained, was the change in people’s attitude to being told what to do. I was very surprised at the number of people, especially younger people, though by no means only younger people, in the workplace there were who seemed to think that they could do what they wanted to do, when they wanted to do it, that they didn’t have to do anything they didn’t want to do, and that no one could make them do anything they didn’t want to do. Again, this is something I’ve also picked up on in conversations I’ve had with people, especially people in supervisory or managerial roles. So it would seem that this is a prevalent attitude, perhaps especially amongst younger people, in society generally. And it’s an attitude that spells trouble for the Church.
I’ve already mentioned that to be a Christian is about following the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. But the two things we need to do that are obedience and discipline. To put it very bluntly, we need to do as we’re told, and we need to do as we’re told even when we don’t want to. In other words, to be Christians, we need two attributes that seem to be in very short supply in our society. And if this is a problem that’s particularly prevalent amongst younger members of our society, it’s a very big one for the Church because it’s amongst the young that we need to find our future congregations.
I think we all accept that to attract new, younger people into the Church, we probably need to change some of the things we do so that younger people will want to come to Church.
But what we can’t do, and must never do, is change what we teach and that includes the need for Christians to have obedience and discipline.
The Christian life isn’t an easy one, but Jesus never said it was. This morning’s Gospel is an example of Jesus teaching his followers something that was hard for them to accept. It was so difficult in fact, that many of them couldn’t accept it and stopped following him. Reading between the lines of this Gospel story, it seems that Jesus may have thought that everyone was going to desert him on account of what he was teaching because he asked the twelve if they wanted to leave him too. But, as Peter said,
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
And that, I think sums it up in a nutshell; if we don’t follow Jesus, to whom shall we go? He has the words of eternal life and so we have to follow him no matter how difficult what he asks us to do might be. And so, whatever we change in and about the Church in an attempt to fit in with the world and attract new, younger people into the Church, we cannot and must not change Jesus’ words. We cannot and must not change his teachings to make them easier to follow. And if what the world, or at least our part of the world, our society, or any individual in our society thinks is moral, right, good and nice doesn’t comply with Jesus’ teaching then we’ll just have to let world and society and those individuals make of that what they will.
Neither the world, nor anyone who follows what the world says has the words of eternal life, but Jesus does. So let’s have the obedience and discipline to follow him, no matter how difficult that might be and no matter how much we’d rather follow the world. And let’s make sure too, that we tell people that this is what being a Christian means. Because if we don’t, we’re leading them astray and away from the words and path of eternal life and, however nice and easy that may be in worldly terms, it is not the moral, right, good, or nice thing to do in Christian terms.
Amen.
The Propers for the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 