“Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.
You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.”
I have been wrestling with the state of the Church in America lately, whether it be in the blind allegiance to leaders espousing beliefs in God, while their actions are far from Him or in the hate-filled rhetoric demanding acceptance with the fear of cancellation in the backdrop. We see worship-like songs exclaimed over the leadership of this nation:
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
I have not been able to get this image out of my mind for weeks. During this time, I keep coming back to an idea that first struck me years ago. In our American Christianity, we tend to read Scripture as if we are the Israelites, God’s chosen people fighting solely for our nation's power, rather than a remnant in Babylon. We want to believe that we are David throwing our stones in faith at Goliath, and not the warriors trembling in the distance. We tend to think we are like Jesus, perfect and willing to sacrifice, rather than Peter denying Him on Good Friday. We are at a critical inflection point.
I feel that this period of tension, pandemic, and change is at the very least a test (Job 1) for the Church, and at the most a judgment (Hosea 4:1-10, Amos 5:23-24) on our uses of God as a meat shield for our own hubris. My faith continues to be tested in this time as I continually run to distractions, voices of perceived truth that are more like facets of my own confirmation bias, and vices that have gripped my soul for years.
So with this, I honestly only have one word of exhortation: Repent.
Repent of your sins. Repent of the sins of your father’s house. Repent for the ways we have run from the heart of God. Repent for our predisposition to turn the Church into a piece of weekly entertainment to experience rather than an opportunity to meet God. Repent of the cultural Christianity that we continually put forth, with our American flags waving behind men preaching sermons of comfort over those which catalyze change. Repent.
Lament for the things we have lost as a result.
In this, I am beginning to have hope again. I hope beyond the results of an election in November. I hope beyond my ability to communicate my values and beliefs. I hope beyond my failings and my inability to “get it right” despite my desires and propensity to continually fail. My hope will be in Christ, despite the days when my white-knuckling seems to keep me away from His heart. My hope will be in Christ, on the days when I feel that I have done well in God’s eyes because it still isn’t enough without Jesus. I hope because I know that each time I partake of His body and blood through the Eucharist, my sins are placed on His back so that I can be made new.
May we find our hope in Him.