Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

by Rachel Held Evans

  Ironically, the event was a success. Now Briggs hosts similar gatherings all over the country and has written a book entitled Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure.

  It’s strange that Christians so rarely talk about failure when we claim to follow a guy whose three-year ministry was cut short by his crucifixion. Stranger still is our fascination with so-called celebrity pastors whose personhood we flatten out and consume like the faces in the tabloid aisle. But as nearly every denomination in the United States faces declining membership and waning influence, Christians may need to get used to the idea of measuring significance by something other than money, fame, and power. No one ever said the fruit of the Spirit is relevance or impact or even revival. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—the sort of stuff that, let’s face it, doesn’t always sell.

  I often wonder if the role of the clergy in this age is not to dispense information or guard the prestige of their authority, but rather to go first, to volunteer the truth about their sins, their dreams, their failures, and their fears in order to free others to do the same. Such an approach may repel the masses looking for easy answers from flawless leaders, but I think it might make more disciples of Jesus, and I think it might make healthier, happier pastors. There is a difference, after all, between preaching success and preaching resurrection. Our path is the muddier one.

  It’s been three years since the Mission’s last Sunday and I’m still trying to figure out what went wrong. Was it our youth? Our lack of denominational backing? Our empty bank account? (All of the above?) I confess that when I play it all back in my mind, the whole undertaking reminds me of the old, jumpy film footage of man’s failed attempts at flight, where someone’s attached wings to a bicycle and peddled off a cliff. Any objective observer could have predicted our inevitable demise, and yet we barreled on, full of trust and hope and good intentions. I was as invested in a church as I’d ever been, and it failed. Epically.

  And yet even our unsuccessful church plant managed to produce some fruit of the Spirit along the way. We baptized, broke bread, preached the Word, and confessed our sins. We created a sanctuary where people told the truth without fear. We fed the hungry and filled out paperwork with the sick. We worked through our differences with care and grace. And we learned, perhaps the hard way, that church isn’t static. It’s not a building, or a denomination, or a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Church is a moment in time when the kingdom of God draws near, when a meal, a story, a song, an apology, and even a failure is made holy by the presence of Jesus among us and within us.

  Church was alive and well long before we came up with the words relevant and missional, and church will go on long after the grass grows through our cathedral floors. The holy Trinity doesn’t need our permission to carry on in their endlessly resourceful work of making all things new. That we are invited to catch even a glimpse of the splendor is grace. All of it, every breath and every second, is grace.

  SIXTEEN

  Feet

  If you want to be holy, be kind.

  —Frederick Buechner

  FOR AS LONG AS ANYONE COULD REMEMBER, THE CEREMONIAL foot washing had taken place at the grand Basilica of St. John Lateran as part of the Holy Thursday Mass. The pope would choose twelve priests, and in remembrance of Jesus’ act of service to his disciples, wash the priests’ feet. But in 2013, just ten days after his election, Pope Francis stunned the world and broke with tradition by traveling to a juvenile detention center outside Rome where he washed and kissed the feet of twelve prisoners, including two women and two Muslims.

  Traditionalists responded with angst to rival that of Peter, particularly over the inclusion of women, but Francis had captured the attention of the world, reminding us that when Jesus washed the feet of his friends, it was an act of humility and love directed toward ordinary people, not merely a ceremony observed by the religious elite. If washing feet was surprising then, why shouldn’t it be surprising now?

  When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he was showing them what leadership in the upside-down kingdom of God looks like. He had told them before, when they squabbled over who would be the greatest in the kingdom, that while the kings and rulers of the world lorded their authority over their subordinates, he came not to be served but to serve, and if they wanted to follow his way, then they would have to do the same.

  “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so,” Jesus told the disciples the night he washed their feet. “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:13–15).

  While Jesus calls all his followers to this style of humble leadership, most Christians hold in tension a belief in both the “priesthood of all believers” and the distinct calling of some Christians to specially ordained ministry roles. In many traditions, these roles—such as pastor, priest, deacon, and bishop—are known as holy orders, and ordination to them is considered a sacrament.

  Unfortunately, the difference between the clergy and the laity is often perceived as more vast than it is, which leads to all sorts of trouble, from abusive and authoritarian churches, to the idolization of religious leaders by their followers, to unhealthy and unhappy pastors who struggle to manage the weight of the expectations placed upon them, to Christians who miss the full depth of their own callings because they believe ministry is something other people do.

  Alexander Schmemann says, “If there are priests in the Church, if there is the priestly vocation in it, it is precisely in order to reveal to each vocation its priestly essence, to make the whole life of all men the liturgy of the Kingdom, to reveal the Church as the royal priesthood of the redeemed world.”37

  Ultimately, all Christians share the same calling. According to the apostle Peter, we are “royal priests,” invited to “show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9 NLT).

  Whenever we show others the goodness of God, whenever we follow our Teacher by imitating his posture of humble and ready service, our actions are sacred and ministerial. To be called into the priesthood, as all of us are, is to be called to a life of presence, of kindness.

  My sister is like this—present and kind. No matter where she lives or travels, no matter what her vocation or responsibilities, Amanda inhabits a place with such a joyful and attentive openness it makes everyone around her a neighbor. When she lived in the city of Nashville, she worked with women caught in generational poverty, helping them find jobs, scouring the city for child care (or providing it herself), worrying with them about their GED scores, sharing in their jokes and celebrations, heartaches and breakdowns. When she lived in India for six months, she learned to sleep without air-conditioning and eat spicy Indian food, and by the time I visited her in Hyderabad, she had picked up some Telugu and knew the names of every single child in the school for HIV-affected kids where she served. The Indian family that hosted her grew so fond of her that they stayed in touch, even calling Amanda on her wedding day. They still talk regularly, and Amanda’s been back to India three times, because for her, there’s no such thing as a short-term missions trip.

  Now she and her husband, Tim,live in Boone, North Carolina, where they both work for the humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse. They also make sure to check in on Miss Mary down the street, who has lived in the same mountain holler all her life and who gets by without electricity or living relatives, and they regularly invite people of all sorts into their home. Maybe I’m just a proud big sister, but when I think about the priesthood of all believers, I think about Amanda. And I think about Brian and Carrie Ward. I think about Pastor Doug and Pastor George. I think about Dan and Chris and Tiffany, and sometimes I even think of me.

  “To be a priest,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “is to know that things are not as they should be
and yet to care for them the way they are.”38

  Such a purpose calls us far beyond our natural postures. It means surrendering all cynicism and pride to take up the basin and towel.

  Just like my sister and the pope.

  PART IV

  Communion

  SEVENTEEN

  Bread

  Give us each day our daily bread.

  —Luke 11:3

  AFTER THE RAIN, THE FARMER TILLED THE SOIL. ONE hand gripped the goad and the other steadied the plow as his oxen lumbered beneath the sun, furrowing the landscape with muddy ripples, brown as the wrinkles around his eyes. In autumn, hope tasted like sweat and smelled of ox and earth and manure. An experienced farmer kept his eyes on the heaving shoulders of the beasts ahead and used his weight to nudge the plowshare down a steady path. No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back, the Teacher said, is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

  After the tilling, the sower scattered seeds. Some seeds fell on rocky soil to be scorched by the sun, others fell on thorny soil to be choked out by the weeds, and still others were carried off by the wind to be eaten up by birds. But most sunk into the good soil where, in a tomb of darkness, they swelled and split open before breaking through the surface with a garish flash of green. This is what the kingdom of God is like, the Teacher said. The seed sprouts and grows when the sower isn’t watching.

  After the stalks grew tall and the heads heavy with grain, there was singing and dancing and harvest. Bodies bent like scythes inched through the fields, gathering the wheat into sheaves. The threshing floor echoed with the rhythmic pounding of flails as women with arms as strong as olive tree trunks loosened the grain from the chaff. At dusk, the children gathered to watch the winnowing forks pitch the last bit of chaff into the wind and send the rest of the bounty back to the earth like rain. The harvest is plentiful, the Teacher said, but the workers are few.

  After the reaping, the hand mills hummed. This, too, was women’s work—grinding grain into flour. Mother and daughter sat at the mill, spinning the handstone over the quern. It took all morning, but by noon a layer of white powder tickled their noses and speckled their hair. The mother teased the daughter about growing old in a day. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast, the Teacher said, that a woman took and mixed into sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.

  Sixty pounds of flour! Imagine that.

  After mixing the flour with water, the baker kneaded the dough. Her hands, calloused from the millstone grip and spotted from the sun, moved with quick precision as she folded and pressed and turned, folded and pressed and turned, folded and pressed and turned. Her surface was a simple wooden trough, her kitchen a modest courtyard, lit by the embers of a dying fire. Most of the time she added yeast and then waited for the dough to rise, but not on the days when her people remembered how liberation once caught them by surprise. On those days she sent it straight to the baking pan and watched until the top browned. The scent made her stomach rumble. I am the bread of life, the Teacher said. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry.

  What did he mean?

  After the sun set, the servant brought up the bread. In one hand he balanced the loaves and the olive oil, in the other he carried a lamp to light his way up the stone stairs. His footsteps echoed too loudly, he thought, slowing down his pace. The mysterious company, once raucous with stories and songs, had quieted to sibilant whispers. Something about a betrayal. Something about a death. He kept his eyes on the floor as he approached the crowded table. But the Teacher thanked him before he took the bread and, like thousands of men in Jerusalem that night, lifted his eyes and said, Blessed are thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.

  The HaMotzi—the blessing of the bread and its journey from earth to table. The Greeks called this kind of thanksgiving eucharisteo.

  After he blessed the bread, the Teacher broke it and said, This is my body, given for you. Take it. Eat it. Don’t ever forget.

  After he blessed the wine, the Teacher poured it and said, This is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Take it. Drink it. Don’t ever forget.

  After he left, the Teacher was arrested. After he was arrested, the Teacher was crucified. And after he was crucified, the Teacher was seen alive. They knew him by how he broke the bread.

  After the Upper Room meal, the dog smelled the crumbs. His nose flared and his mouth watered as he scrambled up the stairs, paws scratching against the stone in frenzied patter. Soon he’d be chased out with a shout and a broom, but for a dog as skinny as he, even a few morsels would do. With animal abandon, he lapped up the spoils from under the table—some bread crumbs, a date, a scrap of fish, a few olives, and a taste of honey—before his ears perked to the far-off sound of another HaMotzi.

  I am the living bread that came down from heaven, the Teacher said. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Meal

  A family is a group of people who eat the same thing for dinner.

  —Nora Ephron

  THE FIRST THING THE WORLD KNEW ABOUT CHRISTIANS was that they ate together.

  At the beginning of each week they gathered—rich and poor, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles, women and men—to celebrate the day the whole world changed, to toast to resurrection. While each community worshipped a bit differently, it appears most practiced communion by enjoying a full meal together, with special prayers of thanksgiving, or eucharisteo, for the bread and wine.39 They remembered Jesus with food, stories, laughter, tears, debate, discussion, and cleanup. They thanked God not only for the bread that came from the earth, but also for the Bread that came from heaven to nourish the whole world. According to church historians, the focus of these early communion services was not on Jesus’ death, but rather on Jesus’ friendship, his presence made palpable among his followers by the tastes, sounds, and smells he loved.

  “With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal,” writes Barbara Brown Taylor, “[Jesus] did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do—specific ways of being together in their bodies—that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself . . . ‘Do this,’ he said—not believe this but do this—‘in remembrance of me.’ ”40

  So they did.

  “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching,” wrote Luke, “and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer . . . All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need . . . They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God” (Acts 2:42–47).

  They were a ragtag bunch, for sure. The pagan writer Celsus dismissed Christianity as a silly religion, fit only for the uneducated, slaves, and women.41 Indeed, sociological studies indicate most of the people drawn to the church in its first three centuries came from the lower echelons of society. Women, especially widows, found a home and occupation within the church, leading some to criticize it as too “effeminized” (proof that some things never change). There were strange rumors, too, rumors about purported love feasts that involved eating flesh and drinking blood—a mystery some said explained why Christians were so quick to take in orphans! But the religion of women and slaves continued to grow, even after its adherents were thrown to beasts in the arenas. In fact, persecution only seemed to grow it more.

  Their unity wasn’t always perfect, of course. In one of his letters, the apostle Paul offered a rather scathing correction to Christians in the church at Corinth who were apparently holding private, drunken feasts for the wealthy while the poor in their community went hungry. “My brothers and sisters,” he pleaded, “when you gather to eat, you should all eat together” (1 Corinthians 11:33). The Didache, or Teachings of the Twelve Apostles, instructs Christians to settle their quarrels with one
another before partaking of the meal. In some communities, the custom arose to send a piece of bread from the communion service at the bishop’s church to other area churches to be added to the meal as a symbol of the bond of unity between all Christians.

  Things changed when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the religion of the state and infused the Eucharist with imperial pomp and elements of pagan ceremony. Prayers grew more stylized and fixed. Solemn chants replaced the familiar hymns, vestured processions the mealtime banter. Christians no longer gathered around crowded tables but instead stood before altars of stone over which only priests could preside.42 It was before the altar at Hagia Sophia that a cardinal from Rome read the sentence of excommunication that split in two the eastern and western churches. By the Middle Ages, many laypeople received the Eucharist only once a year.

  Things changed again amidst the tumult of the Protestant Reformation. Some radical reformers dispensed with formal communion altogether and returned to the shared meals. Others kept elements of the tradition but shifted the focus of Sunday worship to preaching and teaching. Many rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (that the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ in communion), but could not agree on the exact manner of Christ’s presence in the sacrament. Wars were fought and books were burned. You know how it goes.

  Today the meal is known by many names—mass, holy communion, the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper—and is practiced in a myriad of ways. For some it marks the climax of every weekly gathering, for others it is observed just a few times a year. The bread might come as a hot loaf straight out of the oven, an oyster cracker nestled in the palm, or a thin wafer consecrated by a priest and placed directly on the tongue. The wine may be served from an ornamental chalice, a bottle passed around the table, or in rings of little plastic cups. (The wine may, in fact, be grape juice.)