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

by Rachel Held Evans

Through touch, God gave us the power to injure or to heal, to wage war or to wash feet. Let us not forget the gravity of that. Let us not forget the call.

He told us about the seven “I am” statements found in John’s gospel and about how Jesus says he is the bread of life, the light of the world, the gate, the good shepherd, the vine, the way and the truth, the resurrection and the life. Brian said John’s gospel uses the word believe more than any other and that John wrote his gospel “that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” And for a moment, on this day of impossible things come true, I did. I believed more than I had in a long time.

As pink light filled the windows, we clasped one another’s hands, concluding with our favorite prayer, adapted from Alcuin of York: God, go with us. Help us to be an honor to the church. Give us the grace to follow Christ’s word, to be clear in our task and careful in our speech. Give us open hands and joyful hearts. Let Christ be on our lips. May our lives reflect a love of truth and compassion. Let no one come to us and go away sad. May we offer hope to the poor, and solace to the disheartened. Let us so walk before God’s people, that those who follow us might come into his kingdom. Let us sow living seeds, words that are quick with life, that faith may be the harvest in people’s hearts. In word and in example let your light shine in the dark like the morning star. Do not allow the wealth of the world or its enchantment flatter us into silence as to your truth. Do not permit the powerful, or judges, or our dearest friends to keep us from professing what is right. Amen.

All ministry begins at the ragged edges of our own pain. —Ian Morgan Cron

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.

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...

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.

grass

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.

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’

“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.

“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 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.

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.

As a child, I regarded communion with trepidation. Though we marked it on the first Sunday of every month, seeing the silver plates stacked on the table at the front of the sanctuary always surprised and unnerved me. Our church had no confirmation process, so the timing of one’s first communion was left to the discretion of one’s parents. I hated having nothing to do while, in the silence following Pastor George’s solemn recitation of Christ’s words from the Last Supper, I could hear everyone in the room chewing, swallowing, and gulping down their oyster crackers and grape juice in one loud cacophony of ingestion. When I finally got the nod from my mother to go ahead and partake, I was so horrified by the sound of my own loud chewing, which rang like a garbage compactor in my ears, that I took to slipping the oyster cracker under my tongue and letting it dissolve through the rest of the service so as not to disturb the entire congregation with my clamorous manducation. To this day I have to remind myself to actually eat the thing.

“We do church this way,” she says, “because people are looking for Jesus. People are looking for Jesus and thinking that just maybe they see him, but then again maybe not. But when we sit down together and break bread, we glimpse him for a moment in one another’s eyes and say to each other, ‘I see Christ at this table; I see him when we sit down together and eat.’ ”44

Something about communion triggers our memory and helps us see things as they really are. Something about communion opens our eyes to Jesus at the table.

“That’s the lady who served us communion at church this morning,” my dad said, as a woman stood in the doorway, wrapping my uncle in a hug with one arm and balancing a stack of Tupperware in the other. “And here she is, serving it again,” I replied.

when I contemplate leaving Christianity, I have wondered what I would do without communion. Certainly nonbelievers can care for one another and make one another food. But it is Christians who recognize this act as sacrament, as holy. It is Christians who believe bread can satisfy not only physical hunger, but spiritual and emotional hunger, too, and whose collective memory brings Jesus back to life in every breaking of the bread and pouring of the wine, in all the tastes, smells, and sounds God himself loves.

There are strobe lights and fog machines, skits and talent contests, rope courses and altar calls and games. Hundreds of teenagers bounce to the throbbing pulse of theologically questionable worship songs while the back-row boys look on. Ankles will be broken. Romances will be kindled. T-shirts will be shot from cannons. At some point, a guy wearing skinny jeans and a dozen rubber wristbands will jump on the stage and tell everyone in the audience to find someone they don’t know and give them a giant Jesus-hug.

You are loved, someone said. Take that and eat it.

couldn’t reconcile the experience with anything I knew or had been told,” Sara writes in her memoir, Take This Bread. “But neither could I go away: For some inexplicable reason, I wanted that bread again. I wanted it all the next day after my first communion, and the next week, and the next. It was a sensation as urgent as physical hunger, pulling me back to the table.”

Not only did she convert to Christianity, she devoted herself entirely to “a religion rooted in the most ordinary yet subversive practice: a dinner table where everyone is welcome, where the despised and outcasts are honored.”

The servant obeyed, but told his master there was still room at the table. “Then go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come,” the master said, “so that my house will be full” (Luke 14:12–23). This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.

I wound up not in what church people like to call ‘a community of believers’—which tends to be code for ‘a like-minded club’—but in something huger and wilder than I had ever expected: the suffering, fractious, and unboundaried body of Christ.”52

I don’t know exactly how Jesus is present in the bread and wine, but I believe Jesus is present, so it seems counterintuitive to tell people they have to wait and meet him someplace else before they meet him at the table. If people are hungry, let them come and eat. If they are thirsty, let them come and drink. It’s not my table anyway. It’s not my denomination’s table or my church’s table. It’s Christ’s table. Christ sends out the invitations, and if he has to run through the streets gathering up the riffraff to fill up his house, then that’s exactly what he’ll do. Who am I to try and block the door?

Evangelicalism in particular has seen a resurgence in border patrol Christianity in recent years,

They strain out the gnats in everyone else’s theology while swallowing their own camel-sized inconsistencies. They slam the door of the kingdom in people’s faces and tell them to come back when they are sober, back on their feet, Republican, Reformed, doubtless, submissive, straight.

But the gospel doesn’t need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out. It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, “Welcome! There’s bread and wine. Come eat with us and talk.” This isn’t a kingdom for the worthy; it’s a kingdom for the hungry.

The apostle Peter continued this pattern, but took it even further by daring to dine with Gentiles. As a Jew, keeping kosher was tantamount to Peter’s very faith and identity, but when following Jesus led him to the homes and tables of Gentiles, Peter had a vision in which God told him not to let rules—even biblical ones—keep him from loving his neighbor. So when Peter was invited to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, he declared: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28). Sometimes the most radical act of Christian obedience is to share a meal with someone new.

But the table can transform even our enemies into companions. The table reminds us that, as brothers and sisters adopted into God’s family and invited to God’s banquet, we’re stuck with each other; we’re family. We might as well make peace.

The church is God saying: “I’m throwing a banquet, and all these mismatched, messed-up people are invited. Here, have some wine.”

According to John’s account, Jesus resisted at first, but in an odd exchange that I suspect would make more sense if we had the benefit of observing facial expressions and tone, Jesus changed his mind. (Even the Messiah, it seems, obeys his mama.)

The “Not Catholic?” part of my brochure suggested I use this moment to “pray for the reunification of the church,” which, though I’m sure it was unintended, sounded a lot like, “You sit here and think about that schism you caused.”

“Well, I grew up evangelical, but I’ve been rethinking things lately. Our last church sort of dissolved, which was a painful experience. Now I’m not sure what I am. I guess you might say I’m searching.” Before the words left my mouth, I knew I’d just violated rule number one of conversational self-preservation: never tell a religious person you’re searching.

“Do you ever doubt?” I asked both Susan and Brother Brendan. It is a question I often ask of the devout, and I can always guess the answer within seconds of posing it. For those who have doubted, a flash of warm recognition spreads across their faces, as if they’ve just discovered we share an alma mater, a hobby, or an old friend. Those who haven’t look back at me perplexed, like I’ve begun speaking Swahili.

Christians like to claim divine protection when a long line at Starbucks miraculously saves them from the fourteen-car pileup on the interstate, or when a wildfire just misses their home to take out a dozen others, but I’m always left wondering about the victims, those whose supposed lack of faith or luck or significance puts them in the path of the tornado instead. What kind of God pulls storm clouds away from a church and pushes them toward a mobile home park? And what kind of Mother would only shield a few if her arms were wide enough to cover all?

I studied my plate, feeling both guilty for asking these questions and resentful of those who don’t. No matter where I went to church, I realized, doubt would follow, nipping at my heels. No matter what hymns I sang, what prayers I prayed, what doctrinal statements I signed, I would always feel like an outsider, a stranger.

August in Alabama isn’t something you trifle with.

It’s funny how, after all those years attending youth events with light shows and bands, after all the contemporary Christian music and contemporary Christian books, after all the updated technology and dynamic speakers and missional enterprises and relevant marketing strategies designed to make Christianity cool, all I wanted from the church when I was ready to give it up was a quiet sanctuary and some candles. All I wanted was a safe place to be. Like so many, I was in search of sanctuary.

I nearly skipped a tour of the famed Ave Maria Grotto on my last day at St. Bernard. It cost seven bucks to see and I’d already gone all Martin Luther on the gift shop, scandalized over the sale of holy water, which, when you think about it, isn’t much different than evangelicals selling Duck Dynasty–themed Bibles in their bookstores, but still . . .

Madeleine L’Engle said, “the great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”58 I think the same is true for churches. Each one stays with us, even after we’ve left, adding layer after layer to the palimpsest of our faith.

Thanks to evangelicalism, I don’t need Google to tell me that the book of Ezra follows 2 Chronicles or where to find the words love is patient, love is kind. Thanks to the emerging church, I know I’m not the only one who doubts or the only one who dreams of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Were it not for the Anglicans, I’d have never found The Book of Common Prayer or fallen in love with the Eucharist. Were it not for the Mission, I’d have never known the depth of my own resourcefulness or the importance of taking risks.

The journey comes with baggage, yes. And heartbreak. But there are also many gifts. In a sense, we’re all cobblers. We’re all a bit like Brother Joseph, piecing together ...

“I spent a lot of years journeying through a bunch of religious traditions, looking for a place where I fit. But now I feel perfectly at home here with the Friends, or in a Catholic mass, or swaying and clapping at the AME church down the road. When the Spirit lives within you, any place can become a sanctuary. You just have to listen. You just have to pay attention.”59

has become cliché to talk about faith as a journey, and yet the metaphor holds. Scripture doesn’t speak of people who found God. Scripture speaks of people who walked with God. This is a keep-moving, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, who-knows-what’s-next deal, and you never exactly arrive. I don’t know if the path’s all drawn out ahead of time, or if it corkscrews with each step like in Alice’s Wonderland, or if, as some like to say, we make the road by walking, but I believe the journey is more labyrinth than maze. No step taken in faith is wasted, not by a God who makes all things new.

We might instead think of the various Christian traditions as different facets of a diamond refracting the same light, or as workers tending to a shared garden but with unique tasks, or as a single body made of many interconnected parts (1 Corinthians 12). Our differences can be cause for celebration when we believe the same Spirit that sings through a pipe organ can sing through an electric guitar, a Gregorian chant, or a gospel choir—though perhaps not at the same time!—and that we each hear the Spirit best at a different pitch.

Jesus said his Father’s house has many rooms. In this metaphor, I like to imagine the Presbyterians hanging out in the library, the Baptists running the kitchen, the Anglicans setting the table, the Anabaptists washing feet with the hose in the backyard, the Lutherans making liturgy for the laundry, the Methodists stoking the fire in the hearth, the Catholics keeping the family history, the Pentecostals throwing open all the windows and doors to let more people in.

This is not to minimize the significance of our differences, of course. There are denominations of which I cannot in good conscience be a part because they ban women from the pulpit and gay and lesbian people from the table. Historically, churches have split over important issues like corruption, slavery, and civil rights. Doctrinal disputes may, in some cases, be negligible, but in others worth contesting. We’re a family, after all, and so we fight like one.