This past weekend I was in Fort Worth and Dallas to lead a seminar and a workshop, each of which focused on what it means to be "church" in the 21st century and how we might redefine our identity and purpose for this "postmodern" era in which we live.
During the workshop at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas (which is a dynamic and faithful congregation!), I was speaking in the morning about the paradoxes of the culture in which we live. One paradox is that people today feel both empowered and powerless at the same time. We feel empowered because, even as individuals, technology allows us to reach out and influence the world in which we live in ways that we could not have imagined 10-15 years ago. We feel powerless because for all that we can do many of the challenges of our age seem unresolvable. For example, I can change all of the light bulbs in my house to be more energy efficient (thus feeling empowered), but global warming does not appear to be getting any better. In fact, it appears to be getting worse. This disconnect between my actions and the results can easily bring people to a place of despair.
During a break in the morning, a woman who is a member of Transfiguration challenged me on this point. She said, "But our actions do make a difference!" Well, of course, she's right. But the paradox I describe is also right. How can we both be right? Simply put, she is a faithful Christian who participates in a community that proclaims that our actions are a part of a larger purpose, a purpose which God will bring about, even if not in our time and even if we cannot see the results. What she was describing was the perspective of a person who belongs to a faith community. What I was describing is the attitude of someone who does not.
Her comment revealed an important truth about the power of a faith community to shape us. In the context of a community, our actions can lead us to an attitude of hope. Without a faith community, it is much easier to adopt an attitude of despair.
This morning I was reading an excerpt from an interview with Henri Nouwen from 1996. Nouwen said this:
"If you live with hope, you can live very much in the present because you can nurture the footprints of God in your hearts and life. You already have a sense of what is to come. And the whole of the spiritual life is saying that God is right with us, right now. So that we can wait for his coming, and this waiting is a waiting in hope. But because we wait with hope we know that what we are waiting for is already here. We have to nurture that. Here and now matters because God is a God of the present. And God is a God of the present because he is a God of eternity."
We have to nurture this. As a Christian people, as the Church, we need to nurture this attitude of hope so that the world does not fall into despair. We need to proclaim and invite people to participate with us in the world, not to strengthen our pledge base but to shine the light of Christ and nurture an attitude of hope.
Now, there's a sense of purpose!
