Rocky Road

I occasionally remark somewhat playfully (but only somewhat) to my congregation that they are saddled with quite possibly the least “Mennonite” pastor in our denomination. They usually laugh politely and hope I’ll move on. Why do I say this, you may be wondering? Well, let me count the ways.

• I have not been formed in Mennonite educational institutions (public school → secular university → interdenominational graduate school).
• I have always been uneasy with perhaps our most core theological distinctive—pacifism—an uneasiness that has been further complexified by having a soldier for a son.
• I’m mostly on board with believers’ baptism, but I get the logic of infant baptism.
• I dislike identifying myself with a movement named after a fallen human being. (At times I wonder if I would have even liked Menno Simons or the early Anabaptists… they seem a little overly-zealous and eschatologically eager.)
• I feel the pull of the whole “Let’s just try to follow Jesus’ plain teachings and not attempt to escape them via eloquent and evasive theologizing,” thing, but I also love abstract theology. And not to be irreverent, but I find Jesus’ “plain” teachings occasionally baffling and/or annoying and/or impossible. I am gravitating, as I age, toward the more robust theologies of providence and grace that I find in other corners of the Christian family.
• Entirely predictably and not at all originally given my social location, I find the liturgies, aesthetics, worship practices, and historical depth and solidity of other Christian traditions beautiful and meaningful in a way that some Mennonite worship simply isn’t. I could do with more emphasis on the Eucharist and less on the sermon. The well-trod path from low-church to high-church is one that I simultaneously groan at and am drawn to.
• I am deeply suspicious of politics, which would have probably made me a good Mennonite a few centuries ago, but weirdly now seems not to. I am not activistic enough (or in the right directions) for either progressive or conservative Mennonites.
• I don’t live as simply as I probably should.
• I don’t spend hours weeding and tilling and tending my wonderfully virtuous organic garden.
• I drive a Subaru, which might be acceptable when it comes to optics, but it uses way too much fuel (a good Mennonite would be looking into an EV by now).
• I have never sung in a choir and struggle to find my line in any song requiring four-part harmony.

It’s a wonder, as I look at this list (which could have been longer!), that my church ever hired me.

There’s a bit of a light tone to all this. But underneath it there is a tension that I suspect many twenty-first Christians feel, which is that of never really feeling like a great fit in any denomination or expression of the body of Christ. Our historical and cultural location situates us simultaneously as consumers and as choosers. We cannot wind back the clock and simply default to the “one true church” that may have existed pre-Reformation or pre-East-West schism or pre-Augustine or pre-Constantine or pre-Paul or… pick your marker for when the church went off the rails. Like it or not, to be a Christian in 2024 is to be aware of the options, as it were. To be aware that there are options and a bewildering variety of them. We cannot live not knowing that we can choose otherwise. We live knowing (or hoping?) that somewhere out there is a church that is more well-suited to our unique (so we imagine) constellation of liturgical preferences, theologies, and community practices. This makes it hard to ever feel like a great fit anywhere.

In a recent essay for Comment, Jeff Reimer describes his own search for the church that was the best fit for him. It’s called “How Not to Be a Schismatic” and is worth reading in its entirety. I suspect many will recognize their own journey with the church in the story that Reimer tells. Raised Protestant, attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, never quite managing to land anywhere comfortably. Again, it’s well-travelled terrain and he acknowledges this. He ends, as I suppose we all must, with lowered expectations:

It turns out that the most hopeful thing for wayfarers of all kinds to do might be to deflate their expectations a little. The tidier one’s story of the church is, the more likely it is that one has lost hope—whether from despair, losing sight of the destination, or from presumption, thinking one has already arrived. I don’t say this to undermine the self-understanding of any given tradition but to insist that any account of the church, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, must always in some sense be an account of a wayfaring church (even if they conceive of wayfaring differently—and they do). On a more mundane level, seeking a church that is free of all the things that one finds troubling is a futile endeavour. Want a church that confirms all your theological priors? (That’s me.) Tough shit. Want a church without kitschy art and sentimentality? Doesn’t exist. Want a church without weirdo fringe theologians who say cringey things online? Sorry. Want a church without intransigent strands of fundamentalism and bigotry? Good luck. Want a church without abuse? Get in line. Want a church without sin? Look to the eschaton, my friend.

I’m not saying heresy or abuse ought to be tolerated, or that we should do nothing to prevent them or root them out. I’m saying that any church that is mixed up in the mess and the carnage of human existence is going to be, well, mixed up in the mess and the carnage of human existence. If the terms of your commitment to and participation in the church demand the absence of those failures, then what you’ll be left with is yourself, a church of one, alone and still unhappy.

As it happens, I do not want to be left with myself. I think I would make very poor company and my church of one would be a very uninspiring one.

The only thing I would add to the story Reimer tells is to say that, in my experience, lowering my expectations of the church (and of humanity more generally) has been paired with raising my expectations of God. As my anthropology has gotten lower, my Christology has gotten higher. The God who would preside over this mess, the God who work through it and within it, the God who, in Christ would bleed and die and forgive in order to raise us up has only come to seem more astounding and praiseworthy to me. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” has come to seem among the most stunning passage in all the pages of Scripture.

Out at the jail, we’ve been talking about Peter recently. “The rock” upon whom Jesus promises to build his church. We’ve observed that Peter doesn’t always (or even often) seem particularly “rocky,” that even after Jesus’ declaration, Peter remains at times belligerent, reactionary, impulsive. And we know that he will deny Jesus at the crucial moment. Perhaps this is a metaphor for the church that would be built. It’s been an, ahem, rocky road from Peter to today. That word doesn’t just connote solidity and durability, after all, important as these are. You can stumble on a rock. You can get one stuck in your shoe. You can—God help us—throw them at your enemies. Rocks can make the terrain difficult and unpleasant. I’m straining the metaphor, almost certainly.

But even if the metaphor fails, I think the example of Peter foretells an important truth. The church is and has always been imperfect in countless ways. But it is held always and held together by Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church in all its expressions, and the Lord of all who seek to be (awkwardly) faithful within it.