Jesse A. Schroeder

I've been trying to keep up with reading Henri Nouwen's daily devotional book, Bread for the Journey. The readings are short, poignant, and often connect with each other from day to day. Sometimes then I read several entries at once because they flow together easily. Today I found myself reflecting on the Church, and I thought I would share Nouwen's words (added emphasis mine):

"Our faith in God who sent his Son to become God-with-us and who, with his Son, sent his Spirit to become God-within-us cannot be real without our faith in the Church. The Church is that unlikely body of people through whom God chooses to reveal God's love for us. Just as it seems unlikely to us that God chose to become human in a young girl living in a small, not very respected town in the Middle East nearly two thousand years ago, it seems unlikely that God chose to continue his work of salvation in a community of people constantly torn apart by arguments, prejudices, authority conflicts, and power games.

Still, believing in Jesus and believing in teh Church are two sides of one faith. It is unlikely but divine!

Over the centuries the CHurch has doen enough to make any critical person want to leave it. Its history of violent crusades, pogroms, power struggles, oppresion, excommunications, executions, manipulation of people and ideas, and constantly recurring divisions is there for everyone to see and be appalled by.

Can we believe that this is the same Church that carries in its center the Word of God and the sacraments of God's healing love? Can we trust that in the midst of all its human brokennes the Church presents the broken body of Christ to the world as food for eternal life? Can we acknowledge that where sin is abundant grace is superabundant, and that where promises are borken over and over again God's promise stands unshaken? To believe is to answer yes to these questions.

The Church is a very human organization but also the garden of God's grace. It is a place where great sanctity keeps blooming. Saints are people who make the living Christ visible to us in a special way. Some saints have given their lives in the service of Christ and his Church; others have spoken and written words that keep nurturing us; some have lived heroically in difficult situations; others have remained hidden in quiet lives of prayer and meditation; some were prophetic voices calling for renewal; others were spiritual strategists setting up large organizations or networks of people; some were heatlhy and storong; others were quite sick, and often anxious and insecure.

But all of them in their own ways lived in the Church as in a garder where they heard the voice calling them the Beloved and where they found the courage to make Jesus the center of their lives."

I often struggle with the church (visible, lower-case "c"), but Nouwen's words remind me that my faith in Jesus is also intimately connected to faith in the Church (invisible but also visible, upper-case "C"). That means that my faith is also in real people who I have to interact with every day - and that might be the hardest faith to have! Maybe that is why so many people rejected Jesus, even though they saw him face to face. When I look into the faces and the lives of the people who are in the churches around us, I struggle to have faith.

But I pray that the last words of the quote above would describe me - someone who has heard the voice fo God calling me Beloved, and finding the courage to make Jesus the center of my life. And therefore, I believe in this very unlikely, but very divine thing we call "The Church."