Jesus is our Orthodoxy

Yesterday I heard about a local pastor who spends time every week playing bingo with a group of transvestites. In the cosmic scheme of things, she is breaking down walls and smoothing their path to God. In ordinary life, she is simply offering her presence as a friend.

Her story struck me as strangely beautiful amidst my uneasy journey towards rediscovering our true identity and passion as this living entity called Church. There has been lots of unsettling research that shows that the Church by and large is simply not being transformed. Informed, yes. Deformed, all too often. Performed, on a weekly basis. Re-formed, not so much. The Emergents have had the courage to begin to look at our internal ills and to encourage a more genuine spirituality. Now because of the courageous Reveal study done by Willow Creek, Christians from more traditional churches are more willing to take a peek under the hood as well. But to be honest, most of the solutions that I have seen seem to be drawn from the same old manual. (There’s no transvestite bingo in my tribe’s manual of how to do church.)

A major block in our collective journey is our obsession with truth. I am not saying that theology is not important. But it has taken on a role that it was never meant to play – becoming the shaping system for our life together and of our very being. The word Orthodoxy originally meant “right worship”. Theology once referred to the pursuit of God. After the Reformation the meaning of orthodoxy had been reduced to “right belief” and theology became merely the pursuit of doctrinal correctness. The pursuit of right belief or right doctrine has created numerous rifts and is one of the greatest obstacles to oneness in the Body of Christ. It creates “us and them” and so has lowered our sights and limited our prophetic dreaming for the rest of the world. (Remember them?) 

We Evangelicals have created a faith of the mind. Yet, following Jesus is largely a relational matter. Sometimes I wonder if our obsession with doctrinal truth is an attempt to control the uncontrollable. As Annie Dillard says, when we go to church we should wear seat belts and crash helmets. But we simply don’t expect to encounter God.

Jesus said (among other things), “I am the Truth.” Truth is a Person. Imagine exploring and creating a catechism of right beliefs using Jesus as our only lens!

Take for example, the concept of holiness (which means set apart or according to one friend, strange.) Evangelicals talk about holy living. What did Jesus show us about what a holy God is like?

• A Holy “set apart” God leaves a privileged state and enters the world of the other. He even becomes the other. If you’re pretty sure God is Reformed, he became a dispensationalist. He became us all, on the cross.
   
• A Holy God receives the humble ministrations of the lowest of the low. He’d play bingo with any of us. You don’t have to be perfect, or even clean to touch him. 
   
• A Holy God doesn’t dwell on sin. A holy God has a far deeper, all encompassing morality that values reconciliation over condemnation.
   
• A Holy God breaks down dividing walls. Pre-milleniallists and preterists, Red Sox fans and Yankees fans, men and women, church ladies and bingo playing transvestites.
   
• A Holy God invites those who might offend the religious folks right into the sanctuary.
   
• A Holy God loves to party with his friends (did they have bingo then?)
   
• A Holy God is frustratingly unimpressed with those who think they have obtained some sort of moral superiority.
   
• A Holy God loves conversations with people. 
   
• A Holy God goes where he’s invited.

Imagine if we were to let these things inform our orthopraxy, that is our right practices. What would we look like? And when we are living out even this one thing – living as a holy God does – would we not also be living out right worship?

Right worship sometimes may mean playing bingo with the folks that the church is not quite ready to welcome. Worship happens through this holy act of friendship because when there’s less room for our self-conscious selves there’s more room for Love. Love God and love others – we can’t separate the two. I think our much of our transformation happens in the bingo hall.