Press On

Anxiety levels over the numerical decline and waning influence of the Church in the Western world seem at a high-water mark.

Especially in the United States, and especially within our own Episcopal Church—clergy, vestries, and dioceses are searching for solutions to reverse the trends of lower attendance, declining plate and pledge giving, and diminished political clout.

While we here in St. Paul’s and the Convocation of Episcopal Church in Europe are not immune to these concerns, we do experience them differently.

Europe is further along the “post-Christendom” continuum than the United States is, and because of that, going to church here is a more intentional—I dare say revolutionary—choice than in the parts of the Western world that still retain some vestiges of the social benefits of church membership.

If you are here today, and you come here every Sunday to be a part of this worshipping community and what God is doing among us, my guess is you have a deep conviction of how necessary this gathering is.

Those of you that wrangle children out of bed, get them dressed, and drive hours to be here—those of you that brave inconsistent public transportation—those of you who have scars from people and places that claimed to be Christian but practiced abusive forms of religion—you come here because deep down in your heart, you know that you NEED to be here.

Participation in this community has gone beyond a simple want or desire but has become a necessary part of who you are and who you are becoming.

And at the core of that journey toward our deepest identity is the conviction that Paul gives voice to in his letter to the Philippians.

That the new creation in Christ is everything.

Paul is making his case, while writing from the inside of a prison cell, that knowing and living the way of Christ as fully and as faithfully as he can has reordered his entire life.

He is trying to convince his hearers that in Christ, the exterior marks of distinction between Jew and Gentile are no barrier to full participation in shared community.

Gentiles don’t need to become circumcised to follow Christ, and Jews don’t need to be uncircumcised.

Neither does either group need to play down their cultural distinctiveness in order to belong.

The good news of God that Paul is so passionate about proclaiming is that the uniqueness of each of us and the tribes we represent are no longer barriers to relationship, but instead have become valued and necessary components of the great mosaic of the new creation that God has begun in Christ.

And in light of that gospel of liberation and reconciliation, all other pursuits seem small in comparison.

Paul says he regards the gains he had as a faithful observant zealot as rubbish compared to the power of this new creation.

He remains a faithful Jew, with all the social training and religious formation that comes along with it, but his ultimate goal is to work for a world where those not formed in the same way fully belong in the community that Christ makes possible.

Paul knows that there will be resistance to this way of being, but he is so sure of what God has done in Christ, and so sure of how his own life has been transformed as a result, that he will press on in the face of any opposition.

Not in the blind and stubborn way that arises from shallow estimation of others or out of a simple desire to resist change, Paul’s energy to press on is about being supremely loved and graciously integrated into the Body of Christ and stopping at nothing short of seeing that love and grace extended throughout all creation.

He knows he will not see it all accomplished in his lifetime, but that only pushes him to take advantage of the time he does have and help others know the same freedom he does.

Our patron saint’s legacy and example would be hard to follow if we remain planted in the kind of world where comparisons are more meaningful than companionship.

Who am I, and what can I do that could rival Paul’s effective spread of the gospel that eventually remade the Roman Empire and the whole world?

The answer is that you are a beloved member of the same Body of Christ, with access to the same infinite stores of love and the same Holy Spirit.

You are connected to Christ, Paul, an infinite cloud of witnesses, and one another in this church of St. Paul’s Within the Walls in order to bear witness together that it is THIS kind of community that heals the world.

Each one of us has been gifted by God to enrich our common witness, and the more we honor and celebrate those gifts, and show the world that our blessed differences don’t prevent community but actually enable it—the more we begin to see the measures the world uses to define us as worthless.

Rubbish and dung that we’d be better to leave behind as we journey on toward the real together.

So we press on—even knowing that we are flawed and that we fail to love and act as we wish—because Christ has made us his own and his love and grace are wider than our sins.

We press on—even when the powers seemed arrayed against us and the light of our lives seems little in comparison to the weight of suffering and discord in our world.

We press on in the journey—connecting to God and one another through prayer and working together to see the gospel vision shared on earth as we believe it to be already realized in heaven.

There is no shortage of impediments or challenges that threaten to deter us from this mission.

Personal tragedies, dwindling energy levels, competing priorities for our attention and time.

Disappointment when members of the body fail, shame when we fail others, insecurity over our role in the shared witness or in our own abilities.

Paul faced these same challenges, and generations of our forebears in the faith did the same.

They attended to these important aspects of strengthening individual and community life, asking for God’s help along the way.

But they did NOT allow these markers of our humanity, nor the fragilities associated with them to loom larger than the new creation toward which they marched.

And because they pressed on, they experienced foretastes of the fullness of the reign of God in their lifetime.

Foretastes that convinced them ever further that the sufferings of the present age were nothing in comparison to the eternal reality they knew through Christ.

Data about church attendance, our wider church’s influence, and religious and spiritual trends is worth analyzing and can be useful to help us better connect with those who believe we have nothing to offer.

But rather than making such concerns primary, and wallowing in anxiety and uncertainty, perhaps we, the convinced, might try leaning into the fullness of our call.

To press on together—supporting one another, reaching beyond the boundaries of our church, grounding ourselves ever deeper in the joy and mystery of this new community we share in Christ.

This church of St. Paul’s bears witness to how doing so leads us closer to the new creation where language, nationality, denomination, and social position do not keep us from one another, but make our proclamation of the gospel richer and wider.

Let us keep pressing on together dear friends in Christ, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,” entrusting to God our fears, failings, anxieties, and the results.

Christ will be among us as we press on, and no matter what sufferings we encounter, we will not endure them alone, but with one another and the God who keeps calling us forward.