Christianity began as a religion of letting go. So much so, that it didn't even
have the name Christianity. Those brave souls who made up this strange
group were instead called People of the Way. They had no name, no God
tags, you might say. As People of the Way, they could never be established,
they were on the move. Like the one they followed, they had nowhere to lay
their heads. They lived a liminal existence. They were in the world but not of
it.
But somehow, imperceptibly, insidiously, the church was tempted to get a
name for itself. It gained a certain status. It found it had an increasing place
in the grand scheme of things. The church which had held all things in
common now had treasures of its own. The church which originally found its
strength in weakness now had a weakness for power. Slowly but surely, the
church had moved from a religion of letting go to a religion of holding on.
And I wonder whether we have, at least in the West, now come full circle. I
wonder, in the language of the writer of Ecclesiastes, whether we have had
our time of holding on - our time of embracing those things which we
believed brought security and status - and we are now on the cusp of letting
go again. Such a letting go doesn't mean, as some would suggest,
jettisoning our traditions, liturgies or structures. That misses the point and
risks hardening the arteries once again.
No, it means letting go of our very selves.
How do we do that? We open ourselves to others. And that starts in our
dealings with one another. At the height of the church's letting go, the
prevailing cry of those who came across these strange People of the Way
was, in the words of Tertullian, 'See how they love one another'.
It is so easy for us to become preoccupied that we end up not being able to
see the wood for the trees because it seems to me the principle of letting go
includes letting go of our own pet projects; well-meaning agendas; well-
crafted, or not so well crafted, sermons. Of anything and everything that
would constitute what we assume the church ought to look like, which as
often as not is simply a church made in our own image. We must avoid
partisan piety.
So the question for us is, 'What are you prepared to let go of?' What are you
today prepared to sacrifice for the sake of somebody else?
The church makes a big mistake when its primary public posture is to protect
itself and its own interests. It's interesting that the definition of a pioneer is a
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