A Finger Pointing towards the Moon

Why should we bother with church? Why does a Christian or other spiritually-minded person, need to show up to a certain place, at certain times, with other people? In this fragmented, secular, post-post-modern world, what is the point of church? To borrow a metaphor from the Buddhists, the church is a finger pointing to the moon.  The mission of the church is to point us towards God.  The church isn’t God, it is merely the finger pointing towards the mystery.  It’s a crooked, wayward finger, that often strays off course and requires critical redirection.  It’s a flawed, mistaken, human finger, pointing at the inexplicable.  But, it’s all we’ve got to proclaim the scandalous, surprising, saving grace and love of Jesus Christ, the gospel of a God of losers, of outcasts, of sacrifice.  Any other mission:  loving our neighbors, serving the needy, establishing social justice, is a direct result of the mysterious event of Christ’s death and resurrection, the event that happened and is happening in our own hearts, every moment.

The church is where I go to say, “Yes, me too” to the mystery.  It is where I bask in the grief of Good Friday, venerating the rupture of meaning in the world that echoes the rupture of meaning in my own life.  It is where I go to hear the incredible scandal of the resurrection that turned the world upside down.  It is where I go when I feel the embrace of God, or when I am wrestling with God.  It is where others look me in the eyes and shake my hand and say, “Peace be with you.”  It is where I take my hungry hands and desperate spirit to the altar, to be fed with spiritual food in the sacrament of the body and blood.  It is where we are present to and live within the mystery of a God who loved the world so much that he gave himself to it.

Recently, I’ve had a few “god-filled moments”.  Moments where the REALness of reality ruptured my perception and cut me open.  Moments that were indubitably true and inexplicably mysterious.  Moments that seemed either crazy, or made everything besides them seem crazy.  Moments when all my pretensions fell away.  I saw how I pose and posture, how I strive for certain praise, how I preen and practice.  Grace laid me low and naked in the eyes of God.  I couldn’t promise to do it any better, for any attempt to love or serve felt like it was loving and serving my own purposes.  In that moment, I lie there, stricken and paralyzed. Helpless, I knelt and said the confession, “God, I have not loved you with my whole heart.  I have not loved my neighbors as myself.  I am truly sorry and I humbly confess.”  I didn’t hold hope of absolution, for I was in the desert without an oasis.  I had the incredible gift of sight, of seeing myself clearly for a moment, and it was terrifying.  Christ that brought me to that understanding; Christ ripped the scales from my eyes.  In this moment, Christ did not heal me, Christ wounded me.  Christ did not comfort me; he challenged me.  Christ did not prop me up; Christ ripped away the crutch so I fell flat.

When Christ ripped away my crutch, I lay flat and waited on Christ, in the church.  When I shared this overwhelmingly mysterious and emotional experience with my priest, he said, “Yep. God will do that.”  The church is where bring our questions and our despair to contemplate the finger pointing to the moon.  As we live in the church, we shouldn't find the answers, we should find new questions.  Any answers that the flawed, human church could offer would fall woefully short of the reality of God.   The church should be structured not to give us quick comfort, but to challenge us into greater love.  Any quick and easy comfort would only anesthetize ourselves to the pain in the world and isolate us behind the church walls.  The way out of despair is through love, love of the world in the midst of our pain, living through the sadness until the sadness disintegrates.

The world is weird and wonderful.  God is strange and terrifying.  We want to look to the church for answers, but in reality, the church should raise questions and criticism:  about God, about the world, about ourselves, and about the Church.  It should rock us from our foundations, shake us out of our comfort, and attack our presuppositions.  The church of humankind is too flawed, too myopic, and too human to give any real answers.  Let’s not even pretend to give answers.  Let’s just sit together in contemplation, in communion, in broken-down wonder at the mystery, and point our crooked, wayward fingers towards the moon.