Poor Pope Francis … yes, I am going to talk about him again. So much is being laid on his 76 year old shoulders. Will he save the church? Is he different enough? Is he too conservative or his he open-minded enough? Will he finally address the sexual abuse problems? As if saving the church is his responsibility.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the study we are doing on the Fridays during Lent about the unfolding faith called Emergence Christianity. Phyllis Tickle says we are passing through a “hinge of history” and everything is changing and with it the church and indeed the Christian Faith. In our group we have been thinking a lot about what has changed in the last few decades in terms of our apporach, not only to church but to the living of life. Today we were reminded of some of the changes in medical science and reserach alone. The use of drugs, bio-engineering, end of life issues are but a few of the many ethical and spiritual topics that we are confronted with both in our culture and in our religion.
In her lecture Tickle quotes the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. He says, “We are not here to serve or to save a church or an institution, but to serve the Kingdom of God in this strange and pivotal time of ours in which, behold, “God is doing a new thing among us.”
It is a pivotal time in so many ways. It is no one’s job to ‘save the church’. It is everyone’s job to live into the amazing new thing that God is doing in our midst.
