Shake the dust off
“And if anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake the dust from your feet when you leave that house or town.” (Jesus, the Gospel according to St. Matthew).
If we were to take a survey of Western Christians on what they feel is the main problem facing the church today, the answers, though varied, would probably point mostly in the direction of declining church attendance. If you are one of the tens and tens of avid readers of my tri-yearly “By the Way” articles, then you will undoubtedly recall that I actually wrote on this topic about a year ago. Not much has really changed in the state of the institutional church since then, but this week’s Gospel text has inspired me to write some more about it anyway.
The more I ponder the problem of declining church attendance, however, the less I buy in to the narrative that declining church attendance is actually the problem in Western Christianity. If I were to characterize it as anything, I would say it is more of a symptom, or perhaps an outward manifestation, of a much deeper problem. The deeper problem, though, is difficult to put into words because we are now talking about the faith life of each individual human being, thus it is a problem that we are not in the least equipped to take on ourselves. The good news, I am pleased to report, is that Jesus does not expect us to take it on.
This is not to say that we have no role at all to play in the building of God’s kingdom on earth — we certainly do. The time has come, however, for us to recognize that our focus on attendance numbers as a measure of a church’s success is neither helpful, nor is it particularly biblical. We are not mandated by Jesus to simply fill church buildings, nor has he set a certain church attendance quota that each of us is expected to fill. His concern in sending us into the world is not about church numbers, but is rather about the faith of each individual child of God.
Our task then, according to Jesus, is to take the Gospel message out into a broken and hurting world; to allow his light to shine through us and to illuminate the darkness. The problem we run into, of course, is that not everyone is eager to follow the light of Christ. Not everyone wants to accept the free gift of grace through their own Godgiven faith. So the question becomes: What then? What do we do when someone is resistant, or indifferent, or even openly hostile to the Gospel? Well, I actually opened the article with Jesus’ answer: We shake the dust off our feet, we move on, and we pray for God’s continued presence in their lives.
To put it another way, it is not our job to change the hearts and minds of the people that we share the Gospel with. It is not our responsibility to get them to recognize the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives and to respond to it. It is not up to us to use any means necessary to get them to attend church. We could say, in fact, that Jesus has once again taken a burdensome yolk off of our shoulders and has put it squarely on his. We need only to take note that the yolk is no longer there. In fact, Jesus never put it there in the first place.
What a relief that is. What a relief it is that we are not tasked with trying to outentertain the world in order to attract people into the pews. What a relief it is that we do not have to bow to the sociopolitical pressures of the dominate culture in order to pursue the futile goal of making the church “relevant” to society. What a relief it is that God does not make us responsible for the state of someone else’s faith; it is a burden that we simply cannot bear.
But what about the empty church buildings? Church attendance, while vitally important to the Christian life, is not an end in itself. It is rather the natural activity of someone who has a genuine desire to express their gratitude for what Jesus has done for them. It is the natural activity of those who desire to take part in the Holy Sacraments among their fellow believers. It is the natural activity for those who arehungry for the Gospel message. Church attendance will mean nothing to those who feel that they have little use for suchthings, so no amount of extra-biblical enticements will make disciples of them anyway.
To be clear, none of this means that those who reject their own faith are beyond hope. Far from it. They are made in the image and likeness of God, and Jesus loves them every bit as much as he loves the faithful; he will never give up on them, and he will never abandon them. So, shake the dust off, step aside, and let Jesus do what Jesus does. Amen. Rev. Pastor Shane Hein, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Medicine Hat