Institutions, Communion, and Community

Doug Ottati, my very favorite professor from seminary, said on a number of occasions that all the salvific activity of God, the entire Jesus event, was about "true communion with God in true community with others." In other words, it is about relationship in cruciform shape. It's not just about me and God, and it's not just about getting along with others. Jesus' life, death, and resurrection means to create a transformed relationship with God within a transformed community of relationships.

This relational activity on God's part certainly has substance and content. There are standards of behavior, and there are calls to right living. But these are invitations to move toward something new and wonderful, not boundaries that declare who's in and who's out.

This boundary issue is on display in today's gospel. Jesus, as happens so regularly in the gospels, is enmeshed in conflict with religious authorities.  It is a recurring theme: Jesus is rejected by the good, religious folk of his day but very much at home with sinners and outcasts. And it seems likely that Jesus' focus on relationship is at the heart of this.

Religions inevitably acquire institutional components and functions. This is not entirely bad, and it is necessary to some degree. It is nearly impossible for groups larger than just a few people to function without some sort of organization, some sort of institutional structure.  But it is very difficult for institutions to nurture relationships. Relationships often seem threaten to institutions for they easily subvert institutional boundaries.

On some level, most congregations seem to sense this. The tendency for churches to speak of themselves as families points to it, although this family is often more dream or illusion than reality. I've seen a number of congregations that view having a single worship service as a measure of all being one big family or community.  But having 200 people all in one service doesn't make them family, doesn't put them in relationship with one another. On more than one occasion I've been in discussions with church leaders who have just declared, "We're really a family; we all know one another" only to realize they don't recognize any of several names put before them to serve on a church committee.

I think that congregations need constantly to reflect on the degree to which the institutional overwhelms the relational. Jesus' own encounter with the good, religious folk of his day should be a constant reminder that well-intended, sincere guardians of religious institutions can have more difficulty recognizing God in their midst than sinners and outcasts. This tragic tendency begs religious institutions to repeatedly ask themselves, "Are all our actions serving the goal of true communion with God in true community with others?"

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