The Rehearsal
We lived almost six years in a remote first nations community and then came back to suburbia. Our discomfort surprised us. It took months to sort of fit in. Decades later, I spent 67 days cycling through NT and Queensland, finally returning to Adelaide. And for weeks struggled with my distress at the noise and, even more, the frantic hurry of city life. A friend who had walked the Camino de Santiago reported similar experience. Another long-distance cycling friend has spoken to me of the weeks after long outback rides; how the images of another existence keep surfacing into life back home, but then gradually fade.
All of these examples reflect the shift from one world to another. They witness how the place we live shapes how we experience life, leeching the colour out of other worlds, weakening their power to heal us, or indeed, slowly draining away some of their toxicity.
This is why we go to church. God doesn't need us at church; we need it, for good church is an antidote to the world in which we live. Good church is a rehearsal of real life, that alternate reality which Jesus claimed has "come near." Good church seeks to remind us what the alternate reality Jesus called "the kingdom of God" is: "Do this in remembrance of me" is the rehearsal of a compassion which cares so much for people that it will risk death.
Good church is not created by superior bands or coffee, or by the number of bums on seats, or by exciting preaching. These things can too easily not be a living out the kingdom of heaven, but a measure of our assimilation into the other kingdom: empire. Empire—what the gospels would call Caesar's realm, is our only other hope for life. Empire keeps the peace, in a way, but must always use violence to control the violence of our partial humanity. It is the way of all flesh. Jesus seeks, I believe, to show us another way; the way which seeks to step out of violence, to live without violence.
We scarcely know how to do this. It is an almost unimaginable vision. Our fear of death, our need to survive, make this alternate reality seem unreal, so sometimes we ignore it. Or, finding it so far beyond our reach, we sink into despair and disillusionment.
One reason runners and cyclists are so renewed by the rhythms and disciplines of our sport is that the rhythm and discipline takes us out of the rhythm of empire. It requires us to turn off Facebook. Pilgrimage and retreat do something of the same, as do the long hours of the artist or the artisan as they lose themselves in their art. They step a little way out of the grasp of empire.
But church, and much other religious practice, goes further. Church subverts empire at its very foundations. For empire uses the vulnerable as cannon fodder—sometimes literally. It is the vulnerable—the old, the sick, the disabled, those who are unemployed or poor, women, queer folk—it is these folk who are subject to our hate and ridicule and punishment. We tip our anger and fear upon them, and so bolster our peace and security. They are our scapegoats.
Church, the compassionate people of Jesus, sit with the vulnerable. Church welcomes the vulnerable when no one else will. Church learns how to live with those who are difficult, smelly, frightening, and frightened. Church learns how to make a safe place for those who are terrified. Sometimes church simply feeds people who have nowhere else to find food.
Church is often an elusive vision—how can a few dozen people here and there think they can change the world? It is disheartening to fail so often. It is often tiring and frightening, and sometimes dangerous. But the rehearsal of this alternate reality, the rehearsal of a liturgy which is focused upon compassion, the remembering and living out of the theory; that is, the actual doing of compassion, each of these blunt the seductions of empire. They recolour the faith. It is this rehearsal which keeps me alive.
(Andrea Prior June 2023)
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