2 Co 3

“A man in his mid 30s sits in a recliner in a dark room. Bursts of light from an episode of Dancing with the Stars appear on the walls and furniture. In his hand is a cold beer, and in his lap is a bag of potato chips. This man is a pastor, and he is—at this very moment—leading his flock.”[1]

That’s the beginning of an article in a recent Christian Century magazine which purports to describe a PC(USA) congregation in Toledo, Ohio, known as the Master’s Playhouse. They see themselves as part of the “submergent” church.

“When most people think of ministry, they conjure images of prayers with upraised hands, bold marches for peace with justice, a praise song to a rockin’ beat, or fiery sermons. ‘That’s just not me,’ says Michael Bunglebottom. [By the way, I did not make up that name!] ‘My congregation understands that and even appreciates it. We’re not your ordinary church.’”

Apparently not. The article says “that in most Submergent churches, worship seldom lasts longer than 15 minutes and, apart from the service, there are usually no other activities. Instead, they believe faith is lived out in the ordinary moments of life. [No argument from me on that point!] That means while Bunglebottom is watching television alone at home, eating potato chips and drinking beer, he is feeding his own soul and providing a good example for the congregation.”

This is a church that shuns the spotlight; they “don’t feel the need to show off.” The author adds, “In order to attend one of their Plays—as they call worship services—I had to be blindfolded and driven on a circuitous route through Toledo by one of [their members].” Submergent church indeed!

I posted a link to this article on facebook.com and asked others what they thought about all this. Our new minister of worship and family outreach, Tara Eastman, commented that she doesn’t “feel we are to function as a submarine—we are to be the lighthouse.” On what’s being called the emergent church, her husband Ian noted that we can’t push “style over substance. After all, people can feel just as ignored in a hip coffee shop as in a cathedral.”

I’ll admit it; I had a very hard time believing that this is a serious article. Every time I thought of Rev. Bunglebottom, the image of Homer Simpson came to mind. So I called the office of the Christian Century and asked them about it. They confirmed my suspicion by saying that the article is indeed “a spoof.” I guess it’s supposed to be a warning about embracing church fads.

This article reminds me of something I’ve mentioned from time to time, which is: it’s often better to use humor to make a point. That’s a technique I’ve attempted to employ, with mixed results.

Nonetheless, fictional he may be, there’s a quote attributed to Bunglebottom that we need to guard against practicing. It’s this: “we’re comfortable here with our close friends and family. Having strangers come into our midst would throw off the delicate balance of fellowship.”

Few of us would make such a statement, but sometimes our actions say otherwise. It’s very easy to settle for “comfortable,” to become that submergent church—to just hide our faith from the world. And we can come up with plenty of good reasons for doing so, for being Christians incognito. We can even drag God into it. “You know, we don’t go for all that showy nonsense. We’re not into self-promotion. We choose to serve God in a humble, quiet way.”

Taken by itself, that’s not a bad thing. But if we do close ourselves off from others, then we really do promote ourselves. We promote our own comfort, our own little circle, our own little clique.

Our epistle reading in 2 Corinthians, picking up in the midst of chapter 3, finds the apostle Paul apparently promoting himself. He is anything but submergent!

If we go back to verse 1, we see him defending himself and his colleagues. “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we?” Do we need to present our credentials? Paul goes on, “You yourselves are our letter…to be known and read by all” (v. 2).

It turns out that this is more than a matter of mere self-promotion. As Paul notes in verse 5, “Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.” The apostle is dealing with critics he believes have a destructive influence on the church.

He compares the glory of the shining face of Moses with the glory now revealed in Jesus Christ. The first glory faded away; the new glory shines with eternal light.

Paul probably overstates his case by saying Moses veiled his face so that the people “wouldn't notice that the glory was fading away” (v. 13), as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message. As we heard in Exodus 34, Moses had a different reason for veiling his face, which glowed after meeting with God. When people saw it, they were afraid!

Earlier I mentioned what’s called the emergent church. I imagine that’s what led to the satire in the Christian Century about the “submergent” church. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, then we’re in big trouble!

Still, it may be asked, as many do every day, just what is the emergent, or emerging, church? (Some draw a distinction between the two.) First, I must confess some of my own biases. I tend to be suspicious of those who claim to be experts, especially when we’re dealing with things like church and God.

I also find labels to be very tricky. Due to all kinds of assumptions, one person can hear a word and think nothing of it. It’s treated in a quite neutral, non-controversial way. Somebody else can hear the word and red flags go up; alarm bells go off. That’s why I think it’s really important to slow down and explain what we mean. (When Banu asks me a question and I give her that kind of answer, it drives her nuts!)

So, having said all that, let me say that I think the emergent church is something both brand new and something very old. It’s new in the sense that the 21st century presents challenges and realities the human race has never faced before. For example, we can debate to what extent humans are responsible, but the reality is that global warming will greatly change life on planet Earth. As the sea level rises, mass migration of populations alone will see to that. That’s but one of many changes that will happen.

But I also think that the emergent church is something that has recurred throughout the entire history of the church. Over and over, the Holy Spirit has caused a new thing to emerge: a new vision, a new sense of mission. Those who’ve embraced the new work of the Spirit have often been persecuted, even killed. In time, this new movement becomes hardened, institutionalized. Rules get written about how the Spirit should move.

Still, as Jesus says in John 3, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (v. 8). And then the Holy Spirit has mercy on us, and the Spirit graciously allows something new to…emerge.

We have to be aware of yielding to fads. Or at least, if we do follow them, we should be aware that they are fads. They aren’t forever engraved in stone. We too often believe that our time, our way of doing things, is the most important that’s ever happened. A study of history shows that down through the ages, many other people have felt the same way about their time.

The apostle Paul deals with something similar in 2 Corinthians. By the mid 1st century, there were many in the church who believed that following Christ also required following the rules of Judaism. What’s happening is the first major emergence in the church. And Paul is dealing with the backlash against it.

People are trying to regulate how the Spirit should work. They’re trying to codify, to legislate, how the Holy Spirit is allowed to operate. Please understand, I’m not saying that these are bad people. The vast majority of them sincerely believe that they’re serving the faith—that they’re serving the Lord. We should ask ourselves: in what ways do I, in what ways do we, impose our own conditions on how God functions?

The story of the transfiguration of Jesus has a similar idea. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John with him up on the mountain. Right there, in their presence, he shines with a heavenly light. The disciples see him speaking with Moses and Elijah. What does Peter say after all that? “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Lk 9:33).

Peter wants to take this experience and find some way to capture it. He wants to bottle it; he wants to, quite literally, put it in a structure. And Luke immediately says that he basically doesn’t know what he’s talking about!

Bill Loader notes that the apostle “Paul pits his transforming gospel against the one espoused by those who appeal to the…authority of laws and commandments and who see Jesus as…promoting a new version of Moses. The issues being fought out…go right to the heart of the question: how do people change?”[2]

That’s a good question. How do people change? Put that to yourself: how do I change? Certainly, one motivation for change comes through fear of punishment—having someone lay down the law! Of course, if that’s our only reason for either doing or not doing something, that’s not the kind of change that’s going to be long lasting. It isn’t transformative.

For change to be meaningful, it needs to come from within. That’s a sign of increasing maturity. It’s a sign of increasing enlightenment.

The apostle says that “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” (vv. 17-18).

All of us are being transformed from one degree of glory to another. It’s a journey we take together. We can submerge into darkness or emerge into light. I think I’m safe in saying that this congregation has chosen the latter course. But we have to remember the ever-present temptation to think, “Okay, we’ve arrived! Let’s draw the boundaries; let’s put up the walls!”

The Spirit calls us onward; the Spirit calls us on the path of freedom. One last thought: as the Spirit is calling us to freedom, how are we being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ? How are you being transformed into the image of Christ?

[1] James Choate-Munitz, “The Submergent Church,” Christian Century 124:3 (6 Feb 07): 9.

[2] wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/CEpTransfiguration.htm