Church: is it just a colossal adventure in missing the point?

Two years on from Zechariah’s night visions and the people of Bethel send a delegation with a question for God. They don’t know how to ask God directly so they come to the priests and the prophets with their question.

Should I mourn and fast in the fifth month, as I have done for so many years? Zechariah 7:3

This is what they’ve always done. It was what God required of His people: a time to stop and reflect and put things right with Him. A time to deprive themselves so that they never take God’s goodness and provision for granted. The people had lost sight of the reason behind the act. They doubted its significance. They wanted to check whether it was still the right thing to be doing to stay in God’s good books. They were jumping through hoops to please God, to avert disaster. They needed to be sure this was still impressing God – and others.

And this is the question God sends right back to them –

Was it really for me that you fasted?  Zechariah 7:5

He’s questioning their motives

Yes, you did it, but why did you do it? To tick it off a checklist? Because you’ve always done it? To avoid my anger?

He reminds them of what He’s said before time and time and time again. It’s not these religious acts which are important – they can become empty ritual. What matters is how they treat and relate to other people.

Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.  Zechariah 7:9-10

It’s a challenge, right? A challenge to the Church of 2017. Stepping into a Christian church can feel like stepping back in time. We’re speaking words from centuries ago, listening to Bible readings in archaic  language, singing hymns with phrases we don’t understand and songs that belong in the 70s. Church services can fall into a rut. Every service is pretty much the same. Because that’s how we’ve always done it. Church life can revolve around one service a week. And the whole thing can become a colossal adventure in missing the point.

My qualification: I’m not talking about every church here. Or any church in particular. I’m probably talking about how the church is perceived from the outside. And I’m making a huge generalisation. I know that. Let ‘s just reflect today how this applies, if at all, to our own church community.

Isn’t it possible that God is asking us the question as He asked His people long ago –

Is it for me that you’re doing all this?

Are we doing what we do in the way that we do it because we think that this is what God requires? Because we want to keep in God’s good books? Or because we’ve always done it this way? Because it’s easier this way?

This is what God requires.

Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other. Zechariah 7:9-10

This is what God has always required. This is what really matters. How well are we doing with that? In what ways are we showing mercy and compassion? In what ways are we actively standing against the oppression of society’s most vulnerable? In what ways are we refusing to get involved in plans to cause harm to others or bring them down or hurt them?

This isn’t just about getting involved in worthy projects that tick the box of church outreach (and hopefully translate into more bums on seats, because that’s how we measure success as a church, isn’t it?). Sorry if I’m sounding a little disillusioned. Maybe that’s because I am…

This is daily acts of social justice which arise from a depth of mercy and love and compassion within the heart of each individual who loves God and desires to serve God. Church is to be a community of these individuals united in their yearning to bring positive change in the world. Church has the potential to be transformative, subversive, provocative, exciting, inspiring, explosive – of course it does, it is the body on earth of the one true God. This fires me up. This melts my disillusionment and stirs up a burning desire within me to believe in better. We can do better than this. There must be more than this.

It starts with justice and mercy and compassion and love.

God is waiting to lead us on from there into the biggest adventure the world has ever seen.