The Beginning of the Trouble

 This is the first of my Ninety-Five Theses For the Twenty-First Century.  We'll see how many I actually have.  Call it my “airing of grievances”.  As Frank Costanza said, “I got a lot of problems with you people!” Is this the equivalent of nailing it to the door of the church?

Where to begin?  There are so many subtle things we do that I believe are against God’s Law, things everyone around us is doing and has done for generations.  I want to start at the beginning of the Trouble.  To my mind, that means Constantine.  

Emperor Constantine did some wonderful and amazing things on behalf of Christians about 1700 years ago.  I am sure that no longer having to fear for your life just by confessing Jesus as Lord was a great blessing.  Codifying the books of the Bible is another.  Sorting out who Jesus is and quashing some of the more dangerous heresies was vital to the survival of the Faith.  

However, he also set the Church on some wrong tracks: making the Church an institution, with a hierarchy that quickly became more political than faithful; as a result, women in the Church were relegated to secondary roles only, where the “Desert Mothers” were some of the key leaders of the early Church; making the Church a building first, with a staff that needed money was antithetical to helping those in need; today that has led to churches with endowments, because we worry that God might not provide enough for us to keep it open; the selling of indulgences; infant baptism; the many “holy relics” that were fabricated to bilk the masses; the fear of other religions such as Islam and Judaism that led to the Crusades and the Inquisition.  

I want to cover all those areas.  Today I want to look at the Nicene Creed and Constantine’s baptism.  Constantine asked to not be baptized until he was on his death bed. His goal was to have a “tabula rasa”, a clean slate, when he died, as if saving his baptism until then would accomplish what Christ’s death on the Cross could not.  However, practically speaking, he did not want to stop being Emperor the way he knew how - intrigue, war, back-stabbing, oath-breaking and assassination.  These he continued long after his “conversion”, counting on being baptized to wipe clean his many sins. I love that picture of him, sitting casually, even arrogantly, outside a church, contemplating his sword.

According to E Stanley Jones, in his book Christ of the Mount, he made sure that the Nicene Creed would have nothing in it about how Jesus lived his life.  We go right from “born of the Virgin Mary” to “crucified under Pontius Pilate”.  Not a thing about his teachings, his miracles, and especially the way Jesus lived, exhibiting love and forgiveness even to his enemies.  

In this way, the institutionalization of the Church quickly became, in many positions of its leadership, about something other than “Following the Way”.  Yet the people who made up the Nicene Council were genuine believers.  These people were the foundation of the Church, and in many ways, that has been what has kept the Church together ever since, despite the bad and sometimes evil leadership.  I believe that is why people today are identifying as “nones” - the vast majority of these, about 80% of the “nones”, still believe in something, but are not finding it in Church.  There is too much “Religion”, too much greed, corruption, scandal, hypocrisy.  But most of us know deep down, this life is about the Greatest Commandment.  And once again, the ONE Greatest Commandment is to love our neighbor as ourself (Matt 7:12, Galatians 5:14, Romans 13:10, James 2:8).  We love God BY loving our neighbor.  This is why Jesus’ death tore the veil in the Temple.  This is why the early church met in the homes of believers and gave as anyone had need.  

At our first Faith and Reason Conference, I had the opportunity to pray with some people from my church in NJ.  I have known these people for years.  But I tell you, I never felt more connected to them than I was, sitting there on the shores of Lake George, watching the sun rise over the mountains.  We each were able to talk about our lives, our families and our faith in a way we had never done before.  My point is: what kind of religion do we follow where it is possible to know someone for ten or more years and never actually get to know them?  In the pre-Constantine church, this would have been impossible.  Now, it is the standard practice.

I encourage you to get to know someone at church today.  Make an effort to invite them to lunch.  Find out how they came to faith, how their faith has helped them in life.  I suspect that breaking bread together, sharing your needs together, praying and praising God, whether in your home or a restaurant or a truck stop, is more like Following the Way than most of what goes on in that building we call “Church”.  "Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2)."