Thursday, January 9, 2025: A Church That Imitates Jesus

But First: Linda received a false email supposedly sent from Victoria MacDonald that requests you to look at 2 photos -- please beware - using the link provided in the email may lead you astray. It's all bogus -- a device to get some of your personal information.

Please don't respond to it if you have received or will receive the email. Here's what it looks like. A tip off: Victoria's last name is incorrect in the email. It should be MacDonald with a capital D.

And now for the reflection:

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘When did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

• Matthew

Christians have often preached a gospel largely comprised of words, attitudes, and inner salvation experiences. People say they are saved, they are “born again,” yet how do we really know if someone is saved? Are they actually following Jesus? Do they love the poor? Are they free from their egos? Are they patient in the face of persecution? 

It’s not enough to talk about some kind of new inebriating wine, some new ideas. Without new wineskins—changed institutions, systems, and structures—I would argue that transformation cannot be deep or lasting. As Dorothy Day wrote in her inimitable style, “We need to overthrow ... this rotten … industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering.” [1] Personal “salvation” cannot be divorced from social and systemic implications. 

It’s easier to talk about the wine without the wineskins, to talk about salvation theories without any new world order. Unfortunately, Christianity has not always had a positive impact on Western civilization and the peoples it has colonized or evangelized.

So-called Christian nations are often the most militaristic, greedy, and untrue to the teacher we claim to follow. Our societies are more often based not upon the servant leadership that Jesus modeled, but on the common domination and control model that produces racism, classism, sexism, power seeking, and income inequality. 

That’s not to say our ancestors didn’t have faith, that our grandparents weren’t good people, or that the church hasn’t done much good. But, with notable exceptions, we Christians didn’t produce radical change in culture or institutions or operate all that differently. Christianity has shaped some wonderfully liberated saints, prophets, and mystics. They tried to create some new wineskins, but often the church itself resisted their calls to structural reform.

Take, for example, Saint Francis of Assisi, the father and founder of my own religious community. He was marginalized as a bit of a fanatic or eccentric by mainline Catholicism, as illustrated by no Pope ever taking his name until our present Pope Francis. 

Even today many Christians keep Jesus on a seeming pedestal, worshiping a caricature on a cross or a bumper-sticker slogan while avoiding what Jesus said and did. We keep saying, “We love Jesus,” but more as a God-figure than as someone to imitate. It seems the more we talk about Jesus, the less time we have to do what he said.  

- Richard Rohr