Religious communities are to be places of healing and hope. Most churches proclaim a theology that promises compassion, hope and love. The mark of Christianity is that of God’s gift of love, Jesus. The symbol of that reality paradoxically remains the cross. The church is a community that promises hope and healing in the shadow of the cross.
The cross remains the enigma of God’s costly love. Jesus, God’s son, dies there because of the cost of his life of justice and love. Jesus’ life was one of healing and hope, of truth telling and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He rebuked those who did injustice, and preached against those who were powerful and selfish. He cared for the poor and hopeless. His actions and his life of radical compassion led to the cross. And there the great paradox of God’s Love. “Oh Sorrow Dread, our God is Dead.”
The mystery of God’s love is about God’s suffering, God’s weakness, and God’s abandonment.
The resurrection is the historical event that affirms God’s victory over death. Love wins over hate. The Eucharist makes that proclamation weekly in the life of the church. Body and Blood given for you. And that promise makes of the church a holy community of forgiven sinners, renewed in the image of God...body of Christ for you. The challenge of that “great exchange” is the task and the promise of the church.
How is it then that these essays and reflections talk of the sinfulness of the church? How does one understand sexual abuse in the community of God’s sons and daughters? Hoes do we comprehend power and elitism in a community of God’s children? How do we respond to the apparent weakness of the church? How do we justify doctrinal self-righteousness in light of the commonality of God’s children? How do we heal denominational pride at the expense of the unity of God’s people?
I think there are several responses to the sinfulness of the church that are inherent in the essence of the Gospel. The church is a place of sinfulness. The “people of god” are also people of sin. So the cross calls us to repentance and obedience. This is not an easy appeal to “cheap grace.” Rather it is a radical hope that if we confront our corporate sinfulness as well as our individual lives we will be drawn again by God’s love to healing and change.
We live in the shadow of the cross. The promise of God’s love and God’s mercy surrounds us, seeping into our consciousness unsuspectingly. Take and eat, the body of Christ for you. And we are transformed, changed, radically healed, not forever but for this Sunday, for this week, healed to love, to speak justice, to correct and confront the blatant and the silent sins of the church. And we can do so with hope and compassion if we begin with ourselves. None of us lives without moments of failure, decisions of sinfulness and actions of hurt and evil. So in our own place in the “shadow” we can hold others accountable, not out of a posture of holiness, but of commonality. Body of Christ. We share the mystery of being healed, of being called again, this week and every week to keep love and hope alive in our own lives and in the life of the church. And therein the unity of the Church and the end of sinful harmful power and price. “Given for you.” The healing hope of the church as well as yours and mine.

Stephen A Schmidt, Editor