c. 2007 Religion News Service
NEW YORK _ As I walked to Midtown Manhattan, two auto accidents occurred near me on Fifth Avenue.
In the first, two taxicabs collided, the drivers stopped to shout at each other, and an abandoned passenger walked across the street and hailed another cab.
In the second, a cab suddenly erupted in smoke. A passenger fled to the sidewalk, then went back to lead the dazed driver away from whatever danger lay within the smoke.
That instinct to help another person was on epic display in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on New York in 2001. Emergency workers raced to Ground Zero. So did physicians, nurses, counselors and clergy, as well as citizens bearing water and food.
No agency organized this caregiving. In fact, when official agencies did get involved, caregiving quickly became inefficient and politicized.
In the months after Sept. 11, people flooded into New York’s houses of worship. Some came seeking spiritual shelter. Many, however, came seeking more opportunities to help others, further exposure to that godly transaction in which a Samaritan helps a Jew, a Messiah touches a leper, and, in the modern instance, firefighters risk their lives for others and a taxi rider helps a dazed driver, while the less compassionate lean on their horns.
That spike in church attendance didn’t last. The trauma subsided. But more important, those seeking love-in-action often found business-as-usual.
Seeking the egg of compassionate action, they received the scorpion of religionists shouting at each other like outraged taxi drivers _ shouting over doctrine, fighting about sex and money, as if nothing mattered more than denominational politics and partisan sides-taking. People walked away and hailed another ride.
What could have been faith’s finest hour became a brief pause in modern religion’s inexorable march to self-destruction. Doors swung closed, collaboration across religious boundaries lost urgency, institutional concerns like budgets and property reclaimed center stage, and ideologues intensified their hijacking of faith.
What hasn’t been extinguished, however, is that deep human need to help others, a need that comes from God. Religious institutions are humanity’s doing, and sometimes they work nobly. God’s transforming flame, meanwhile, touches the human heart and stirs boundary-shattering compassion.
A healthy faith community knows that it cannot take credit for that flame, but can only provide a venue where the flame grows bright and leads to action, even if the flame burns out of control and transforms the venue itself.
A healthy faith community hears the flame-induced yearnings of people, not the stale exigencies of structures. A healthy faith community honors those yearnings as pointing to God, and resists the politicians and moralizers who seek to manipulate the human heart.
Now, as church membership continues to slide, many congregations look longingly at that post-Sept. 11 moment when pews were full and Sunday felt purposeful.
Without waiting for taxicabs to explode or terrorists to strike, what can congregations do? Personally, I think churches need to turn off the usual noise _ denominational squabbles, liberal vs. conservative tussles, fussy traditions, niches of familiarity and privilege _ and open the doors widely and bravely to a needy world.
I don’t mean a 20 percent increase in the mission budget, but a 100 percent reorientation of the congregation’s focus toward doing what Jesus said to do: Help other people. I don’t mean position papers on noble concerns, but passionate and self-sacrificial effort.
I mean love-in-action, not talk-in-safety.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest now living in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)
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