As worthless as. . .

From the farm we had the completion of the phrase  this title began and it is not pretty -- even though it is mostly true.  So much of what the Church is and does is exactly that according to the world -- worthless and useless.  It is, as one author entitled her book on worship, A Royal Waste of Time.  I will not dispute this conclusion.  From the point of view of the world, God is mostly worthless and without use except as a convenient target, scapegoat, and blame for the things you do not like or want or have gone wrong.  Other than this, why do you need or want a God or His Church?  

There was a time in which no one said such a thing out loud.  You may have thought it but in public in America, Church was as American as apple pie and Chevrolet.  God was an American, as true blue a patriot in the eyes of our society as anyone.  Those days are long gone.  With gluten intolerance and diabetes and concern for organic and fresh supplies, apple pies are not what they once were.  Chevrolet is not exactly what it once was when the chairman could quip that what was good for General Motors was good for America.  Even those within the Church do not call God an American anymore and it seems that churches and the Church are at best tolerated and at worst despised across the culture of our land today.  Nobody seems to want either around anymore and some are hoping to tax them both out of existence.

If you are outside the Church, I suppose there is no more logical conclusion than to think God useless and the Church worthless.  Even the old charities once so intimately connected with the churches have become largely NGOs who work on the government's dime doing the government's business and not God's or the churches.  But many things seem to have been jettisoned by the times.  We no longer value or share a great moral vision in our land -- not about the sacred character of life from its natural beginning to its natural end, not about what it means to be male or female, not about the centrality of marriage and family, not about the blessing of children, not about a work ethic, not about social interaction, and not even what it means to be spiritual or religious.  Our individualism and our consumer and entertainment culture has isolated us from each other and built invisible barriers that divide us even more than walls.  Ear buds and small screens are more important to us that community or fellowship of any kind -- especially religious.

Lets face it.  Christianity is a hard sell to a people who find most of what is Christian worthless and useless.  But it is not our job to insist that Christianity is worth something or everything or to argue them into seeing how useful it and God and the Church are to have around.  Our calling is to proclaim the Gospel, to call a people to repentance, to baptize and to absolve, to catechize and instruct, to feed and serve.  What God does with our labors is not given for us to define or judge.  We simply do what we have been called to do and as faithfully as we can do it.  Each of us in our stations in life and all of us as the Church doing and serving as faithfully as we are able -- that is our job.  The worth or value of God and the Church are the fruit of faith and not the reason to believe.  The cross is that reason and the Spirit is that power.  Once a person called me as a pastor a blood sucking leech.  Okay.  But thankfully God has defined my worth not by what I do but what He has done for me.  Tell that to the world.  It may not sell but it will probably make for more Christians.