A Good Shaking

Every now and again the church needs a good shaking.  When it happens again, it will not be the first time, nor will it be the last.  It could be said that Jesus brought along with His announcement of the Kingdom coming, a shaking of the spiritual community that started being shaped on Mt. Sinai.  The Ten Commandments soon were viewed as not enough and soon all kinds of rules and regulations became attached to them to give them practical interpretation.  Jesus shook up the status quo.    

And, it has happened again and again.  The Reformation which gave the Protestant community its life speaks of an established spiritual community being shook to its core.  The Methodist movement into which I was ordained some fifty plus years ago came from a shaking of the Anglican Church in England.  It seems that from time to time the Church needs a good shaking to get rid of some of the superfluous clutter which becomes all too important to the status quo.    

Sometimes I wonder if these are not days when the Spirit is shaking the Church once again.  The ecclesiastical atmosphere is filled with verbal squabbles, the closed churches of last year, and the slow return all point to such a possibility.  Probably one of the worst things which could come to pass out of all the confusion is a return to what used to be.  When the Church truly gets a Spirit shaking, a new normal is sure to come to pass even though we may fight it tooth and nail.