A Subtle Shift

Retirement took me out of the liturgical loop.  I must confess to Advent slipping up on me.  It used to be something seen on the distant horizon and anticipated like a glowing sunset.  Nowadays it, along with other turning point liturgical days, seems to be first seen in the rearview mirror.  Easter and Christmas are appropriately duly noted, but the rest of the important liturgical days come and go without much notice on my part.  I am not bragging, or confessing, but acknowledging a change that has taken place in my life.  

This change is just one of the things which points to the reality that the institutional church is no longer the center of my life.  Some might say such a change is good while others might point a finger and speak of backsliding.  What I really need to confess is that the church should never have been the center of my life. Somewhere along the way of going from ordination to retirement, I lost sight of the real center.  The real center is not the church, but the One whose blood was shed to bring it into being. It is painful to confess that the church was substituted for the Christ, but if there is to be any honest repentance in this season of Advent, it must be confessed again in the present as it has been in the past.   

It is a temptation most clergy face at one time or another in their lives.  It is also easy for those who do not wear the markings of the ordained to figure that doing the work of the church is synonymous with serving Christ.  And while it may be, it can also be another way Christ has been usurped by the church.  It happens in such a subtle way.  Not too many can point to the hour it happened.  In some ways it is like the Garden of Eden coming alive again except it is not Adam and Eve being temtped, but you and me.