Is the Church any use to God?

God’s action in the world is clearer and better because of us. This God-who-is-helped, who acts in us and through us, is the God we discover in the Gospels, the God we see at work in Jesus Christ. The Church, created and nourished by the proclamation of the Gospel which she incites around her (sometimes because of her actions, sometimes in spite of them!), helps God by underlining the truth that God and humanity exist and exist fully together.

A God without Christ, a God without the incarnation would be a mere principle, a concept, an idea, pure abstraction. We could speak of such a God only as a mythological, shadowy figure. But the God of faith, the God of Jesus Christ, isn’t a virtual form, an eternal or abstract entity; he is always partly determined by how we experience him and what we make of him. This God of faith is always a God-by-means-of-faith, a God who lives through the trust which we have in him. So it is our faith in God which enables God really to be God for us. In the same way, the God of Jesus Christ is God through Jesus Christ: it is Jesus Christ himself, his life, words and deeds, who brings God into being and enables us to love God as God.

Our relationship with God and with everything that makes God present in the world is part of what makes God God. This is the idea which Wilfred Monod had when he held in a sermon that, “Our prayer gives us God.” When we pray to God, when we open ourselves to him, when we centre ourselves on his presence, we work with him and in him for the Kingdom of God, we help to make real, according to his will, a more just world, where good overcomes evil, truth overcomes lies and beauty overcomes ugliness.

What helps God is therefore what makes him present, what makes him more real, more present, more believable. It is in order that God should exist for every person, for the whole world in its great human, animal and vegetable diversity, that the Church acts in preaching, worshipping and social work. The great task of the Church is to give us the tools to calculate the active presence of God everywhere in the universe. Her role is to enable us to become aware that God is really present for us, that he calls us. Her role is also to help us to respond to God. As the theologian John Cobb wrote, “The fundamental task of the Church is to invite us to the free acceptance of God and to make this acceptance real.” So the Church doesn’t summon a God who is already there. Nor does she exist to make the whole world Christian. It is more a question of her awakening our sensibilities in order to make us more receptive to the presence and action of God.

The Church is born through the Good News which she proclaims and through the items of good news which she delivers: for example, the good news of a world and an existence which, in God, can never be reduced to the evils which occur in them. Through the Gospel of which the Church is the active sermon, the Church is in herself a struggle against the disenchantment of the world. She labours to make visible and to encourage everything which participates in God’s resurrection energy. It is for this reason that we must believe that the Church surpasses all ecclesiastical institutions. The Church as a community of faith should not be confused with the Church as an institution. If the Church is born through the proclamation of the Gospel, nothing prevents us from seeing the Church alive exactly where the Gospel is lived: in a hospital, a parliament, a classroom, a prison, a public protest, a concert. We need to live these Gospel moments as events which help us to give space to God’s action and to experience God’s action present in the world. Through our ability to decipher the areas where life wins over death, we heighten our awareness that we can experience the liberating, transforming action of God, and become more open to it.

It is also in her ability to protest and in social activism that the Church helps God. If the Church is born through the proclamation of the Gospel, she is born to serve, to be a rallying-call, a force for activism. The Church as a pressure group and a social force can often achieve more than isolated individuals. When the Church combats all that devalues humankind, all that reduces humanity to the status of an object, to something worthless and exploitable, when she works for the spiritual, psychological, moral and sexual fulfilment of humanity, the Church helps the God revealed to us in the Gospels as a power for resurrection who struggles against all that paralyses and alienates us. When she does this, the Church helps to make real a humanity and a world which are always in the process of becoming, of being created; she helps God to stick with his creation by awakening our senses, by encouraging us in new relationships of solidarity, also by freeing us from the weight of our sense of blame and guilt, by inviting us to live in grace, with greater relaxation and light-heartedness, faith and trust – in short, by making us more human. Process theology has defined the Church as “the community which self-consciously aims to maintain, develop and deepen the force-fields created by Jesus.”

For example, when a preacher is transported by the insistent breathing spirit of the Gospel, which enables him to unveil the human soul in all that makes it beautiful and sovereign, its creative freedom, its courage to be, its resistance to annihilation, its power to love – then the Church, through the preaching of the Gospel which gives rise to her, helps God. When on hearing a sermon, a feeling is born in us of total self-acceptance which liberates us from every scintilla of self-justification, when a sermon gives us the feeling of being more than we were before, of being more present, more just, more loving, more capable – then the Church, through this seizing of eternity, clearly helps God.

And on the contrary, when a sermon is just a fussy deployment of an ideological catechism which offers answers to questions which nobody is even asking any more, when the Church is entombed in the dogmatic straitjacket of a previous age, then, just as certainly, she does not help God. She simply gives everyone the overwhelming desire to get out while they can and never come back. When a sermon forgets the human soul, ignores our passions, desires, troubles, questions, dreams, when it takes no account of the very humanity in which God is present, then the preaching ceases to speak to us, and indeed silences God in us.

And finally, that which in us helps God, isn’t it actually that in us which is already God’s? Isn’t it the part of God which is already in us which allows us to help God? So through us, God actually helps himself, in order that his Gospel should not be a dead letter and a cringing proclamation, in order that the universe should be ever more harmonious.

God’s action in the world is clearer and better because of us. This God-who-is-helped, who acts in us and through us, is the God we discover in the Gospels, the God we see at work in Jesus Christ. The Church, created and nourished by the proclamation of the Gospel which she incites around her (sometimes because of her actions, sometimes in spite of them!), helps God by underlining the truth that God and humanity exist and exist fully together.

A God without Christ, a God without the incarnation would be a mere principle, a concept, an idea, pure abstraction. We could speak of such a God only as a mythological, shadowy figure. But the God of faith, the God of Jesus Christ, isn’t a virtual form, an eternal or abstract entity; he is always partly determined by how we experience him and what we make of him. This God of faith is always a God-by-means-of-faith, a God who lives through the trust which we have in him. So it is our faith in God which enables God really to be God for us. In the same way, the God of Jesus Christ is God through Jesus Christ: it is Jesus Christ himself, his life, words and deeds, who brings God into being and enables us to love God as God.

Our relationship with God and with everything that makes God present in the world is part of what makes God God. This is the idea which Wilfred Monod had when he held in a sermon that, “Our prayer gives us God.” When we pray to God, when we open ourselves to him, when we centre ourselves on his presence, we work with him and in him for the Kingdom of God, we help to make real, according to his will, a more just world, where good overcomes evil, truth overcomes lies and beauty overcomes ugliness.

What helps God is therefore what makes him present, what makes him more real, more present, more believable. It is in order that God should exist for every person, for the whole world in its great human, animal and vegetable diversity, that the Church acts in preaching, worshipping and social work. The great task of the Church is to give us the tools to calculate the active presence of God everywhere in the universe. Her role is to enable us to become aware that God is really present for us, that he calls us. Her role is also to help us to respond to God. As the theologian John Cobb wrote, “The fundamental task of the Church is to invite us to the free acceptance of God and to make this acceptance real.” So the Church doesn’t summon a God who is already there. Nor does she exist to make the whole world Christian. It is more a question of her awakening our sensibilities in order to make us more receptive to the presence and action of God.

The Church is born through the Good News which she proclaims and through the items of good news which she delivers: for example, the good news of a world and an existence which, in God, can never be reduced to the evils which occur in them. Through the Gospel of which the Church is the active sermon, the Church is in herself a struggle against the disenchantment of the world. She labours to make visible and to encourage everything which participates in God’s resurrection energy. It is for this reason that we must believe that the Church surpasses all ecclesiastical institutions. The Church as a community of faith should not be confused with the Church as an institution. If the Church is born through the proclamation of the Gospel, nothing prevents us from seeing the Church alive exactly where the Gospel is lived: in a hospital, a parliament, a classroom, a prison, a public protest, a concert. We need to live these Gospel moments as events which help us to give space to God’s action and to experience God’s action present in the world. Through our ability to decipher the areas where life wins over death, we heighten our awareness that we can experience the liberating, transforming action of God, and become more open to it.

It is also in her ability to protest and in social activism that the Church helps God. If the Church is born through the proclamation of the Gospel, she is born to serve, to be a rallying-call, a force for activism. The Church as a pressure group and a social force can often achieve more than isolated individuals. When the Church combats all that devalues humankind, all that reduces humanity to the status of an object, to something worthless and exploitable, when she works for the spiritual, psychological, moral and sexual fulfilment of humanity, the Church helps the God revealed to us in the Gospels as a power for resurrection who struggles against all that paralyses and alienates us. When she does this, the Church helps to make real a humanity and a world which are always in the process of becoming, of being created; she helps God to stick with his creation by awakening our senses, by encouraging us in new relationships of solidarity, also by freeing us from the weight of our sense of blame and guilt, by inviting us to live in grace, with greater relaxation and light-heartedness, faith and trust – in short, by making us more human. Process theology has defined the Church as “the community which self-consciously aims to maintain, develop and deepen the force-fields created by Jesus.”

For example, when a preacher is transported by the insistent breathing spirit of the Gospel, which enables him to unveil the human soul in all that makes it beautiful and sovereign, its creative freedom, its courage to be, its resistance to annihilation, its power to love – then the Church, through the preaching of the Gospel which gives rise to her, helps God. When on hearing a sermon, a feeling is born in us of total self-acceptance which liberates us from every scintilla of self-justification, when a sermon gives us the feeling of being more than we were before, of being more present, more just, more loving, more capable – then the Church, through this seizing of eternity, clearly helps God.

And on the contrary, when a sermon is just a fussy deployment of an ideological catechism which offers answers to questions which nobody is even asking any more, when the Church is entombed in the dogmatic straitjacket of a previous age, then, just as certainly, she does not help God. She simply gives everyone the overwhelming desire to get out while they can and never come back. When a sermon forgets the human soul, ignores our passions, desires, troubles, questions, dreams, when it takes no account of the very humanity in which God is present, then the preaching ceases to speak to us, and indeed silences God in us.

And finally, that which in us helps God, isn’t it actually that in us which is already God’s? Isn’t it the part of God which is already in us which allows us to help God? So through us, God actually helps himself, in order that his Gospel should not be a dead letter and a cringing proclamation, in order that the universe should be ever more harmonious.

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