Movement 134

A wounded body
Jessica Rose, author of Church on Tria[ examines
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the church community and finds it wanting.
Church means many different things to
different people, but whether it is 'two or three
gathered together', or two or three hundred at a
Sunday service, or the huge structure of popes,
patriarchs, priests, people, monks and nuns, it
always involves a community. At the same time
the church is the continuing incarnation of the
God who became human and part of our history
it is the body of Christ. If Jesus the man were
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to walk in to one of our churches today, would he
recognise his own body?
Sometimes, we can say yes. The body
functions in recosnisable wavs:
rr
I ngfC) SG)gms as groups of p"opl" giving
to be no each o.ther.mutual ,tYppott: lt
continuity
between
praying
together
and the WaV -'
pgOple behaVg
parr or socrery, reacnrng our ro
help others and speaking out
for justice and for the care of
creation; as a community of
prayer bringing us closer to God;
and as a 'community of saints'
connecting people across time
and space.
It was-the first of these that
interested me when I decided to
write about church life' I mvself
grew up rn a vicarage, and shook
tOWafdS ln" a.rr, from off my feet when
each other. LTj;':l":ffi:;'.i*jj"f;
Only many years later did I find
myself very involved in church, and decided to
see what other people's experiences were like,
and how they might relate to being Christ's body.
I found, of course, a huge range of experience
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much of it good.
For example, a university chaplain described
what she sees in her college chapel: 'Newcomers
are met by a real generosity motivated by faith,
which says, "You may be isolated, and this may
not be your cup of tea and you don't have
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to stand up and say you believe all this
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you are welcome anyway."' And when Teresa's
husband had a long stay in hospital, people from
church visited regularly: 'I cannot tell you,' she
said, 'what a godsend that was, because I was
under such pressure with work and visiting
hours. I would walk in and see someone from
church the relief that would give me, to know
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that someone cared enough to spend a little time
with him.'
The support a community gives may be more
subtle. When I first started going back to church,
I was looking for a God-space, a place to pray,
maybe some music, ritual or a building to help
me to do that. I began by going to services at an
enclosed convent where no-one spoke to you:
it was both hospitable and undemanding, and
there are quite a few people who need this kind
of space. 'I have a big problem in taking an active
part in the church', said Ted, a regular churchgoer,
'I don't participate in any groups or take
any offrcial positions. But I go every Sunday and I
feel I need to be there and I want to be there'.
Being part of the church community can
also be an important part of how we experience
ourselves. John, for example, started singing
for services in his college chapel because he
liked singing, not because he believed in God
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he didn't. But he soon began to read about
Christianity, and eventually was baptised.
'Becoming a Christian helped me find a sense of
forgiveness', he said. 'Forgiveness is built into
the Christian story: Jesus accepts all the consequences
of sin and lives through them on our
behalf. He overcomes, and helps us overcome.'
John's experience is that the church, too, lives
out this story. 'The way Christ overcomes is
found actively in the church', he said, 'in the
way people are Christ-like. I was made welcome
without reservation. This was something
and practical as well as theoretical.'
Sometimes, however, the redemptive story
can be hard to find, and church life can be a rough
ride. Sooner or later we run into conflict, and
what really disturbs people is when there seems
to be no continuity between prayrng together
and the way people behave towards each other.
'So much time is wasted at PCC meetings,' said
Bill, 'So much bitterness over absurd little things.
People are just not willing to engage it drains
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the whole point of it.' Jane, a pastoral worker,
says she often unwittingly upsets people. 'I try
to do something and it turns out that "somebody
else always does it" or more often it turns out
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that somebody else always does something that
Movement 15