Has Jesus left the building?

Maybe a personal dose of Jesus isn't meant to satisfy.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez

I sat in the second row holding the plastic communion package, hands rested in my lap. When it was time, I joined the symphony of squeaky plastic lids peeled from foil underlays on individual communion cups around the room as we each freed our own little allotment of wafer and juice. A personal dose of Jesus, I guess.

At the go ahead from the pulpit, I cringed involuntarily as the wafer hit my tongue. Was it supposed to taste of dirty cardboard? I had to close my eyes to swallow it. And was the juice supposed to taste of chemical sweetener and dye? I gulped it down like broccoli (which, for the record, is not my favorite). I sat through the rest of service that day stunned, not because I had met Jesus through the sacrament of communion, but because it didn’t feel like he was there at all.

“Where are you?” I whispered under my breath as I blinked back the salty disappointment leaking from my eyes and wondered if the huge lump of sadness caught in my throat was as visible from the outside as it felt on the inside.

If Jesus wasn’t in the Lord’s Supper, where was he? Had he left the building altogether?

This is not meant to be an inditement on the church—not the Church as a whole or even my own particular church But it was my experience that day. My knee-jerk instinct was to blame myself. Why couldn’t I just be grateful I was invited to participate at all? (Not everyone is, you know; very few churches offer communion to all who may want it. Or some offer it '“to those who love Jesus” seemingly forgetting that Jesus offered it out of his love for us not the other way around.)

The whole exercise felt like going through the motions—we “took communion” because we were supposed to and because that’s what we always did. But where was the reverence? Where was the communal aspect of sharing it face-to-face (or at least shoulder-to-shoulder) with other believers? Where was the blessing, the gratitude and thanks, the giving and receiving, the revelation of Christ? I sat in the second row that day and wondered if Jesus came to church at all. Maybe we were the only suckers still showing up. Maybe Jesus was hanging out elsewhere with people less religious, people less inclined to think they know what he’s going to do next, people who don’t try to package him into to-go cups for personal convenience and expediency.

You could think I’m being sacrilegious here. Or that I’m disparaging the local church. And maybe I am? But if that’s the case, I include myself in the critique—I am the local church. I don’t stand apart from her. I am trying to reckon with the ways I’ve been complicit or propped up structures that don’t serve or propagated misguided teaching or reinforced stagnant practices. And honestly, this isn’t even really about individual communion packets—they have their merit.

So many friends and acquaintances are struggling to show up in churches at all any more. Most have opted out completely. Even if we aren’t paying attention to the actual people in our real lives who won’t darken a church’s door or no longer feel safe in religious communities or environments, the statistics speak for themselves. In fact, they’re only getting louder.

Last week I listened to a prominent and well-respected Australian theologian as he was interviewed on an American podcast¹ and he shared that Australia is at least ten years further down the track of being a post-Christian nation when compared to the USA’s own journey toward secularism. Australians have long ago grown tired of the scandals, the tax evasion, the child and sexual abuse cover-ups, the overt and covert misogyny, the homophobia, and the (sometimes thinly-veiled) racism they’ve seen on display through the institutions of church as society has changed and churches haven’t. (And this isn’t even touching on the alarming rise of political idolatry over the past several years.)

They discussed the research, as well as personal anecdotes, which show that when asked about church—a rapidly growing number of Australians disdain it and want nothing to do with it. But when asked about Christian individuals, they almost all have a story of a caring auntie or generous friend or kind grandmother who gladly gives their time at the Tuesday soup kitchen or fills back-to-school backpacks with school supplies for families in need or mows the lawn for their elderly neighbor. Somehow our churches (the institutionalized gatherings that meet in our buildings) don’t seem to reflect the spirit of kindness, generosity, and sacrificial love that many individual Christians still do. (This tells me not all hope is lost for believers, but our institutions have a lot to answer for. Again, I am part of this; I’m not “othering” here.)

I’m not interested in commenting on the accuracy or fairness of these negative perceptions of church in a short essay like this, but I do think we need to pay better attention to what people actually think and say. It does us church folk no good to stay siloed in our beliefs or refuse to change because “this is how we’ve always done it.” We could spend all sorts of time dissecting the reasons why church attendance has declined—weighing up their legitimacy, examining motives, blaming high profile cases of sin and abuse and hypocrisy, discussing worship practices or outdated style choices or unappealing environments, or whatever.

If you’re anything like Ryan and I, you probably discuss these things often and will readily admit we don’t have all the answers we would like. We’re simultaneously frustrated by churches and leaders who say they want to change, adapt, and grow yet refuse to do the hard work of looking inward and admitting they—we!—are part of the problem as we are also frustrated by our own inability to ‘make’ people listen to our concerns or lead them to engage difficult realities. When do we stop spinning our wheels in the sand and leave that old bus to go ahead and sink? Jesus talked about ‘shaking off dust’ when people didn’t want to listen to his teaching or change their ways, but the old cliche is true here: it’s easier said than done. Old dust is uncomfortable but also familiar. It can be hard to shake off.

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Back to the second row. What do you do if you show up to where Jesus is supposed to be and he seems nowhere to be found? Surely it’s worth noting where Jesus does and doesn’t appear to be, right?

And what do you do if you show up to receive Jesus through the sacrament of the Eucharist—whether you take it as symbolic or as literal Transubstantiation—and it seems Jesus has up and left the building?

Do we need to re-imagine our communal ways of honoring and worshiping Jesus? Do we need to look for him in new places and spaces?

Photo by Jon Tyson

In chapter 24 of Luke’s gospel, we learn the story of Mary Madeline, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women who came to Jesus’s tomb on the first day of the week (after their Sabbath rest) with their burial spices and ointment to find Jesus was no longer there. The women see two men in “dazzling clothes” who tell them Jesus is no longer dead and are understandably astounded at this news of his resurrection. When they go report what they have found and believe to be true to the apostles, their story is assessed—dismissed—as an unbelievable “idle tale.” 

Later that same day, two of the disciples walked along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus discussing all that had taken place—the crucification and the women’s reports of the empty tomb—when Jesus himself appeared to them and began to walk and talk with them. The men relayed their concerns and sadness about the events that had unfolded in the days prior and Jesus countered by explaining all that had taken place using the prophecies of scripture to help them understand exactly what was unfolding, yet the men stayed in their bubble. They still couldn’t recognize Truth when it was standing right in front of them; they couldn’t hear Truth even when it was clearly explained to them. It wasn’t until they all broke bread around the dinner table that night that they finally realized and accepted it was Jesus who was with them. (This says a lot about the power of the shared table but we’ll save that discussion for another time.)

What do we do when we think Jesus has gone? No doubt the women were upset when they realized Jesus wasn’t where he was “supposed” to be. And yet even in their disappointment the women were able to hear the truth and accept that Jesus was alive, not contained within the walls of the tomb or within their religious or cultural scaffolding and practices. They didn’t understand it but they also didn’t labor under hopelessness and defeat or willful unbelief.

The disciples on the way to Emmaus were also sad and disappointed when Jesus wasn’t where they thought he’d be. But unlike the women, they weren’t able to recognize God’s presence standing right in the middle of their disappointment. They were so consumed with their own perceived reality that they couldn’t see that Jesus wasn’t nowhere; he just wasn’t in the ‘somewhere’ they expected.

I’m not sure how to end these thoughts other than to say, I hope I can be a little like Mary Magdalene and the other women. I hope you and I can accept the reality that Jesus may have left, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone. We don’t need to be satisfied with just a little personal dose of Jesus. What Jesus offers is so much more expansive and pervasive than what we can reason or imagine, and nothing—not even our stubbornness or despair or apathy or misguided beliefs or ambition or pride or ignorance or sadness or scarcity mindset or disappointment or refusal to listen or change—can actually separate us from the love of God in Jesus. Mercifully, we remain tethered by God’s love whether we perceive or receive it or not.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39, NIV

For you to consider:

What does it mean to keep looking for Jesus when he isn’t where you thought he would be? I’d love to hear your experiences or thoughts in the comments below. I would also be interested to hear about your current or recent experiences in church. Are you still attending? Why or why not?

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ICYMI on The Foundry:

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1. See Skye Jethani’s interview: John Dickson on “America’s Secular Future” on the Holy Post episode 623.