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The church has - it seems - made an artificial distinction between the holy and the everyday, which has become increasingly reflected in the dichotomy between church and community. What happens in most churches bears little resemblance with what happens in the lives of its people between Sundays. We have created religious enclaves, not just in buildings and times, but in every part of our lives.
It has always fascinated me that Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God by utilising images from the ordinary, every-day life of a first century Palestinian Jew. He impregnated the ordinary - a sower going out to sow, a woman looking for a lost coin, a shepherd guarding sheep - with kingdom meaning. From that time forward, the person doing their ordinary tasks was also engaged in reflection upon God's kingdom, and their part in it.
Of course, we don't have the same access to camels, ploughs and the like in inner-city Melbourne. But I wonder how often we have taken time to think about the way things about us reflect God's kingdom? How would Jesus' parable be written: "The kingdom of God is like a worker at a desk... a driver in a taxi... a shopper in the city..."??
While we persist with foreign images of God at work, we are doomed to separating true spirituality and true faith from the ordinary moments of our day.
Posted by gary at January 10, 2005 03:09 PM
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