8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
As part of my own spiritual preparation for our church's adult retreat in Santa Fe this past weekend I read Willa Cather's great Southwestern novel "Death Comes for the Archbishop". It is a fictionalized account of the permanent establishment of the diocese in northern New Mexico and the missionaries who founded it. One has only to gaze at the austerity of the land to imagine the physical hardships those men endured. Heat, cold, snakes, bandits, hostile native peoples, lack of water, and lack of connection with the outside world are but the things which immediately come to mind. All for the sake of the Gospel.
Our retreat leader for the weekend, Dr. Will Willimon, challenged us also to live for the sake of the gospel. One of his underscoring themes is that the Christian way is not a way of comfort and ease, but always one of risk. And it's risk that gives our Way its appeal -- it's witness. But according to Willimon, the North American church has mostly lost its sense of adventure and risk and as settled for comfortability.
As he said in an earlier interview,
"We have lost precious few disciples because we've been so courageous or bold or radical . . . More people we've lost we've lost just through death . . . And it's hard to count the people we've lost through boredom -- [people who have] just given up on the idea of the church ever saying anything that was challenging . . . invigorating or even maddening."
Reading "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and hearing Willimon's words at the same time, the retreat was for me a reminder that we are called to be a church on mission -- a risk taking, invigorating, and certainly not boring people.
Near the end of Cather's novel one of the missionaries has grown old and frail. He catches a chill, which will take his life. But the old missionary has a broader perspective than this most recent illness. In Cather's words:
"The old man smiled. 'I shall not die of a cold . . . I shall die of having lived.'"
Indeed.
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