It can be easy to despair as a Christian. With the great evil and division both in the world and, more scandalously, within the Christian community itself, there is great temptation to hopelessness. I think, for myself, this despair stems from an attempt to control things, followed by a realization that my attempts for control are futile, and then feeling hopeless about the entire affair. Throwing my hands in the air, I concede this is just the way things are, and further isolate myself from the world and its problems. Ultimately, despair says there are certain things which cannot be redeemed and from these things, I should separate myself.
This attitude is not unlike those in the early Christian heresy, Donatism. The Donatists desired to separate themselves from the world and its evils. They sought to create a church of saints to the exclusion of the sinners. They believed that the validity of the Sacraments was dependent upon the personal sanctity of the minister. In the end, their heresy is one of trying to control, of saying God’s mercy only extends this far, of isolating oneself.
A favorite image of the Church for the Donatists was that of Noah’s Ark (which, it should be noted, is an image affirmed in Scripture and by the Church Fathers). They rightly saw the Church as the means of salvation given by God, a rescue from the sin and brokenness of the world. In the first of two New Testament letters attributed to St. Peter, he affirms that the waters of the deluge, which cleansed Noah’s world of sin, provide an archetype of the waters of Baptism, which cleanse our souls from original sin. Those who are aboard the ark remain safe from the destruction without.
It seems to me, however, that the problem with the Donatists (and often myself) is the desire to stay on the ark. While perhaps a bit cramped and uncomfortable (and smelly), at least there is a sense of security, a feeling of being separated from those unpleasant and even dangerous things outside.
But the thing is, God didn’t put Noah and his family on the ark so that they could stay there forever. In fact, God only makes a covenant with Noah once he and his family reached land. And God’s command in that covenant is to be fertile and multiply—to be the seed of renewal for all of creation. If they didn’t return to the world, there would be no point for them to have been saved in the first place.
So it is for us, too. Though the Church is the place wherein salvation subsists, it is not ultimately a place of escape or security from the world. Rather, it is a place from which we are sent. Hence at the end of each liturgy, ite, missa est—go, it is sent.
To live liturgically is to recognize all of creation as gift and to offer that gift back to God. In his book For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann writes, “The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God [...]. The world was created as the ‘matter,’ the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament.” Thus, it is part of our call as human beings to affirm the goodness of all of creation.
Of course, this does not mean a blanket acceptance of all things that go on in the world. Nor does it mean conformity to the world. The New Testament is pretty clear on that point. However, the problem comes in when we start to view things—whether consciously or unconsciously—as irredeemable and unworthy of our attention. If we believe anything in this world is beyond redemption it is likely that we have ceased to trust Christ as savior and instead have looked to ourselves and our own small-minded idea of what God’s mercy is.
In the midst of the raging storm, can we trust that Christ is steering the ship, even though He is asleep down below? And even more than that, are we willing to come off the boat at Christ’s bidding and walk on the water towards Him? Rather than throwing our hands up in despair, can we open our hands in prayer and trust?
This is what we are called to: a radical hope that impels us to face the messiness and sin and brokenness of the world around us. In the waters of Baptism we have salvation, but this salvation is not something to be kept to ourselves. Rather, it is what enables us to go out into the world to be agents of the new creation.
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