Lent and Restoration: On Making the World the World
February 17, 2024 | By Jacob Brogdon Cornell ‘25
image description: globe close-up
The lectionary today includes a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah, in which Yahweh is laying out a conditional covenant with the people of Israel. “If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,” He says, “your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday … your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt.”
This can be read as a political message to the ancient nation of Israel in the midst of a fracturing and partial occupation. Yahweh has appointed for the nation of His people, which he pledged to uphold, to be restored as the direct result of only following His order.
Theologian and public intellectual Stanley Hauerwas makes the statement that “the first task of the church is not to make the world just. The first task of the church is to make the world the world.” Making the world the world is done by setting the church under the teachings of scripture and tradition only—resisting infusion from the pressures of modern governments, ideologies, and social movements. The world is made distinctly the world when the church is clearly other.
Hauerwas intends to shake out of the church certain presuppositions about Christianity’s place in modernity–namely that it is to interact with modern secular society by adopting secular society’s current baseline consensus. Of particular concern to him is the system of liberal democracy, but this applies broadly. Envisioned, instead, is a church whose independent practice of Christian life and worship draws the world to itself, and ultimately to Christ.
The details of political theology are debatable, but it’s essential that the church is focused on perfecting itself in a way that it becomes naturally distinct before it attempts to perfect the non-church world. This distinctiveness does not come from doctrinal guarddogging or installing louder heresy sirens. In fact, these may harm the church more than a “firm center, soft edges” approach to doctrinal disputes. It is also not distinction for distinction’s sake that is being pursued, but distinction unavoidably occurs when the church is the church in the best sense.
The church would be blind if it could not see that our world needs restoration. But we do not find success here in appealing to ambient power structures. We find this in dutifully and courageously following the full, beautiful, historic Christian faith as the church, global and congregational.
This is not a trouble-free undertaking, but the psalm appointment for today gives us an exemplary prayer to aid in this: “Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth.” The Body of Christ comes into its telos when it puts its full being and effort into properly giving glory to the God who gives life. A Christianity whose focal activity is, instead, activism will find itself woefully ineffective at being either a political force or a renewing spiritual body.
Lent, as a practice, makes the church clearly the church. The lenten practices which we take on for ourselves do not serve to bolster our position in the hierarchy of social institutions which have influence over modern life.
They do not vanquish from the public attention anti-Christian attitudes and pressures. They do not make Christianity more respectable to whichever elites we would most like approval from. Instead, they radically draw us into the person of Christ and partially away from the gluttony and over-consumption of our day. This discipline moves the church to be the church, which makes the world the world.