Church Family

I am proud to say
the church is a family,
my family.

Unfortunately, you’re an American family
Too busy to sit down to dinner together
to know each other,
to see into one another.

Though God has put you together,
You’ve ripped yourself asunder
Living in an unchecked divorce
but keeping up pretenses for the neighbors

time-adulterers, love-adulterers, relationship-adulterers
cheating yourself more than any other

Your children want nothing to do with you
hope to be nothing like you
and they’re leaving you;
Though really, if you could see it,
you left them first a long time ago.

And now you hope they’ll come back to bring you grandbabies.
But they’d rather raise their children on their own.

But don’t let any of that bring you down
Jesus can be your lifelong prozac,
your conveniently renewable prescription
from the family doctors

-Oh, the pastor, your hired help for spiritual chores;
-Oh, the children’s minister, nanny to your sons and daughters
-And oh, the youth minister, your teens’ activity coordinator.

But at least your house is wonderful,
full of stored up, unused equity,
and your retirement secure,
built up like a surely impenetrable storehouse of grain.

And at least it’s safe from unwanted

solicitors and vagabonds
and upstarts and criminals
and the shamefully lost and broken
and the strange people of the Middle East–
those Muslims–
and the strange people of the familiar West–
those gays–
and any other uncomfortable inconvenience

that makes you think and question and pray together
because your family does not know what to do.

And at least when things are not right
in this household
you are skilled at imagining and living and pretending
like nothing is wrong
skilled at reinterpreting and twisting and self-promoting
so that nothing is wrong

The church is an American family,
and why fix what is not broken?

 

Sometimes you make me sick.

 

But somehow I still love you,
and that’s what makes you my family.

Nothing can change that,
but I won’t be your son or your daughter any longer.
I will be your sister, your brother, your honest friend
Because I can’t be silent when I feel so sick about us.

But it would really help if you would be sick with me, brother
Let’s double over in grief together, sister

over our all-too-American family
over all we’ve done and not done

And even as we run out of tears together
Let’s go back to father
and be a new family again.

 

---

The church is a whore, but she’s still my mother.
-Augustine?, Luther?, Anonymous?, Made up quote by Tony Campolo?

 

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~ by Chris Sweigart on Tuesday, January 20, 2009.