By Rev. Justin Comber
YOU ARE SUPPOSED to be afraid of wild animals. It’s part of what makes them beautiful.
They are untouchable. You shouldn’t be able to pet a lion like a cat. It’d probably take your hand off. You shouldn’t be able to snuggle a grizzly. These are far off things. They are mysterious things. If you are near, but not afraid, you aren’t really getting it. The danger is a part of their appeal. Their untouchability, their uncertainty, their indomitable forms, and their wildness is what draws us and makes us curious.
But I was at a place a few years ago, where wild animals were held in cages for public display. There were lions, and the remnants of the frozen meat they had been fed. There was a wild bird of prey in a cage about 60 feet tall; nearby, visible, grounded. There were primates, too (no, not that kind), in little rooms behind fences. All of these wild things were brought to me. I could see them close up without fear or danger, in my element, safely, tamely.
It was among the ugliest things I have ever seen. The cages, too small and cramped, too domestic, had robbed the wild of all its beauty. Fear and inaccessibility is what made these animals worth seeing, what drew the crowds to gawk through the chain link fences, to point and jeer. But they looked miserable in their captivity, and I felt miserable looking at them. Because the best things in life cannot be captured or owned. Because there is nothing so destructive to its subjects and objects as possession. Because there is no less Christian word in the whole of the English language than “mine.”
Possession simply is not a Christian virtue.
You and I belong to the community of Christ. And we recognize that there is virtue in surrender, in handing over, in recognizing that God is our source. We abandon control of others. We surrender our rights. But the Love of God is never ending. Those who are abandoned to the love of God cannot help but love with God’s own love—unbound, unpossessed, undemanded, wild, and beautiful.
I have been following the Bishop’s plan for our diocese since 2020, when the first hints of its direction appeared in his inaugural address to synod. It has been refined and given structure since then. It has been the object of subsequent addresses to synod, sermons, and consultations.
At its centre, you will find a choice. We will either focus our attentions on the administration of the church, or we will become one. In the fall edition of this paper, the bishop reinforced the need to relinquish our need to “[c]onquer, master, and ‘get ahead’…” Instead, we ought to “open ourselves to the uncontrollable encounter with God.”
That’s the plan, in a nutshell. We find where God is, and we meet God there. It will fail to satisfy our desperate need for the controllable and the measurable (things well within our capacity to possess). It requires us to stand a few steps removed from our administrations and metrics. It requires us to act (fiscally, even) as though our proclamation of a God who makes himself known, who loves, who redeems, and who is merciful, kind, and just (i.e. a Christian reality) is worth acting on.
We love our church. I love this church. But control isn’t affection, and ownership isn’t love. (Aside: I have fallen for an idea I found in Rowan Williams’ Looking East in Winter; that the trinity is bound together in unity by a love that loves the other fully and completely without erasing or consuming the other into oneself).
So, allow me to offer you a beautiful alternative. Allow me to offer you the life of a disciple of Christ. Forfeit your possession of this church. Abandon every hour and tear and dollar that you have given—that your families have given—to establish these beautiful places. Release all of it, every last bit, into the hands of God. And then watch as these precious gifts, this terrifying abandonment of self and family and history become good in God’s hands.
That is what this church is for. There is no beautiful, mysterious, and wild future for your church, this diocese, or the Anglican Church of Canada if they are trapped in our feeble hands, or bound and caged as our unhappy possessions.
In short, our plan (our only hope) is to be made new by the God who we cannot own.
Rev. Dr. Justin Comber is the rector of St. George’s Goderich and Christ Church Port Albert, and Adjunct Professor in Biblical Studies at Thorneloe University.
Photo: Sutirtra Budiman/Unsplash