Yeah, but she's our witch

“Yeah, But She’s Our Witch:

Why the Church Should be More like Serenity”

The best t.v. show of all time, “Firefly,” centers on a small spaceship crew trying to get by in the tumultuous universe the human race has made for itself five hundred years from now.  The rag-tag band of outcasts and adventurers that crew the good ship “Serenity” are ostensibly in search of one thing: a job.  Any work you’ve got for them, they’ll do it, from hauling legal cargo and passengers to smuggling contraband and occasionally a little gun-slinging.  They need work.  They need money.  They need food for their table and fuel to keep their ship flying.  They’re a lot like most of us.  Specifically, they’re a lot like any church I’ve ever heard of.

Churches, whether we intend it or not, are goal driven.  We’re always on the look-out for that next job we need to do, trying to discover the work that God wants us to accomplish, the causes He wants us to champion.  We look to find a mission around which we can wrap our congregational identities, believing that if we do so, a sure sign will be that our doors will stay open.  Our lights will stay on.  Our staff will get paid.  We’ll be able to do even more Godly work in the world.  The cycle of blessing will continue when, and only when, we successfully execute the job God wants us to do.

What I’ve always loved about “Firefly,” though, is that over and over again, the mission gets derailed by the needs of the people trying to accomplish it.  The crew must put their work on hold to take care of their own, and sometimes others who come across their path.  Mal takes time out from pursuing a paying job to flatten a guy who insults Inara.  When Book needs a doctor, the job comes to a full stop.  Rescuing Simon and River from danger gets in the way of, well, almost every mission that comes along.  In fact, it’s relatively rare that the crew of Serenity completes their work.  They are really not great successes.  When the crew does see a tidy profit, they almost immediately hand over every cent of it to ransom Mal and Wash from captivity.  In fact, time after time, caring for one another wrecks the crew’s plans, interferes with their work, and complicates their profit.  This is why I want to live aboard “Serenity.”

In church, we know we’re supposed to love each other.  Everyone agrees to that, but when relationships get in the way of accomplishing what we think is supposed to be our “mission,” other people are off the priority list.  Once a person disagrees with us on what the church should be doing or how we ought to do church, that person becomes expendable in our minds.  Sure, if the dispute is minor enough, we might agree to disagree, but if the difference is real and vital, then we feel justified in either winning them over or cutting them loose.  They’re going to hold us back from accomplishing our God-given mission, all that work we believe we are called to do in the world.  They become, to use a very churchy term, “stumbling blocks.”  I mean, I love you and all, but if it’s a choice between you and my mission, then it’s your own fault for not getting with the program.   

The problem is, I’m harboring a growing suspicion that the relationships we develop in church, first with Christ, and then with each other, may be the only mission we are called to in this world.  What if you are supposed to be my only cause?  Knowing you might be supposed to be my only mission.  Loving you could be my only program.  When I look at the scriptures, I see the story of the good Shepherd. 99 sheep are very definitely with the program.  They’re hanging out right where they’re supposed to be, munching on the food they’ve been provided with, staying in the boundaries, obeying their Shepherd.  That’s not good enough for Him.  A shepherd’s whole job was to stay with the sheep, and that’s the one thing He “fails” to do.  The missing sheep leaves a big enough hole that He literally walks away from the rest of His responsibilities to go and restore it, prioritizing the needs of the individual, and the troublemaker at that, over the successful accomplishment of the rest of His task.   

I want to quit thinking of you as something I can dismiss when you don’t support my agenda.  I want a friend who is most present to me when I am most useless to them. In the church, as in the rest of the world, we distance ourselves from others when they become a liability. When someone is caught in failure or sin, the world builds a pyre and the church shows up with the matches.  Where, oh where, are the friends who will show up with a spaceship and some shot-guns and announce: She may be a witch, “but she’s our witch.  Now cut her the hell down.” Where are the people willing to insist that right at the moment when a person becomes worthless or dangerous is the moment when we need to scoop them back up into the fold and hold on for all we are worth?  What, besides that kind of faithfulness will ever open up our hardened, self-satisfied hearts enough for us to be changed?  What else can it truly mean to become the body of Christ on earth?  This church thing, heck this salvation thing, is kind of a crazy idea to begin with.  It shouldn’t work.  Only love, first God’s for us and then ours for each other, will keep us in the air when we ought to fall down.