The Complacent Christian

By Paul Birkeland, Community Life Center Building Committee co-Chair

We St. Thomas folks live good lives – Andy of Mayberry would be proud. Perfect people, living in perfect homes with perfect families; as Garrison Keillor would say, “Everyone above average.” Life is good for most of us, better than we would ever have imagined. We have our families and friends, our social circles, our golf buddies, our bridge clubs, book clubs, and investing clubs. We travel extensively and winter either in a top tier ski area or in the sun. Life is good, isn’t it? Isn’t it? Or is it?

Scratch the surface a bit, and we have our issues. Divorce sneaks into our perfect families and ruins things. Kids go a bit wild and we wonder what kind of parents we have been. The stock market and real estate market tank at absolutely the wrong time, and we are left wondering how we could have been so naive about prices/values continuing to escalate at unsustainable levels. Loved ones die early, or linger with Alzheimer’s or other dreaded diseases, and we wonder how God could allow that! Our advanced degrees suddenly have left us unimaginably vulnerable to all these things, and we are bewildered to the point of despair. Where did we go wrong? What happened? Nobody told us to expect this. Now what? Where should we turn for advice and counsel? We are lost.

Sound familiar? Many have written sociological tomes on all of these issues, but most miss the most fundamental point of all – namely, we are indeed pretty helpless and subject to the whims of the marketplace, our jobs, our relationships. and the many temptations life throws at us. As Pogo so famously put it maybe 60 years ago: “We have met the enemy, and he is us!”

But there is an answer if we just pull back and listen to our hearts. God has created all of us in His own image and has imbued all of us with His grace. All we have to do is accept that grace, freely given, and life takes on new meaning. We are His creatures, and we are here to serve Him. What a novel idea, but it is transformative. We become free when we accept God’s grace.

Now you ask, what in the world does that have to do with the Parish Life Center? Everything, that is all. If we accept that grace and if we thus become free, we also become free to share ourselves with our fellow human beings and free to practice the “hospitality of God.” We are all here for a purpose, and lowering the old handicap isn’t quite it. What is that purpose?

I pondered that when I wrote the obituary for my late wife, Joyce, who died from breast cancer a year ago, and the most meaningful thought came over me. She left the world a better place than she found it. She helped many people and did so very quietly. She served many causes and was known around the community for her generosity. She had a heart of gold. Her purpose was to share the many gifts God had given her, and she did so on a grand scale. And as I reflected further on this, I thought of the many devout Episcopalians who have gone before us at St. Thomas – among them the Clapps, Radfords, Helsells, and many others who donated the land and made significant contributions to make St. Thomas the place it is today. They were not complacent by any means, and they made a difference.

We the living have that same challenge. Are we leaving this world a better place? How so? I believe the new Parish Life Center at St. Thomas will serve many needs in our community – from child care services to Boy Scouts, from sheltering the homeless to a new Sunday School, from providing an emergency community shelter to providing a place for our teenagers to hang out, from serving Al Anon to welcoming nearly 500 AA attendees every week to providing more useful spaces for receptions and community meetings, and, of course, space for Bible study. Spaces will be brighter with better heating and cooling, better sound proofing; numerous activities can take place at the same time, the facility will be high tech, etc. And we will have expanded spaces for a much richer Sunday School experience. Hurray! These are real solutions to real needs, and this project will be an incredible asset to our community at large.

You can make a difference; you can help leave the world a better place by becoming a part of this Parish Life Center project. We need you to be a part of it. For many, becoming a part of the Parish Life Center will be their way of “making a difference” by serving God and “practicing the hospitality of God.” I would call it the end of complacency. Wouldn’t you?

To end with my favorite phrase: “Thanks be to God.”