The Crumbling Church
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| Dzibilchaltun Mayan Ruins, Yucatan Mexico |
How
do you talk about the church that is crumbling, falling down in the world, no
longer what it used to be? This is one
of the issues facing the writer of the Gospel of Mark. In Mark 13, Jesus says in his last sermon: As
he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher,
what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you
see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all
will be thrown down.’ The church, the
temple is in crisis.
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| The layers of the pyramid at Dzibilchaltun |
I
was touring the Dzibilchaltun -
Mayan ruins in Yucatan Mexico. This is a
wetland area where trees are small, vegetation runs riot and snakes are
abundant. In these northern wetlands an
archeologist uncovered ruins. As they
dug below the layers of vegetation they found a life of a people, a
civilization that has scattered into new locations. This site used to be an economic, political,
and religious center of the Mayan people and now it is crumbling. In these pyramids and structures which were
aligned with the stars, you don’t discover buried tombs or treasure at the
center, you discover pyramids all the way down.
The layers tell how life was for the people, whether good or bad. In good times, the stone walls are thick and
solid and held together well. In the
lean years, the time of famine, war or natural disaster, the walls aren’t as
thick, the binding materials are sometimes nonexistent, and the stones crumble
easily. And then the building
stopped. There were no more layers.
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| The Catholic Ruins Dzibilchantun |
At this site there is a visible sign
of why the building stopped. In the
midst of the ruins is a crumbling Catholic church. There in the center is a structure, also
falling down, of what changed and transformed this Mayan people. The conquistadors came through and said your
beliefs, practices and culture need to change.
We need your gold and resources, your labor and even your beliefs. They demanded that the Mayan give up their
Gods and worship the Christian God. Yet
even there, a place where the oppressors ruled, the church was
transformed. The conquerors came to
bring the truth, to subdue the people.
Yet they were now as crumbled as the older ruins.
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| The Catholic Ruins Dzibilchantun |
As our guide talked about this site,
he shared how at home with his wife they speak a version of Mayan/Spanish. He shared that even today as the people
practice Catholicism; they still have Mayan traditions that were incorporated
into their life of faith. I wish I could
remember what he said those traditions were.
But what struck me was how this tour was reflecting what we had been
talking about in my continuing education. We had been discussing how Mark was written in
a time when the temple had been destroyed.
For Mark, the religion that he had known was disappearing and being
rewritten. Mark was trying to speak to
the lost children of Israel about a new way of relating to God. For Mark, the gospel is about
transformation. On hearing the story,
will you turn to God and believe the Good News?
Will you hear of this Messiah and allow him to enter your life and
transform it?
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| The spring at Dzibilchantun |
So
the temple is crumbling again. More than
50% of the people in any given community do not attend church. They may be spiritual but not religious. They
may be agnostic believing in something, but not sure what. They may love what they have heard about
Jesus and hate what they have heard about the church. And the churches themselves are in
decline. Numbers are shrinking,
buildings are crumbling.
Is the church willing to take a leap
of faith to write a new word? Will the
church share the Gospel in a new way in which both the churched and their
unchurched neighbors are transformed and neither is the same?
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| Gulf of Mexico |
Come Jesus as you go before us, may
we catch a glimpse of Your Kingdom.
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