Institutionalized! - Lectionary 32B

Like it or not, human beings are civilized by institutions. Institutions give us a framework to live together and advance the goal of a group. Three observations:

One, institutions are absolutely necessary. Without institutions, we have only personal opinions or individual preferences. Institutions focus the cause. Not only that, they are part of an inevitable process. For all of Jesus' critique of templism in his incarnated life, in arguments about who's the greatest and questions over admission to the kingdom, early institutionalization was at work.

Secondly, institutions err in opinions, deviate from their original purpose and intent, and deteriorate from within. Orthodoxy and orthopraxis begin and develop, then become fixed and permanently articulated. Almost immediately, such belief and practice is drawn away from the purpose of "the founders" not only by contradiction, but also by context. Deterioration of the institution comes in the frozen notions of the true believers as well as from the brokeness of the human beings in the institution and the death of relationship and dialogue within the institution.

All of this leading to the third observation: institutions as creatures of human beings subject to death do themselves die! Internal confusions and contusions have their place in hastening the death process, but inevitability also points to our subjection to fate, as external wars of political entities, conflict in society, and yes, natural, cosmic disaster put an end to every institution.

"Not one stone will be left here on another," says Jesus (in next week's Gospel from Mark 13). But before that comes the institutional erring and contradictory practice exposed in the deeds of the scribes and made known in the tragic context of the widow who gave "all that she had to live on" toward an institution in decline at best (or, if so inclined to believe by scholars already destroyed) when these words were penned.

All of this having been said, there is no doubt that many institutions, mostly large and enduring ones, take on their own identity beyond the contributions of the individuals that allow institutional functioning. (Political and religious institutions seem to have the most "success" in this area.) At the same time, people are driven to continue contribution whether by force of legality in the political arena or salvific necessity in the religious.

When all is said and done, there will be a time when all is said and done. And the "last man standing" will be the One who conquered sin, death, and devil as high priest of a sanctuary "not. . made with human hands," One who offered Himself once, for the sake of the world. In Holy Baptism, "we were united with him in a death like his" so that, through the vision of faith, we might see ourselves sharing in His fate: life in the resurrection of the dead.

In a tenuous relationship with the claims of the human institution of the church, even in the context of her errors, deviations, and deterioration, the Holy Spirit creates through faith a divine institution by uniting with poured water, spoken word, and shared bread and cup. So it is that in Word and Sacrament, a scattered, incomplete, self-absorbed, and wandering group of religionists can be claimed in the creed as "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church."

Beset as we are by necessity, wandering and wavering in purpose, faced with the terminus that is death, shouldn't we give all that we have to the One - Jesus Christ our Lord - who draws us to Himself and invites us in His promise to live "in the communion of saints", be reborn in "the forgiveness of sins," and trust in Him to lead us to "the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting"?