Holy Week Batman!

Call it an occupational hazard, but I think a lot about the church.  I think about the congregation I serve and the ones I have served.  I think about the Presbyterian Church (USA).  I think about the many other denominations that comprise the church in this country and around the world.  I think about the whole notion of being the Body of Christ, and that last one is usually where I smack myself upside the head and go "D'oh!"
It's easy to begin to wonder if God really thought this thing through.
I have served some wonderful churches and been privileged to know some genuinely good and loving people.  And I have also been profoundly annoyed by some genuinely good and loving people.  And I have been disappointed when those genuinely good and loving people were profoundly annoyed with me.
Genuinely good and loving just isn't enough.
Sin is a really big three letter word.
I have often heard those who would defend the church as an organization and/or an institution start to trumpet the genuinely good and loving things the church does and has done over the centuries of it's existence, and the list is not insignificant.  Then again, neither is the list of catastrophic failures: corruption, violence and general complicity with worldly evil. It all pretty much comes out in the wash.
Sometimes, in moments of uncharacteristic optimism I can almost see the balance shift a little bit to the good, and then some representative of some part of the church does something horrific, or just plain stupid.  For every Mother Theresa, there are five pedophile priests, for every Billy Graham there's Jim Bakker AND Jimmy Swaggart; after a while the math just gets depressing.  Then you have majority that are not exactly staggering failures, but you can't really get 100% on board with what they're up to either: Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, Joyce Meyer, Charles Stanley, TD Jakes etc.  They preach a very particular brand of Gospel, and sometimes, even if you generally like them, you get this creeping suspicion that perhaps they're peddling snake oil.  Maybe it's because they always seem to be trying to sell you something.
My point (I actually do have a point here) is that, from the beginning, Jesus gave his mandate to some profoundly flawed individuals.  He vested authority in a bunch of clowns who, honestly, were better suited to hauling fish out of the sea of Galilee than they were to continuing the incarnational ministry of God.  As hard as it is to believe from the results, God actually planned it this way.
Yahweh has always been a fan of seemingly random, often slipshod and momentary victories, using the worst  possible candidates in the most unlikely situations.  Like the point guard who slips at half court and has the ball fly out of his hand... and then hit nothing but net for a game-winning three pointer.  Yeah, he totally meant to do that.
Marketing the church of Jesus Christ with slick, results-driven, advertising-inspired, sorts of strategies, while it makes perfect sense to our modern minds, is probably rather contrary to God's actual plan for the church.  The stories of the Passion narratives kind of reinforce that notion in my mind.  There are no heroes in those stories.  No one saves the day, no one comes up with a really clever way out of the mess they're in.  Jesus himself prays for the cup to pass from him, but... no dice.
It all starts with a lot of promise and ends in a big hot mess.
The disciples start the week riding high on a wave of hosannas and end it hiding in the cheapest motel room they could find thinking about how they can slip out of Jerusalem without getting tacked up by the Romans.  It's not a pretty picture, but there you have it: our spiritual heritage, hiding in rented rooms thinking about maybe dying our hair in the bathroom of a Texaco so we can get out of town without being picked up by the man.
The really disturbing thought in all of this is: maybe that is the will of God after all.
Maybe the reason why the church is floundering and failing is because we've gotten too big for our britches and God is getting back to grassroots.  Maybe God wants some more glorious misfits like Abraham, Jonah and Peter instead of slick, smiley, dudes and well coiffured platinum blondes preaching and singing to arenas full of clamoring sycophants who "really feel uplifted" by the wonderful atmosphere.
Maybe I'm being cranky.
Maybe this mosaic of messed up, confused, self-absorbed, cult-of-personality driven, anxious, and complaint-ridden group of people who sit around wringing their hands about where they are ever going to find some "new" people to come be a part of this borderline psychotic community (honestly sometimes well over the borderline).
How's this for a new way of pitching the church: Messed up? Crazy? Lazy? Directionless? Anxious? Afraid? Combative? Obstinate?  We know how you feel.  We've been that way for two thousand years, but for some reason God still hangs out with us.
We've tried just about everything else, maybe we should give honesty a try.