Killing the savior

"The Zen Master warns: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” This admonition points up that no meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real. The Buddhahood of each of us has already been obtained. We need only recognize it."

I am not Buddhist.  But I heard this saying back when I was in seminary and I've remembered it.  I won't attempt to interpret this from a Buddhist perspective.  But it causes me to think of  my own situation and experience of being bipolar, and stimulates yet another thought.  Perhaps the opposite thought.

"If you meet a savior within yourself, kill him!"

If there is one word that best describes my manic side it would be 'savior'.  It's wrapped in a sense of a holy calling, a mission to make a difference, a conviction that "I can fix that", and a sense that many depend on my fulfilling this purpose.  If I don't do it, who will?

"Who will?"

There's an obvious answer to that.  As a person of faith I believe deeply in the one and only One who is the Savior of the World.  

Believing this leads me to the conviction that whenever that savior mentality enters my brain, I must kill it.  I relate to John the Baptist's statement, "I am not the Messiah."  That is a confession of faith in the one who is.

Christmas Eve services.  Always a highlight of the Church Year.  Typically the largest attendance, and this held true for us as well.  But there was disappointment.  I have been experimenting with using Facebook advertising to try and extend the outreach of our little congregation.  Our invitation to Christmas Eve services went out to 1241 households in the Otis Orchards area.  1241.  Our attendance was 41. That's approximately double our normal attendance, fairly typical for a Christmas Eve service, especially when we know that some of our regulars are attending elsewhere with their families and others probably stayed home because of the icy roads.  But I must confess I had hoped that my efforts at outreach would have netted a lot more.  Especially because my family alone accounted for nine of those in attendance.  I dreamed of a standing room only crowd.  

Kill the savior.

This morning I'm thinking of a strawberry patch.  The thing about strawberries is that you can plant and nourish those first starts, but it is the strawberries themselves that send out the shoots that grow the patch.  I would say that we sow the seeds, but the growth comes from God.  But even that is too much.  The seeds of faith are sown by the Holy Spirit.  Not us.

Kill the savior.

In the end, faced with the decline of the Church in our country, and the challenges of growing my own little congregation, perhaps the most faithful response is simply to recognize that the responsibility for revitalizing the Church is God's alone.  God's alone.

There is no reason to get depressed about 'our failures', cause it wasn't our responsibility in the first place.  I would like to counsel God about a reasonable direction forward, and the need for real growth in our Church and congregation, but alas, God does not need my counsel.  Whatever God is doing, God is doing.  

Kill the savior, and let the Savior live.