I'm reminded of the expression, the more things change, the more they stay the same, especially after this evening's preformance of "The Importance of being Earnest".

For those who don't know the play this quick exerpt from Wikipedia may help: 

...a comic play by Oscar Wilde, it premiered on 14 February 1895 at the St. James's Theatre in London.  Set in England during the late Victorian era, the play's humour derives in part from characters maintaining fictitious identities to escape unwelcome social obligations. It is replete with witty dialogue and satirizes some of the foibles and hypocrisy of late Victorian society. It has proved Wilde's most enduringly popular play.

Wilde was pointing out that institutions and people take on roles that are convenient but not necessarily useful.

So here on mychurch these last few weeks there's been all sorts of talk to not change page formats and to return to the older (meaning comfortable) format because it was better (meaning familiar).  My experience of websites, their masters and administrators is that really the more they "impove" things the more its the same thing.  Look carefully, they are just magicians using slide of hand tricks, its all the same just rearranged.

And while I'm thinking about the illusion called change or new or improved, isn't Wilde right?  People and institutions may look to be doing new things but in reality its not, its just rearranged.

During tonight's intermissions my friends and I got to talking about the church, in this moment I mean the Roman Rite to which this group of friends belong.  We were, with bitter-sweet reflection thinking about how in the early 1960's the church was on the cutting edge of reform, renewal.  Documents abounded that promised change for societies and cultures.  They spoke of social justice and equality, they promoted prophetic and dynamic missions.  And people got excited.  People began to respond to this call for change.  Change is good.  Change means life. Change means growth.

"A grain of wheat remains a grain of wheat, but if it dies (changes) it produces thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."

Now flash forward forty years. 

With each day the church is retracting the energy and direction given it by the Holy Spirit.  It is fast becoming the church of 1950.  And the result is a stagnant institution that speaks to old women's piety and children's need for baptism.  So for all the energy of change the institution remained the same.

Sadly, for the sake of comfort and familiarity many people call for the "old formats" and the trade-off is that anyone not familiar with the old formats meet a church that doesn't address their need.

The church, if it were true to the real charter given to it by the Holy Spirit it would be dynamic.  It wouldn't be so concerned with devotions as it would be with justice.  It wouldn't be so worried about rubrics as it would be with mercy.  It would really try and make The Beatitudes (Matthew 5) real to a hurting world.

Why do we allow ourselves to fall into this "the more things change the more they stay the same" attitude?  I guess because no one likes getting out of their comfort zone.  Okay.  But at what cost?