When contemplative prayer doesn’t work – and hard words do.

In the Celtic Daily Prayer of the Northumbrian Community there's a lot of liturgical material you don't easily find elsewhere. And sometimes it gets in the way of meditative or contemplative praying. Some sentences are just too provocative. Like this one:

"Many whom God  has, the church does not have; and many whom the church has, God does not have."

That is Karl Rahner, an often controversial Catholic theologian, parodying Augustine, who was also controversial but tends to be seen as a central pillar of orthodoxy. One of Rahner's more controversial ideas  was the notion of 'anonymous Christians', those who were unrecognised as Christian because they were outside the recognised spiritual terrories of the Christian churches. But their character, their inner impulses and instincts, were open to and responsive to the grace of God in Christ. Now however difficult this idea is, and it is fraught with theological contradiction and damaging tensions, Rahner is saying something important as a general observation on the Church's amnesia about some of Jesus' hardest words. "Not everyone who says Lord, Lord, will enter the Kingdom".
And what about that huge granite boulder of a parable in Matthew 25 where the presumed righteous, (in Matthew's gospel, the Church), have to ask in consternation, when did we see you naked, hungry, thirsty, in prison and do nothing about it? That parable is a road-block on spiritual complacency, a take-down for theological over-confidence, a puncturing of presumed moral and ecclesial superiority.

We can all find good biblical and theological reasons to refute the claim "you can be a Christian without going to church". And we instinctively resist the idea that some people outside church life altogether are nearer to what it means to follow Jesus than some professing Christians who say "Lord, Lord." For myself, I am trying to stay alert, to see those whom God has, but the church does not have; I wouldn't presume to think too hard about whom the church has that God does not have. But I suspect there is a serious and troubling truth in Rahner's words that catches those warnings of Jesus to those who think they have Christian discipleship and their personal place in heaven sussed. And then there's that veiled promise of Jesus that there are those whom the church does not have, who are invited into the Kingdom because when Jesus was naked, hungry, thirsty, sick, in prison, they fed, cared for and visited him. And all of those, God does have.  Hmmmm.