Out of the Matrix

I don't know if there are any Matrix aficionados out there in the blogosphere, but I'm a big, unashamed fan.

One reason why is that, when they take a breather from the overzealous gun play and the over-the-top CG wizardry, the characters in the Matrix series actually have conversations. And, for movies, long ones. They kick around (when they're not kicking each other around) some really intriguing stuff. Love. Faith. Fate. Choice. And, of course, the nature of reality itself.

When you meet the central character, he's Mr. Anderson, a not-so-mild-mannered, cubicled computer jock by day, and Neo, an insomniac hacker by night. He's living a double life, flying under the radar, but the authorities, in the person of cybercop Smith, are closing in.

He's consumed by a question. As a hacker in a universe that (though he doesn't know it yet) is nothing but very complex code, he has glimpse here and stumbled upon there, anomalies -- little scraps of evidence that all is not as it seems. Behind everything he knows is something he doesn't know. Past all that appears to be real is something else. Something Other. He knows one thing. A word. "Matrix." What is The Matrix? Neo doesn't know it yet, but someone's looking after him. And though he thinks he's going crazy, he's really going sane.

I think there are many people today who, when they view the thing we call "church," have that same creeping sense that this thing we're in, as real as it has seemed in the past, is not all there is. The people I know who experience this most acutely are people who, swept up by the Holy Spirit in the last two or three decades, plunged into churches wholeheartedly, worked, served, gave, prayed. It is those who most wanted to do church who now ask "What is The Church?"

Like Neo, they've gone underground, hacked into the code (that is, searched the Scriptures with fresh eyes and open ears), and found evidence to support their uneasy feelings. The church as we know it -- and let's be careful here to identify it specifically as the American church,, in fact, the Predominantly White, Middle-to-Upper-Middle-Class, Protestant Evangelical/Charismatic church ... more or less -- often bears only a passing resemblance to the ancient faith and its 1st Century practitioners. The PWM2UMCPE/C church, like the Wachowski Bros.' Matrix, is a cultural construct, or, if I may turn that around, a constructed culture.

Like Neo, these hackers been awakened from the Matrix, and suffered the profound shock of having most of their cultural props knocked out from under them. They're finding one another. And they're now involved in a conversation. Some call it the Emerging Church. Some think they're going crazy. But I think -- and here, I guess, I declare a sort of allegiance -- they're going sane.

But my allegiance is "sort of." Yes, I'm a fan, but a wary one. I worry about the Emerging Church because, for one thing, it's not unprecedented. In fact, the very cultural construct the Emerging Church deconstructionists would like to dismantle is, for the most part, the outcome of the work done by the last group of deconstructionists that blew through the PWM2UMCPE/C church. Those familiar with the movies will remember that when Neo finally finds the Door and meets the Architect, he finds out that he's not the first to have done so. Others have gone before us as well -- many, in fact, since the 1st century. And we, like it or not, are living with the results of their conversations.

One thing that concerns me is this: Some (although they may just be tired, and need a rest) have toyed with the idea that church, in any formal sense, ought to be dispensed with. The idea is that we all just unplug ourselves from the Matrix and, well ... stay unplugged.

That's a tempting idea. Who wouldn't like to sleep in Sundays?

There's some evidence from Jesus own life that that might be permissible. When he began his ministry, he did what all the rabbis did. He went to the synagogues. He became part of the church of his time. But when his message wasn't well received, he stopped doing synagogue gigs and went out into the Judean countryside. And a bunch of people followed him out there. And you could certainly make the case that he didn't so much leave as get chased out. When someone tries to through you off a cliff, it's time to go!

But it was Jesus himself who first called us the church. He led us away from the institution of the time, to be sure, but he also instituted something new. He didn't deconstruct the synagogue. He simply did His Father's will wherever and with whoever would consent to do it with him. I find it interesting how little effort he made to "rescue" the synagogue. To set the elders straight. We have to remember that, unlike us, he could have called down 12 legions of angels and set things to rights in a quick minute. He chose not to. When his followers tried to take him by force and make him King, he was outa there. But he also said that on this rock (and by that, I think he meant, himslf, not Peter) he would build his church.

That and many other things he said have lead me to the firm belief that , since I am -- we are -- the church, unplugging might be problematic. Truth is (well, I think it is) that unlike Neo, we can't unplug. We're not just jacked into the Matrix, we're hardwired. The church cannot escape itself. If you want to unplug, you gotta die to do it.

Until Jesus comes again, we -- our being together, somehow, as the church -- is the closest thing to Zion we get this side of the grave.

And that's exactly the way He -- the real Architect, not the pompous greubeard in the Matrix movie -- intended it.

Doesn't that boggle your mind? It does mine.