|
Today we begin a three week miniseries based on questions that I’ve been asked by you to address… questions that have been roaming around in your brains and perhaps even intriguing your souls… questions that have a kind of universal appeal, and whose responses and reflections hopefully will nudge each of us on our journeys of faith. The question for this morning is a fitting place to begin. Why Church? Why participate in a church when there are any number of do-good organizations around town that are equally, if not more efficient, in meeting needs? Why commit to church when our world offers a variety of places and pathways in which to explore and expand one’s own spirituality? Underneath our sister’s initial question was the unspoken one…has church outlived its usefulness?
This is fertile ground for a minister such as myself! For, as many of you know, I left the church for a lengthy period of time, and only returned under duress and because of a swift bolt of lightening from the Divine! So I have spent many sleepless nights and waking hours contemplating this very question, Why church? This meditation is some of what I have concluded.
Humorously, church is a great way to keep thousands of ministers, including myself, off the streets and gainfully employed! Church provides all of us here at RUCC a place to enjoy Helen Arth’s delicious communion bread each month, not to mention potlucks, study groups, service opportunities, and lots of party-like spirit-filled fun! In the afterglow of last Sunday’s amazing Elders Service, I’m reminded that church is a place with over 2000 years of combined narrative wisdom, delivered with insight, humor, and a healthy dose of inspiration! In my youth and young adulthood, I was raised to believe that church was the only place where love and service co-mingled in a way that would transform, revitalize, renew both self and world. And for over 40 years, I lived and worked as if that were true.
But there is more…
Another person with whom I discussed this question in the past week laughingly noted that church is the one place you’re guaranteed to be next to someone who’s on the “fast track” to God…a direct line to the Divine through the pastor or priest, so to speak…assuring you that your special prayer will be heard and your unique need immediately addressed! That one scares me!
It is true some participate in church to assure themselves a better place in heaven, or personal salvation from sin, or to alleviate an imprinted fear of eternal damnation, or because they believe church to be a kind of fast-track to God. Still others seek in church, and in church alone, a deeper and more enduring relationship with God, with Christ, with Spirit, and an abiding peace that comes with that sought-after balance. Some participate in church as a kind of surrogate family or as a safe place to socialize.
On a still more serious note our worship leader, Bettye Wheeler, and I were discussing this question of why church, and she admitted that she is drawn to church like a piece of metal to a magnet; that she needs the church experience like an electric cord needs to be plugged into a socket to receive its power. Bettye’s need to connect with God and with others has propelled her to be involved in church since before she can remember, and from that experience, she has come to see that a part of God is in each one of us; and that part calls us to connect and to be connected.
Why church? I imagine that were we to pass the microphone around this group of 100+ worshipers, we would receive at least 200 unique responses! Perhaps this is partially why an early disciple of the apostle Paul, soon after the apostle’s death, addressed this very question of why church in a little letter written in Paul’s name to the Gentile church at Ephesus. Surprisingly, his or her responses are still relevant today, and we heard several of them this morning. Among the reasons given for church to exist and for believers to connect to it are these:
First, having faith in others and feeling love for them is great says the author of Ephesians. I would add that many do-good organizations share these motivating feelings of love and faith. But such powers need a spiritually-sound safety net in which to operate…the church is such. With checks and balances, with others in the church to help observe the greater movement of the Spirit, we can share our faith and our love abundantly and safely.
A second reason comes from the author of Ephesians, who writes that in the church as in no other human organization, we literally are invited to participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. If we are open to it, we can experience brand new life, just as did Jesus when he emerged from that early-morning tomb. Will we return from the dead by being a member of a church? Probably not! But I can guarantee you that you will be party to an endless number of tiny, everyday, yet personally significant resurrections.
Thirdly, the church, according to the Ephesians author, is the ongoing Body of Christ on earth…and this is where the service aspect of our work enters in. Did Christ get everyone healed or all the lessons in life taught or all the world’s children blessed with a future? No, and that becomes our job to continue his work on earth. You’ve heard me say many times, quoting St. Theresa of
Avila
, that Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which he is to bless us now.
Further, the writer of Ephesians says that in the church, we are brought close to God…so close, in fact, that we are no longer strangers to our own spirits, or aliens wandering the earth aimlessly. Through the church we become family of God, taking up residence in the household in which God dwells. Does not God dwell in forests, we may ask, or in Kiwanis, or Rotary, or PEO, or PTA, or any other good civic organizations? Of course God dwells therein, too. The author of Ephesians is not, I believe, writing in an exclusive manner, nor is he or she attempting to say that God can be found only in the church. Rather, it is through the relationships that are fostered in and by church, the relationships in which love and service co-mingle, the relationships in which forgiveness follows wrong-doing, and where grace is the mother tongue, in those relationships God finds a home that is secure.
Finally, within the church, as in other human organizations, people are endowed with particular gifts. But unique to the church, apparently, is the source of these internal gifts, the source which is the Spirit of Life itself. According to Ephesians, the Spirit offers gifts to each one of us gifts of teaching, or truth-telling, or sharing good news, or inspiring others, or healing or humility or gentleness or patience or love…these gifts given by Spirit, enable us to effectively be Christ on earth.
So, the bottom line in this little letter circulated among the earliest Christians, seems to provide a consistent response to our question, “
Why
Church
?” In church, as in no other human institution, is the potential for actually embodying Christ on earth, and for plugging into the necessary power source to keep us going and going and going. In that embodiment, we both acknowledge and trust that, in Christ, we have a model of forgiveness, of loving our enemy or even just being kind to the really-irritating neighbor…in Christ, we have a brother who does not leave us alone in the tiring work of justice and peace.
Unlike other human organizations, when the church is at its best, we have fellow-travelers on the journey, who seek to be equally as connected to Spirit as are we. We have the guidance of elders in faith, whose perspectives offer more than wisdom to our own. We have the support of a safety net of saints who covenant to offer us a sure and steady hand when we fall or fail or take a wrong turn. Other organizations certainly are valuable and worthwhile to the wellbeing of the community, the nation, and the world. Yet, no other offers us this much-needed co-mingling of love and service intimately connected to Spirit. As we participate in healthy church, we benefit from both external creative programs of outreach and avenues of service, but especially through pathways of internal spiritual growth and grace. On this foundation, says Jesus to Peter, this foundation of relationship, of grace, of love and compassion, on this foundation, is the church uniquely constructed… through your eyes, through your heart, through your hands and feet and soul and mind, through your body and through mine…we are the church together.
|
