Church

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To Return or Not

Will people who have been locked out of church by the various Covid-19 lockdowns will actually return to in person worship when the restrictions are eventually lifted?  In a world where church is important to people the answer would be of course. In our world I am not so sure. Too many parts of the church not only no longer teach that church is important but do not even seem to believe it.

Once upon a time churches believed that they were an essential part of God’s plan of salvation. He who does not have the church for his mother cannot have God as his father. The sacraments were not just a public affirmation of faith, not even just a means to strengthen your faith by actual grace, but an unquestioned necessity for salvation. No church, no heaven. Okay, I am exaggerating. But not by much.  The exceptions to church, while they existed, were rare and often sublime.

People went to church as if their very souls depended on it because they did.  Churches taught it, people believed it and with some very notable exceptions society was better for it.  People took God, God’s standards, and God’s church seriously. The very act of failing in our aspirations put us in mind of God’s mercy and the good news of Christ crucified. People, again with notable exceptions, seemed more prone to forgive others and our civil discourse was, well more civil.

Then, as they say, something funny happened on the way to the forum.  People forgot that church was about God. Maybe the church forgot first? Hard to say. But somewhere along the way church, preaching and teaching became more about keeping people in the pews in a world of entertainment options, than helping them live into God’s will for their lives. Church became what some have called the therapeutic church and others have called the emotive church: all about making the people who attend feel better now.

Better, more entertaining sermons. Better music. Less focus on the demanding bits of scripture and more on cheap grace. Church after church focused, not on the eternal destination of their members but on smiles and accolades. What started as just putting a little sugar on the oftentimes bitter pill of discipleship soon became all sugar and no discipleship.

Oftentimes sugar was enough. The seed fell on rocky ground and it sprang up with joy but had no root. Because it had no root, when the sun arose, when troubles came, it withered and died. 

Pastors of all kinds have seen people of joyful yet shallow faith fall away when a crisis comes into their lives. A faith based on hearing and not doing is like the man who built his house on sand and when the storm came great was the lost.

But hey, I get it. The ground was rocky, it’s not easy to convince your parishioners to let God prepare the ground. To let the Holy Spirit convict them of sin. To pick up their cross rather than that doughnut in coffee hour. Spiritual formation is hard work. With man it is impossible but with God all things are possible. Pastoring is hard work and we are told that pastors will answer for the souls entrusted to them.

So, bit by bit, small step by small step, we convinced ourselves that perhaps it was right to let people only hear the good, only experience the fun. We forgot Paul’s exhortation to run the race and pummel our spiritual life.

We became emotive preachers. We became feel good churches. Church became a place where our best values were applauded rather than where our human thoughts died to make room for a renewal of our minds according to God. So we were lost.

Now in this time of pandemic the believers look with disbelief as their leaders declare church non-essential. In person worship? Not now. The actual sacraments? Maybe later. It’s almost as if they believe that it is better that one soul go to hell than the nation to be hurt. Or was that Caiaphas?

What root do these people have? Do they understand the importance of discipleship? Do they understand the importance of the sacraments? Do they understand how in person worship impacts their eternal destiny? Or is church just a feel good exercise that can be replaced with some nice music and maybe a nice affirmation over a cheap glass of wine?

Is church necessary, or is it at most icing on the cake? If I’m okay the way I am, and you are okay the way you are, and god loves us all so much that he will let us all into heaven then, really why shouldn’t I sleep in on Sunday morning? Maybe the first few weeks was fine with watching virtual worship, but hey I have a life and the TV is in the living room. That backyard is calling. Someone has to mow it and gosh it is easy to walk away. No one is watching, I’m not really listening anyway. That magazine in my lap? My pancake breakfast? Life is life, got to go.

I doubt the emotive church that has grown up over the last 50 years or so can take a sustained lock down. It’s just a habit and there are a lot of more entertaining options for positive affirmations out there.

Time will tell. Well we hope time will tell. Truth has become such a flexible concept these days that one wonders if the church can cover up their bad numbers forever.

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To Church or not to Church

In our hour of need will the Church of God stand up to the powers of this world, or will they be complicit in defining us as numbers in some “model” to be ordered about without regard to our inherent dignity as image bearers of the Most High?

There is so much going on and it all seems to make so little sense.

Businesses are closed. People out of work. Life routines disrupted. Dreams interrupted. Families disunited. That which makes us human is outlawed. The virus seems to have been overestimated. Our ability to kneel before governments as they take away our liberties seems to have been underestimated. We are forbidden to visit the old and infirm. We are forbidden to be with our loved ones as they struggle for life in hospitals. We are forbidden to hold their hand while they die.

Our governments have forgotten their role as civil servants to enable our human flourishing.  In a rush to avoid death they have forgotten what makes life worth living. They have reduced us to numbers in a mathematical formula. They order us to behave in a certain way in order to achieve a particular outcome without regard to our humanity.  One plus one may equal two, but one person in isolation does not equal living.

We know from experiences with solitary confinement, as in prisons, that the human mind cannot tolerate being truly alone.  Human interaction and human touch are not just important to us, they are necessary to our survival as humans. To live is to live with other people.

Every time a person is denied the ability to visit with their loved ones in hospital, the ill are deprived of one more reason to live, one more motivation to heal, one more reminder that someone cares.  Lost in a medical induces haze the touch of family and friends may be the last tenuous connection to life the person has.

Every time a person is denied the ability to be with a loved one while that person dies, we not only deprive the dying of solace but we wound the living. For the living know that it is part of their imperative to care for those they love. To not be able to care for our dying, hurts our sense of self.

From before all time, and before creation, God has always been three persons in one nature.  That is, God has always been, and always will be, an intimate loving relationship.  Humans, being created in God’s image, are made for intimate loving relationships.   We are not made to be alone. We are not created to be isolated. We are meant to interact with others. To talk with them, to touch them, to know them and be known by them.

We are not numbers. We are human beings. For the government to reduce us to mindless variables in their pandemic models is to treat us as less than human.

We were expecting our churches, the institutionalized visible outward forms of our faith, to guide us through these troubling times, reinforce our faltering faith, and to help us put the virus and physical death into perspective. We have been given; closed churches, online services, a voice on the other end of the phone. We have been deprived of the sacraments and even denied being shriven before dying.

Jesus, once healed a leper with a touch, although touching lepers was forbidden. Jesus walked among us, often in crowds too dense for social distancing. Jesus commanded us to visit the sick. Jesus has been reduced from a real active presence in the church to a feel good motivational story we hear of at a distance.

We seem bereft of the presence of God. We seem reduced to trying to remember God’s words. We are in a drought of God.  The very people who are meant to most remind us, and represent to us the active presence of God in our lives, seem almost complicit with the secular authorities. The same authorities that are so intent of reducing us from human children of God to mere numbers in a mathematical model.

Where is the church? It seems, over the last decades, the church has more and more abandoned the role of mediating the word and presence of God. Instead it seems to have chosen to mediate between the earthly powers that be and their subjects.  In the Church’s rush to be relevant to our current lives it has become more and more irrelevant to our eternal hopes. When our earthly masters tell us to isolate ourselves, to cut off part of our souls and make ourselves less than fully human, our churches do not push back they adapt. When our secular authorities tell us that in order to be “Good” we must stay at home, our spiritual leaders tells us that we no longer have to live out God’s command to visit the sick and those in prison.

I have heard expressions of regret but have not seen significant push back.  A leper came to Jesus and said, “Lord if you will you can heal me”. That is Lord if you want to heal me, even though it is against the law and you will suffer consequences for breaking the law, you can.  Blessed be God, who did not send His son to be incarnated of a Zoom conference, but to walk among us in our flesh and our nature. Blessed be God, that He did break the law and physically touch the untouchable, to bring mercy and healing.

Yet God’s most public followers, the modern church, when faced with its “If you will, you can help” moment chose to step back, close its doors and phone their compassion in.

There is so much going on and it all seems to make so little sense.

No one minister is to blame. No one should judge any particular Bishop, superintendent or senior pastor. This has not shown the world anything new about the weaknesses of any individual.  We all knew that to begin with.  Rather is the spirit of our time. A spirit of materialism which seeps into all of us making us think more of the things of men than the things of God.

The church as a whole must regain it way. Let this time of pandemic remind us all that no matter what our society says, physical life is not forever. Let our awakening awareness that we are dust and to dust we must return be in turn a wake up call. Let the church reclaim, with God’s grace, its role as being the outward symbol of God standing between this limited physical life and the life eternal won for us on the cross.

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What a “Church” is

A Church is often seen as a local congregation. A congregation is the local embodiment of the universal Body of Christ. As such it has certain responsibilities entrusted to it, Such as:

  • Corporate worship including the sacraments
    • Various verses indicate that the church is for worship including but not limited to
      • Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God.
      • And 1Corinthians 14:26 What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.
    • For an example of a reference to the sacraments see the section of 1st Corinthians which deals with the Lord’s Supper
      • 1Corinthians 11:26 (NRA): For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
  • Organizing to the relief of the necessities of the brethren
    • See among other verses indicating that the church is to be a center of resource distribution
      • Acts 6:1: Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food.
  • Facilitating the discernment and efficient coordination of the gifts of the sprit to the saints
    • The gifts are given to individuals but they are to be discerned within, developed within and put at the direction of the Church
      • 1Corinthians 12:7: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
      • Ephesians 4:11: The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
  • Equipping the saints for the work of ministry
    • See Ephesians 4:12: to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
    • Such equipping to include but not limited to mutual support and encouragement
      • See Romans 14:19: Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.
    • And Mutual accountability and aid in discernment
      • See Ephesians 4:11: The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,
    • And Proper mechanism for education, honing gifts and organizational help in applying same
      • See 1Corinthians 2:16: “For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
      • See also A1Corinthians 14:40: but all things should be done decently and in order.
  • Sending resources to the greater Church for doing all of the above over a greater area
    • 1 Corinthians 16:1-2: Now concerning the collection for the saints: you should follow the directions I gave to the churches of Galatia. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put aside and save whatever extra you earn, so that collections need not be taken when I come.

 

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The house of God

Trigger warning. This essay is not about any parishioner who may have a legitimate reason to miss Sundays. They may have a job that force them to work on Sundays. They may be ill or housebound. They may be on a much delayed vacation. This essay is not about them. It is not about any particular person. This essay was written about what appears to be an epidemic in American Christianity. Apparently there is bad teaching out there that is leading more and more people to think of Sunday morning service as just one more option among many for Sunday morning. More and more people seem to consistently prioritize other events over spending time with God in the service.

The other day I overheard a parishioner saying that “god says we can talk to Him anywhere, don’t have to be in church”. Of course this is true. It is also over simplified. When people avoid meeting god in the church they often talking to a god that they invent themselves. That is because the true god often makes us feel uncomfortable. The God of our backyards rarely challenges us.

So the question is not where can we talk with a god? The question is where does god agree to meet us? Meet us in a full way. A way which can challenge, and transform us.

There is in genesis 28:10-22, the story of Jacob’s ladder. Jacob who is traveling stops in a valley for the night. He sleeps. He dreams. He dreams of a ladder to heaven. He dreams of angels and he dreams of god. In the morning he declares the place he slept Bethel which means house of god.

Now days we think: how cute, Jacob thought that god has a house. But is really such an odd idea, that God would have a house?

Ah! You say god is omnipresent (everywhere). To which I reply, yes of course but scripture teaches us that god is in heaven. Try Matthew 6:9 when Jesus teaches us to pray “our father who art in heaven “.

Then you might say that god is in all of us. To which I reply that scripture teaches us that Jesus ascended to the right hand of the father in heaven. Luke 24:51- Acts 7:55

But what about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit? Yes it is true that believers receive the gift of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It is true that in the mystery of the trinity that means that the “being” of god is with us. Yet the person of Jesus and the person of the father are in heaven. I know, confusing.

Scripture shows us that while God is God and therefore impossible for us to fully understand, he interacts with humans in a particular way. In the Garden of Eden: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” (Genesis 3: 8). In some fashion God’s interactions with us are localized.

Think of the exodus; Moses goes up Mt. Sinai to meet with god. God then directs the building of the tent of meeting. The tent of meeting. Its name says it all. It is the tent where god met with the people.

This of course later translated into the temple in Jerusalem. Remember in Deuteronomy god told the people that they were to worship him in the place he would designate. Not anywhere they please, but where god says to. Deuteronomy 12:5

Yes there were instances of worship elsewhere. But on the whole god was pretty insistent on his rules. Think of what happened to Aaron’s sons when they offered unauthorized fire. (Leviticus 10). Or what happened to Uzzah when he touched the tabernacle without authority to do so. (2 Samuel 6)

The point being that god interacts with people in a localized way. Even Jesus did the festivals at the temple and indeed as a boy Jesus referred to the temple as “my Father’s house”. Luke 2:49

Well you might rely on the fact that all that was Old Testament. The temple is gone and new times are here. To which I say, yes and no.

The temple is gone but scripture still indicates that god interacts with us in a localized way.

When Peter declared Jesus to be the messiah the son of the living god. Jesus responds with on this rock I will build my Ecclesia (Matthew 16). Which is a Greek word meaning an assembly and is often translated as church. Jesus did not say he was going to build an individual believer here and another there. He was going to build an assembly.

Elsewhere Jesus says where two or three are gathered in my name I am in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). He did not say if you call on my name in your Camaro I will be in the passenger seat. Not if you talk to me in the parking lot by yourself I will be there. But where two or three are gathered in my name.

In the Old Testament the temple was the father’s house. People could talk to him and pray to him anywhere but if they wanted to meet with him they went to his house.

In the New Testament, and by extension today, you can talk with god and pray to god anywhere. And believers carry the person of the Holy Spirit within them. But if you want to “meet with god” you have to go to the assembly.

Please no jokes about having an assembly in your hot tub. Ananias and his wife Sapphira thought they could play fast and loose with the assembly in acts Acts 5. It did not turn out well for them and that was New Testament.

Remember Jesus refers to the assembly as himself (Acts 9:4) Elsewhere in scripture the assembly is referred to as Jesus’ body (1 Corinthians 12:27 among others).

There is a real spiritual identification between Jesus and the assembly/church.

Paul talks “we are the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16).
In Hebrews it is said not to neglect to gather (assemble) Hebrews 10:25

There are many reasons for believers to attend Sunday services. There is, as I said before, less chance of avoiding the hard bits of the gospel. There is mutual encouragement to be given and to be received. There is the arena is which our faith and our spiritual gifts can mature. In short, time is the assembly is where we meet Christ and grow in Him.

In Matthew 22:1-14 Jesus tells a parable about a wedding feast. The king invites people. They do not want to come. He invites more people, he even has his servants go into the streets and bring everybody, willing to come, into the wedding hall. But when the king is walking through the hall he spots one man who was not wearing a wedding robe. (All the other men were wearing jackets and he showed up in a dirty t shirt.) The king threw him out. It’s not right to disrespect the king.

To sum up. God is god. God chooses to interact with people in a localized way, even today. You can talk to god in your shower. You can pray to him in your garden. But if you really want to spend time with him, and build up a solid relationship, as he invites you to, then you have to go to his house, and his house is his church.

You don’t want to end up not being known by God. Matthew 7:21-22

We’ve been taught that we are to be in a personal relationship with God. Let us not forget that real relationship means spending time with Him.