Blue Waters, Stinky Ship

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. In fact, he began his journey on this very day!

For months, he and his crew were out on the ocean, cut off from all communication with Spain. No iPod, no internet, no Wii! There was no email, snail mail, or telegraph. Even today’s astronauts do not experience that level of isolation.

Nonetheless, because Columbus and his crew sailed for Spain, they remained organically connected to Spain; so much so that all the territories they discovered and all the wealth in those territories were claimed not for themselves as individuals but for the nation they represented.
(Of course, no one asked the Incas, Maya or Aztecs what they thought of the arrangement.)

As I have been writing about the Church and its role in spiritual life, I have realized just how much all this goes against the grain of contemporary thought. Christians now think of themselves as individually connected to God but voluntarily assembled with others who are also individually connected to God. That is what constitutes a church in our contemporary way of thinking. However, the New Testament doesn’t present things that way.

Paul begins many of his letters with a greeting to a particular local church. “To the saints who are in Ephesus,” he says. Or “to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.” As with the other apostles, Paul assumes that believers will be faithful members of local assemblies. The New Testament writers never assume any other possibility. The thought that a believer might not be organically planted within a local church just doesn’t occur to them.

On the other hand, the apostles did not envision the believer’s relationship with the local church as “membership,” in the sense we use the word today. The believer didn’t voluntarily join a church; he or she was born into the church. The church was the spiritual family of the believer.
Furthermore, the relationship between believer and the congregation had to be deliberately nourished by someone.

Paul writes in Colossians, chapter 2:
For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ.

“Knitting people together in love” requires a healthy community. We are not “knitted together in love” through private piety, by doing good things like reading the Bible or by praying at home. We are knit together with other believers through the rumble-tumble of life, through our ups and downs, through attachments and misunderstandings, through victory and grief: through living out real life in the context of our spiritual family, the local church.

Our private piety is an outgrowth of our community life and our community life is an outgrowth of our shared piety.

Thus, we cannot be “knitted together in love” by jumping from one church to the next or by hopping from one “good gospel show” to a better one across town.

Spiritual growth simply does not happen if we keep an arm’s distance our brothers and sisters in Christ. Being knitted together in love requires intimacy. It only happens, if, over time and through commitment, we live together, work together, learn together and grow together.

As Columbus sailed into the West and gradually lost sight of land, the sailor’s sense of adventure turned into the routine of surviving on the open seas. After a while, when no new land came in sight, when it began to look as though the ocean was infinite; the sailors began to complain. Their fear of meeting untold monsters from the deep, falling off the edge of the world, or merely running out of food and water, gripped them and wouldn’t let go. But Columbus was the captain because inside that ship, they were still in Spain.

I have no idea what the sailors did to remind themselves that they were still Spaniards an on Spanish territory inside that ship. I suspect that they did things like raise flags, sound bugles, celebrate special holidays and observe other kinds of ritual that would keep Spanish life alive in their hearts. If so, then someone had to see to all of that. Someone had to “knit everyone together.”

Then one day, land was spotted. The journey was over. The ship had carried them across the wide expanse to the other shore.

I bet they were glad to get off that stinking ship!

But while they had been at open sea, the ship sure had come in handy – stink and all!

Polly Wanna New Church?

A little church rented a building that had once been a brothel. On the first Sunday of services, the deacons were coming in the front door and saw that the former inhabitants had left a parrot behind. As they laughed at the parrot, the bird looked them all over and squawked: “same old crowd, same old crowd!”

Well, hopefully not! However, undeniably every church is a collection of sinners; who, called to live a different sort of life, gather to receive grace and strength to do so.

Our church is reading through the One Year Bible, so we are presently in the Book of Judges. It is an interesting book, full of some of the Bible’s most memorable stories. It is also a disturbing book since the characters depicted as heroes of the faith act in ways that we would not tolerate in a heathen. They visit prostitutes, cut off members of their enemies’ bodies, and sacrifice their daughters to win wars.

Sounds like the same old crowd!

I like the book of Judges though. It reassures me that God will work among a people, even if they have a woefully deficient understanding of His ways. And that is what is happening here. The generations after Joshua do not learn the ways of God. They sink into the ways of their heathen neighbors, the very thing Joshua had warned them against.

By the end of the era of the Judges, we are entering the time of Samuel. He is the prophet who heard God’s voice as a little boy and led Israel back into a fuller awareness of covenant. After Samuel came David, Solomon and, in time to come, the prophets.

Covenant information and the wisdom to apply it to life, accumulates over time. It takes generations before the full force of redemption makes a visible impact upon a family or a nation. It also takes generations before a backsliding from covenant reveals its full impact.

Many nations that wallowed for centuries in poverty and ignorance are now enjoying rising levels of education and economic prosperity. I have lived long enough now to have witnessed their transformation and understand its cause. It is the single factor that the world’s economists miss: the effect of the gospel on the poor masses.

When I was a teenager in Ecuador, the masses of the nation were desperately poor and illiterate. Cars were few and roads were bad. We still used many of the of the old Inca highway system from the days of the Empire; cobblestone washboards that made thin ribbons across the Andes and down into the jungles. After a few hours creeping on these roads, one was thoroughly exhausted.

Today, the nation is full of energy and intelligence. A beautiful mass transit system effectively carries the people of Quito from one end of the city to the other. Good roads connect the cities of the mountains with those of the coast. Markets are full and the people are healthy.
This is the story of many of the countries of Latin America.

What did all of this? It wasn’t politics, that’s for sure. Neither theirs nor ours understood the suffering of the masses – or cared, for that matter. Politicians on both the right and the left botched numerous opportunities to improve the lives of the people. Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum ping-ponged the poor from one extreme to the next.

Meanwhile, something had entered the backdoor of Latin culture. In the hovels and barrios of our great Latin cities – in the rural huts of the starving people living in something akin to slavery on the massive plantations – very flawed and simple people were teaching the scriptures. Often barely literate and poorly educated themselves, Christian workers taught a new kind of life and laid down their own relatively comfortable existence to awaken the people of Latin America to new possibilities.

While politicians strutted across the stage before their middle class audience, while those who could listened to the speeches and read the newspapers; while the left and the right battled it out in the streets with Molotov cocktails and tear gas; while revolutions came and went; the poor memorized scripture and spent nights in prayer.

Their grandchildren are no longer poor. They are the nation’s teachers and judges. They own the new businesses and run the clinics and hospitals.

It took a while and the ones who made it happen didn’t get to see it. The leaders of nations and universities still don’t see it. They paddle on and on about theories that never worked and don’t work now. Their grandfathers missed the point and so do they.

In an earlier blog, I talked at length about how the early church fathers borrowed the Latin word "persona” from the theater. To the ancient Romans, a persona (from the Latin prefix “per” meaning “through” + the word “sona,” meaning sound; thus “to sound through”) was a mask used by actors in drama. The persona allowed the audience to understand the actor’s role in the play. When the audience saw the persona, they knew what character the actor was wishing to express.

We have already seen how the early church used the word persona in their development of the doctrine of the Trinity. Now I would like to use the word persona in another context. I would like for us to consider that the local church is the persona through which the church catholic, the body of Christ, is seen and experienced in this world.

We cannot see the mystical body of Christ. We can only see the shape it takes in a particular time and place, upon this fallen planet, peopled by fallen men and women.

Although believers know that the spiritual body of Christ exists, although to believers that eternal body is more real than the earth itself, it is nonetheless, invisible to most of the world. Most of the times, it is invisible even to believers. Naturally then, when we hear the word “church,” we usually think of that face of the church that we can touch, see and experience. We call this part of the body of Christ, the local church.

While the local church may seem so much less that than the mystical body of Christ, it is the place where the rubber really meets the road. The local church has a quality about it called community, a characteristic of corporate existence that nurtures believers while they are making their journey to eternity. Believers do not make their spiritual journey alone. In the Old Testament, believers belonged to a real country, a nation called Israel. New Testament believers belong to a real community too, as should we. It is called the local church.

The writers of the New Testament stress the importance of belonging to a local church. The writer of the Hebrews (10: 24,25 NKJV) says,
"let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."

I have been fortunate to live long enough to witness the power that is hidden within the local churches. The world ignores the most powerful of these assemblies because they seem so ordinary – so much like the same old crowd. Even Christians cannot be proud of everything done in the churches, especially when the gospel is poorly understood and so inadequately practiced.

Still, the parrot is wrong. It just looks like the same old crowd. In all the mess, a nation is being born in the home of one of those people so badly living out the faith they profess. A little boy will soon hear a voice and answer “behold, your servant heareth.”

Altared States

The Part and the Whole

On today’s date in 1865, federal troops shot and killed John Wilkes Booth. He had been running for days after shooting Abraham Lincoln. The nation, weary of all the fighting and dying, had little sympathy for Booth. Even Southerners, who merely weeks before had been fighting the armies commanded by Lincoln, joined the search for the ego maniacal actor.

Booth was perhaps the last real casualty of the American Civil War.

The amount of books, academic papers, movies and other media depictions of the War Between the States would take a lifetime to read. Americans keep trying to figure out how and why their ancestors took up arms against one other. Most American families with long roots in the nation descend from people who fought on both sides. That is certainly true of the Scott family.

So why do nations divide into such bitter conflicts?

In Joshua, chapter 22, there is an interesting story about civil war. In that passage, Israel almost goes to war against two of its own tribes. Surprisingly enough, the contention was over an altar! Two tribes had built a separate altar from the one upon which the rest of the Israelites offered sacrifices. This was such an egregious act that it nearly resulted in bloodshed.

Just before the troops marched to battle, the nation sent the high priest, together with representatives from each tribe, to ensure that their information was accurate. As it turns out, it wasn’t. The tribal altar was erected as a memorial. It would never be used for sacrifices but would remind the descendants of the two tribes that they were a part of a nation. The tribal descendants would observe that although their altar was identical to the national altar, sacrifices would be offered only on the national altar.

The tribes were not attempting to be their own nation.

But why was it such a big deal to the Israelites for tribes to make their own altars? Wouldn’t more altars in a country make for a better nation?

Well, yes. However, sacrifices could only be made at one altar, so that every Israelite, of whatever tribe, would have to make pilgrimages to a common place to worship God. That would ensure the national and spiritual unity of God’s people despite their tribal differences.

In normal times, God’s people thought of themselves as Danites, Benjaminites or Levites. Each tribe had its own dialect, dress and customs. However, God intended that the people remember that they were members of a common nation. Allegiance to the nation came first. Allegiance to the tribes came second. What a separate altar seemed to threaten was a division of the nation into rival sects. This would not be tolerated.

As Jesus told us (and as our sixteenth president reminded us) “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

When a tribe sets up its own altar and fails to see its need for the nation, it commits the sin of sectarianism. If the rebellion becomes deeply entrenched and removes those who embrace it too far from the common altar, the rebellious tribe may find itself cut off from its roots.

This is why orthodox Christians view the so-called Christian cults (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons) to be outside the boundaries of Christendom. We don’t have the right, and we should not have the desire, to judge whether a particular individual in any such group is or is not God’s child. That is His business. However, we can say, indeed we are required to say, that such groups and the teachings they espouse, are heretical. We can also say that such groups lack apostolicity because they have broken the essential links that connect Christians with the apostles. In such a case, we say, with sorrow, that they cannot be regarded as legitimate Christian assemblies.

Of course, it is not only the Christian cults that have abandoned the apostle’s doctrine in our times. Great portions of the so-called mainline Protestant churches have also abandoned the “faith once and for all delivered to the saints.” They no longer confess or practice what C. S. Lewis called “Mere Christianity.” Therefore we must sadly conclude that these groups too have broken ranks and have set up their own private altars.

The Church of the Ages is due a higher level of allegiance than our local church or denomination. The local church is where we live, learn and grow in Christ. It is dear to our hearts. Our denomination represents the customary ways in which we express our faith in Jesus and we grow to love it. However, local churches and denominations earn the right to call themselves “Christian” only to the extent that they hold fast to that core of faith which has been passed from Jesus and the apostles through all generations.

In the last few years, such denominations as the Episcopal Church U.S.A have built their own altars. They have set up doctrines and practices that endanger their Christian identity.

Christian churches around the world of all sorts have responded by pleading to such groups to to recognize the mortal danger of their growing apostasy. The new altars must not stand. Either these churches will repent and return to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, or the other tribes will disown them, allowing them to continue their long descent into liturgical Unitarianism.

The Body of Christ is amazingly broad and diverse. Copts and Baptists, Lutherans and Marionites, Pentecostals and Quakers may appear to have little in common. Indeed, most days they don’t even think about one another. However, they have a common altar. Something flows from a single source to their people. That stream enriches the diverse soil of the peoples of God. When that common source is threatened, then the Church will and should rise up to define its borders.

Fortunately, in the Joshua passage, the tribes explained to their brothers that they had no intention of offering sacrifices on a separate altar. They intended to make their descendants aware of the common heritage they shared with the other tribes.

The nation was satisfied. It left the tribes free to express the covenant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in their own unique way.

A hundred and forty years ago today, a man who had just attempted to rekindle the newly concluded conflict between the peoples of the United States, met justice. The nation – North and South – did not mourn his passing. Americans were busy grieving the loss of a odd, gangly man in a tall hat who had called for a new birth of freedom; so that the “government of the people, for the people and by the people would not perish from the earth.”

The conflict had tested whether this nation or any such nation “could long endure” and it had passed the test.

Last week I drove from my home in Nashville, Tennessee to visit Springfield, Illinois. I crossed no border. I needed no passport.

That is what happens to the descendants of those tribes that honor the nation and do not erect separate altars.

Will's Time Machine

Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday.

I knew that this morning; my daughter reminded me as I headed out the door. I didn’t know what to do.

Bow?

Weep?

Sigh?

Then I attended grandparents' day at my granddaughter’s school. During the presentation, some students recited Sonnet 116, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.” It’s my favorite sonnet.

I first learned it in high school because I thought it would impress girls. It didn’t. The line about going to the edge of doom was too much for the girls I dated. Also, I didn’t know what most of the sonnet meant. I just learned it to impress people. Now I know what it means. I discovered that the “remover”, removes things that we find attractive and alters things that threaten to alter love. However, I also know that these alterations do not alter real love because it is an “ever fixed mark.” Love is not time’s fool. Time, which removes and alters things, is helpless when it comes to the “love of true minds”. The Bard was right about that, as he was about so much.

The students who recited that sonnet today do not know any of this yet. They have only memorized words. But as they experience life, they will have a road map to help them recognize real love –the sort that is “an ever fixed mark.”

Not many students in our schools care about Shakespeare now. That’s because the culture doesn’t care about him. So, far too many of them will leave school without a roadmap. They’ll know how to make a living but not how to live a life.

This same principle is true about spiritual life. The creeds and hymns – even the Holy Scriptures themselves, frankly -- do not automatically grant spiritual life. One can read them, memorize them and recite them without ever knowing God. However, it is the duty of the church to teach them, so that as we do experience God, we will understand what is happening to us.

Most Christians now are as bored with the creeds as the children are bored with Shakespeare. Both are bored for the same reason: immaturity.

My blogs are a cry in the dark to those who want to shake off the immaturity of our times and become wise. You can decide later (if you wish) that the creeds are not for you. But you should know them and know what they mean before you decide that. Otherwise, you are just praising stupidity and trying to claim it as holiness and piety.

Whenever we recite the Apostles Creed, we are repeating the core doctrines of the early Church. Every generation of Christians tend to emphasize some lines of the creed and downplay others. Each generation also seems to struggle with certain phrases that conflict with popular ideas of their own era. In our times, we seem to have a special difficulty with the line, “I believe in the holy catholic Church”

That line is usually difficult for Evangelicals and Pentecostals. It is especially difficult for those of us who are members of “independent” churches.

In early blogs, we discussed why many believers have a problem with the word “catholic.” With a bit of education we can get past that problem. However, what do we do about the high view of Church that this line seems to suggest?

Independently minded, post-modern Christians tend to see the Church as a convenience. Church is a nice warm place to assemble and meet other believers. We tend to treat our churches like shoes; when one pair of shoes gets too tight we get a new pair! When one church seems not to work for us, we just change churches.

We are just not happy with assigning too much importance to church. So when we hear the phrase, “I believe in the holy catholic Church” It’s just too much. We know that God is holy. We don’t object to that. (At least not yet!) So, we can say easily confess the holiness of God. But is the Church holy? We are not really sure that it is.

The Nicene Creed adds to our discomfort. It asks us to confess, “One holy catholic and apostolic Church.”

We have a problem with the word “one”. If there is one church, then which one? “Holy” is a problem for us too. We don’t seem to be very holy. “Catholic,” as we have already discussed, is a problem. And now, this strange word “apostolic.” What does that mean?

Each one of these words in the creed is important. They each describe different aspects of the church.

The Church is “one” because it is the single entity upon the earth vested with authority to cast out demons and proclaim the Word of God. It is “catholic” because despite its cultural diversity, every local assembly, every mission, every para-church, every group of any kind that claims to represent the Church of Jesus Christ, shares a common essence. All believers are bound together across generations, race, language, national borders - even across death itself. The church is united through the presence of the Holy Spirit, by the common deposit of teaching, by the table of the Lord, and by the living link we have to the apostles. That’s what it means to be “catholic.”

But we have talked about all of this already, haven’t we? So let’s look at this new word, “apostolic.” The word “apostolic” means “in succession with (and sharing the teaching of) the apostles.”

There are many ways that this apostolicity is expressed in the life of a church. For example, all believers are baptized by someone who was himself baptized. The one who baptized that person was also baptized by another. This chain of baptized and baptizer, goes through time, back to the apostles. That is one living link we all share with the apostles.

Also, when Christian ministers are ordained, they are ordained by someone who was himself ordained by someone. The newly ordained minister takes his or her place in a chain of spiritual leaders stretching back to the apostles. Some of the older churches question the apostolic succession of those ministers who are ordained in Christian communities other than their own. This is another disagreement between Christians. After the Reformation, most Protestants did not keep careful records of their ministerial lineage. Also, some churches do not even see this link with the past as being very important. Nonetheless, the vast majority of ordained Christian ministers of all denominations are ordained by the laying on of hands of older ministers who were themselves ordained, and are therefore, a part of a living link stretching back to the apostles.

There is an even more important link than these sacramental ones to the apostles, however. When we preach, teach and experience what the apostles taught, preached and experienced, we are linked to them. A local church, in order to be apostolic and to possess the quality of catholicity, must above all else, teach and live that which has “at all times and in all places been believed”.

In Acts, chapter four, St. Luke tells us that the early Christians were faithful to the “apostles’ doctrine”. When we learn the creeds, when we pledge to be faithful to the doctrines that they contain, when we experience what the apostles experienced, we are making good on our intentions of remaining “apostolic,” of being faithful to the apostles’ doctrine.

None of that may be very important to you. It is certainly not important to a new believer who is just glad to escape from hell and be rid of sin. But once you have any level of responsibility in spiritual leadership, the doctrines of the church become a roadmap.

Yeah, I know. This stuff is really, really old.

But love is not times' fool.

There are some things that time cannot remove or alter.

One who truly loves the church will not admit impediments to learning what our ancestors asked us to learn. Even if we decide to disagree, we at least will know how to get through our “brief hours and weeks, even to the edge of doom.”

‘If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ nor no man ever loved.”

Happy Birthday, Will. I’m glad there is still a living link between us and that the link survives somehow, as I heard from the students today. You have helped us live richer lives because we learned your words before we knew what they meant.

Two Geezers Walk Into An iPad (Tomorrow is Dan’s Birthday)

I once asked a great sage of our time, Jerry Kroon, how he was doing.

“Well, Dan, I have officially entered geezerdom. It’s a strange new life.”

I am always amazed by the unique insights of Jerry Kroon. A percussionist’s perspective can be difficult to access but once a person truly listens, the wizardry of that gild opens up unfathomable riches of mind and heart.

Ok. That was all BS. But Jerry really is funny.

What caught my attention was his word “geezerdom.” Now that’s a great word.

I am not ready for geezerdom. Heck, I just now got used to adulthood.

Tomorrow, April 22, I turn fifty-seven. Unless I get an iPad for my birthday, the most memorable thing of the day will be simply that I will realize that I have lived on the earth for fifty-seven years. That was really old when I was a child. Now it is just sort of old.

I don’t see an old or even a middle age face in the mirror. I see a mature young adult face. I realize that I am the old one who judges my face that way. The reason for the discrepancy of perception may be that I am the only person alive capable of accurately discerning the features of my own face. Alas, the discrepancy may be due to another cause – namely, what psychology calls “cognitive dissonance.”

Cognitive dissonance is what is popularly called “denial,” that interesting feature of human consciousness that edits our perception and eliminates elements of reality that we may find unsettling.

Jerry doesn’t have cognitive dissonance, I guess. He looks in the mirror and sees an aging man. He wants me to wake up to reality. So there is only one solution – I must stay away from Jerry Kroon. Otherwise, my perception of myself may change and cause me discomfort.

For this blog to have any point, I need to offer some keen insight pretty soon. I suppose it is this: in order to acquire any sort of wisdom, we need healthy community. Otherwise, cognitive dissonance keeps us from learning the truth about ourselves. We keep believing our own inner script about ourselves. We keep playing our own inner movies; movies that we write, direct and produce for our own private enjoyment.

They are really good movies, by the way. I watch mine all the time. I am the star in every one of them. Every person in those movies who disagrees with me becomes the villain. I win; they lose. I never make a mistake and never get old. Women find me young, brilliant, strong and irresistible. The world awaits my every idea. Yeah, the inner movies are the greatest.

I have been writing about the church and why God makes the church an indispensable part of our spiritual life. He knows more than we how screwed up the church is. He knows how dysfunctional, chaotic and irritating it can be. But the church is a community that turns off our inner movies. It makes us look at something else. We learn when our own breath stinks because someone will always tell us.

Church is the antidote for cognitive dissonance disease. I just hate it sometimes! Especially on birthdays. Church tells me about mortality and the need to prepare for age and death. It tells me that suffering is a natural part of the fallen world. It tells me to get out of the way so my children can have a chance. It laughs about geezerdom.

So which church should you attend that will do all of that for you?

I don’t know. That is what we have been talking about in the last five blogs or so.

Churches really differ from one another. Though we accept that this diversity exists in churches, we must be firm in our commitment to the eternal things: the unmovable and unshakable aspects of the Lord’s Church. For, although the church is a human institution, it is also a divine institution.

The New Testament boldly calls the church: “the pillar and ground of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15) It also calls the church “a nation of kings and priests.” (Revelation 1:6,) The church is also the family of God.

A few years ago Tom T. Hall made a lot of money singing, "Me and Jesus got our own thing going; me and Jesus got it all worked out; me and Jesus don't need anybody to tell us what it's all about."[1] It was a great song, a very American song. It caters to our sense of independence and autonomy.

Unfortunately, the song was also heresy!

God has chosen to work within this eternal covenant community that He calls His Church.

If you want God to be your King, you must be willing to live within His kingdom, under His rules, and in community with His other subjects.

So, despite our fallen nature and all our differences of opinions, we Christians have much in common. All Christians meet together to worship. We all honor the Word of God. We all partake of the Lord’s Table. We pray for ourselves and for others. We teach one another the Ten Commandments. We pray for and encourage one another. We work to take food, clothing and shelter to the poor. We help one another become more like Christ. We try to remain true to the core teachings of the Lord and his apostles.

Whatever our failings, these things insure that our local churches are true reflections of the Lord’s church.

We want the church to be important, powerful, relevant and intelligent. However, what the church offers is something we can’t get anywhere else. It offers truth: we are mortal, fallen and finite creatures in search of glory and eternal life. Without knowing that we are fallen and mortal, the search for glory will destroy us. Without knowing that we suffer, grow old and die, we will fail to find glory or eternal life.

Churches have all sorts of ways of teaching us, but none are more effective than the companionship of a brother in Christ who has lived too much life and experienced too much stuff to tolerate denial. A man like that will hold the mirror up in front of your face and laugh when you finally see in that mirror what everyone else sees: a mortal, fallible man.

God shouldn’t use a drummer though – that’s a bit over the top.

Maybe He’ll get me an iPad to compensate.

That’s not much, right?

Janis Joplin asked for a Mercedes Benz!

Who Let You In?!

Today’s One Year Bible reading (Luke 19) tells the famous story about Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple. The money changers made a good living exchanging Roman money for temple shekels. Roman money was too nasty for the temple, so they created their own currency. If a person wanted to give an offering – buy a lamb to sacrifice for example – he had to first acquire temple currency. During special religious seasons, pilgrims came from all over the empire to worship in Jerusalem. They were moved, had more money than sense, and were often gullible. Local people could clean up on the tourists, pocketing the percentage points they made on the financial exchange.

Jesus was outraged and we know why.

It wasn’t just because the temple was making money from worshippers; it was because the money exchangers were filling up the only place in the temple where unbelievers could pray.
Much of the temple was off limits to unbelievers. The “court of the gentiles” was the only place the heathen could worship.

But that was where the money changers were – in the court of the gentiles.

We know this because of what Jesus said: “It is written that my house should be called the house of prayer for all nations but you have transformed it into a den of thieves.”

Well, he did just say that! He whipped the holy entrepreneurs on the back with a whip as he said it.

It would go over about as well today if someone were to get nasty with all the merchandising that goes on in our churches, but I’ll leave that for another blog.

The point for today is the Lord’s passion about his house being a place for all nations.

“Catholicity,” the quality we say of something that consists of all ethnicities, was one of the most striking features of early Christianity. In fact, the reason the word “catholic” is included in the Apostles Creed is that early Christians believed that this was an essential element of the faith, no less than baptism, repentance, a final judgment and the resurrection from the dead. In the first century, no religion was “catholic.” Religions were deeply related to ethnicity. Jews were no different. However, the Lord never intended for the Jews to be a spiritually gated community.
God’s promise to Abraham was “in you all families of the earth will be blessed.”

The reason God had instructed Moses to build a court of the gentiles was so that unbelievers could come close to the God of Israel and accept Him.

Alas, like so many Christians today, the Jews didn’t want “those people” in their church. In fact, many scholars believe that the reason Muslims became bitter toward Judaism was because of the treatment they received in the early days of Islam from Jews when Mohamed actually wanted to learn more about the faith. Evidently, when Mohamed and his band of Arabs went to the synagogue to learn, they felt ridiculed by the Jews who attended there. Up to that time, they had turned toward Jerusalem to pray. After that, they began turning toward Mecca.

It is said that while living in South Africa, Gandhi read the New Testament. He was so impressed after reading it that he went looking for a church. When he got there however, the sign over the door said, Whites Only.

He never went in.

So it was not just the merchandising that made Jesus angry. It was the fact that believers had made it impossible for unbelievers – at least the wrong sort of unbelievers -- to get in.
The Christian church began without a deep natural loyalty to ethnicity. Everyone was welcome. After the conversion of Cornelius, the Counsel of Circumcision, and the revival in Antioch, the church leapt out of its Hebrew womb. Since then, we have been stuck with anyone from anywhere who wants to join!

That impacts the way any specific Christian group expresses its faith.

Many believers get perplexed about this great diversity in the worship, teaching, and culture of the various kinds of Christian expressions.

Didn’t the Lord pray that we would be “One, even as He and the Father were One?”

“When and how will that happen,” such believers ask?

Perhaps I’ll shock you by saying that it already happened!

When we realize that the church is an organism and not an organization, we immediately understand that Christians are already members of a single body. As for the fact that we do things differently from one another, who cares?

Should we waste time and energy grieving over our diversity when in fact, that diversity is, in more cases than not, a sign of the strength?

What did we say the word “catholic” meant?

We said that it meant ‘consisting of all people of all cultures, all times and in all places.”
The peoples of the earth are culturally diverse. They like different music. They organize themselves in various ways. They build various styles of buildings.

If the Church was going to reach the different cultures of the world it had to be willing to allow for different music, organize itself in various ways, and build different kinds of buildings in which to worship.

The churches of the world hold to an essential core, to what Lewis called “Mere Christianity” are we not already one, at least in the most important sense? Jesus said, "by this shall all men will know that you are my disciples because you love one another" (John 13:34, 35). Isn’t the quality of that love all the more impressive to a non-believing world when it exists between people who differ in culture, race and customs?

How far can this diversity go?

That is another question, a very important one.

The message of Jesus and His apostles is the same for all eras and cultures. That cannot change. The “faith once delivered to the saints” must be maintained. However, the way that message is communicated does change, from nation to nation and from generation to generation. Whether we use incense, an organ or a guitar to prepare our hearts for worship, whether we dance or make the sign of the cross to express our piety, whether we place the pulpit on the side or in the center, whether we use Sunday School or home groups to disciple our converts – customs such as these are the reactions of God’s people are related to time and circumstance.

The important thing is to keep that court of the gentiles free for the heathen – to not fill it up doing all the stuff we like to do.

Otherwise, if one Sunday morning someone tells you that there is a guy with a whip running across the parking lot toward the church, don’t blame me!

Zacchaeus: A Tea Little Man

In today’s One Year Bible reading, St. Luke considers it newsworthy that a rich publican gets saved. A tax collector who becomes rich at the expense of others is universally despised, but a Jew who worked with Romans to oppress his own people was particularly abominable. Nonetheless, he wanted to see Jesus.

I first learned about this story in Sunday school. We sang about it.

Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed him by, He looked up in the tree,
And he said, "Zacchaeus, you come down;
For I'm going to your house today."

The version I learned ended the song with “for I’m going to your house for tea.” Probably the British influence still lingering from my Virginian ancestors brought that to us.

I am unsure of which version of the tune is the authorized, orthodox version, but I’m sure the Lord would have wanted a cup of tea after his long journey and knew this refined gentleman would have a good cup, even if no one else in the village did. The Canadian-made Red Rose – not the pitiable American blend sold under the same name – or the Australian Bushel’s, or perhaps even P. G. Tips would have been nice. Unfortunately, those fine teas were probably not yet available.

Even Herrod’s tea was not yet ready for the world. (Herrod's the store, and NOT the leader, lest you become confused. Consider this your tea education for the day.)

What wondrous things have developed in Western Civilization!

OK, the tea thing may be up for grabs. But the story line is good. Zacchaeus WAS a wee little man.

(Forget for a moment that this is a redundancy, “wee” being Scottish for “short.” And, forget about the issue of Scottish dialect so rudely interjecting itself in the very heart of American Christianity – the Sunday Schools of this sacred land!)

The point, dear reader, is that the Lord upset everyone by inviting himself to eat – even if not to have a cup of tea – at the home of a repulsive man. “Because, Jesus insisted, “he too is a son of Abraham.”

“What?!” I can hear the people saying, “This traitor is a son of Abraham? What planet do you live on?”

The Lord’s house was an open house. Anyone could come, repent and leave behind his old life. Anyone. Even a traitor.

That’s why I am always leery of really righteous sounding churches. It’s one thing to encourage righteous living; it’s another thing to proclaim one’s own righteousness or the supposed moral superiority of one’s own little group.

When I serve at the Lord’s Table, I always enjoy telling the congregation, “This is not the table of Christ Church. It’s the Table of the Lord. If you belong to the Lord, you are welcome to eat from His table.”

Closed communion sucks.

It doesn’t sound like Jesus at all.

Not at all.

The Lord didn’t go into Zacchaeus’s house to condone his wickedness. He went to encourage his journey toward God. The man was obviousness hungry for God. He climbed a tree; went out on a limb; trying to find God.

When he tried to find God, God found him!

That’s what churches must do too: find those who are searching for God.

I’ve been going on for weeks now about the church, asking what the church is, what should it do and so forth. In the need, churches should just do what they see Jesus doing: having tea with wee little people who climb trees; reaching people who are out on a limb. All the safe people will howl for a while but that’s OK.

Go have that cup of tea with the wee little person.

In my last blog, I moaned about how hard we are on the church. We expect the church to be perfect, even when the human beings in it cannot be perfect.

Go figure.

The truth is, even institutions corrupted by wicked living and false teaching often contain genuine believers. Those believers love and serve the Lord. Yes, we represent the eternal body of Christ, which the Bible says is without spot, blemish, or any such thing (Ephesians 5:27.) However, we are fallen creatures. In this fallen world, fallen people must keep calling the churches to be the Church. At the same time, we must also extend grace and forgiveness to those churches – and to the individuals in them – as they keep falling short.

God once instructed Moses to build Him a tabernacle. God said that He would meet with His people in that tabernacle, so it had to be assembles just right. So He ordered Moses to fill it with articles of gold, silver and beautiful fabrics. And yet, the outside of this beautiful and opulent and place was to be covered with badger skins!

Imagine: people on the outside of God’s tabernacle saw only ugly and commonplace stuff. To experience the eternal, one had to go deep inside, into the very center of the meeting place.
The Church, the place where God designed to meet with us, is still like that. You have to get past the ugly and commonplace. You have to go deep inside, on to that place where eternity invades earth.

Zacchaeus saw past the dust covered man who was stirring up the peasants and shaking his world. He saw someone who might just free him from his sins and give him new life. So he climbed up that sycamore tree.

On this date in 1930, the BBC announced that there was no news that day! Soon, the British people would long for a day without news; a day in which some children might sing a silly song about how the Lord of glory once walked under a tree and laughed at the man looking down at him.

He didn’t laugh in ridicule, but in glee. A sinner man had just come to his senses and remembered that he was a child of Abraham.

Just like some us who wonder so far that old friends think we will never get back. And then, suddenly, its tea time and wonder of wonders, it is the Lord himself laughing at us and telling us to get out of that tree and go prepare him some food.

And that is news!

Very, very good news!

Let’s Start a New Church!

There are many good reasons for starting a new church. New churches win most of the new converts to our faith, for one thing. They can often respond quicker and more efficiently than older churches to new needs within a given society. And, of course, missionaries who wish to establish a beachhead in a nation without many Christians must establish new congregations.
Sometimes, Christians must start new churches because the old ones have become apostate or grown deaf.

In the book of Revelation, God warns some of the churches of “Asia” (modern day Turkey) that they were in danger of moving outside the borders of His kingdom. He did not want to "remove their candlestick"[1] (or refuse to recognize them as churches.)

The Lord’s words to these seven churches show us how God keeps working within His Church, even when it operates far beneath His standards.

The church, like ancient Israel, is a community made up of individuals in various stages of spiritual development; tares and wheat, sheep and goats.

So these reasons, starting a church because one wants to finally attend a REAL church, where TRUE believers SOLD OUT TO GOD create BIBLICAL COMMUNITY – well, knock yourself out! If the church succeeds, it will take about a generation before you will face some other prophetic zealot leading an exodus out of your beloved church with the very same cry on his lips.
It is never a good idea to throw away something good in order to grasp something perfect. Why not? Because the perfect thing is only in your head – or in heaven – or in the coming Kingdom Age. Its certainly not here. Not now. Not with people like you. Or me.

As we grow to love the body of Christ, we must also become mature enough to remember that God has “incarnated” it within visible, fallible and earthly bodies – probably like the church you presently attend.

In the Church, you will find people of great spiritual power and purity of life coexisting with the most twisted and corrupt individuals imaginable. To some extent, these attributes even coexist within each believer!

Therefore, we can’t determine what a “real” church is just looking at the name over the door.
Of course, we would all like to belong to a “real” church.

In every era of the church’s history, believers have walked out of corrupt church situations to begin a “New Testament” church (by which they mean a church that will be on this earth all that the universal church is described to be in the New Testament. The only problem with this impulse it this: even the churches in the New Testament era were not “New Testament churches” at least by that criterion. Otherwise, why would Christ have threatened the churches of Asia with excommunication? )

All attempts to “begin the church again” have ended up as new denominations, groups that later generations leave in disgust to try yet once more.

You will save yourself much heartache and disappointment if you realize the following unassailable truths: believers are forgiven but fallen, men and women. Some who call themselves believers are not really born again. Those who are born again are at various levels of spiritual maturity. Those who are spiritually mature are still fallen human beings. Believers make mistakes. Leaders of churches are fallen people.

There is no other kind. At least not yet.

Does this mean that we just excuse bad living? Of course not!

Men and women who claim to follow Christ must be expected to live like the Lord taught us to live. We must hunger to live a godly life. We must believe in the Ten Commandments. We must believe in the Sermon on the Mount. Being a believer means to come under the authority of God and His word.

And yet, and this is worth repeating: we must not reject a concrete good simply because it has not yet reached the level of an abstract perfect.

God’s Word gives us an abstract image of what a “good” Church looks like. We must keep reaching for it, both as individuals and as local churches. However, we must also believe that God already sees us, and sees His Church, as it will be in its glorified state.

Individual believers must view themselves that way too.

We should thank God for the extent to which we (as individuals and as local churches) reflect God’s goodness and grace even in this life.

We should not reject the good that individuals and churches do simply because they have not yet reached the perfection that we long for – and that our Lord promises us will one day occur.

The place where all expectations are reached is called Heaven.

That does not happen here on this fallen plant.

Keep that in mind as you start that new church!



[1] Revelation 2:5

Messy Church

It is not difficult nowadays to find people who believe church is a mess. In fact, it has become rather unfashionable to honor the church for anything. Even church leaders have joined the fracas, making jokes and taking jabs at the church. The congregational response is nearly always laughter.

The church: what a joke.

The mess is not new, of course. Church has always been a mess.

What is new is our expectation that church ought not be a mess, or that the mess was something unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary.

Our ancestors never expected to find paradise when they went to church. They went to the church to “taste of the powers of the world to come.” They went to experience a “foretaste of glory divine.”

Our ancestors understood the inescapable reality of original sin, the verifiable existence of the “prince of darkness grim,” and the daily grind of walking through a “world with devils filled that threaten to undo us.”

We now have little patience with such doctrines or with those who preach them. We think of these phrases as cute, quaint and hopelessly irrelevant barnacles that cling to hymns we no longer sing and books we no longer read. In the absence of such doctrines, we expect the full realization of the Lord’s coming kingdom right now, without pain, without resistance, and without repentance.

I write these blogs in hope that there are still many who understand that the teachings of the Bible – doctrine, if you will – are vital to authentic Christian life. Without them, we cannot do else but continually reshape the church (and our faith) according to the beliefs of whatever secular philosophy pleases us – or pleases the crowd we hope to attract.

In the last few blogs, I have been asking a question: “what is the church anyway?”

I have admitted that there are a number of conflicting definitions. We call the definition of church an “ecclesiology.”

Even though it is new for Christians to dishonor the church as they are prone to do at present, we have disagreed for several centuries now about what church is supposed to look like.
Although this is as unpopular subject as one could possible imagine, deciding one’s ecclesiology is a very important part of a Christian’s spiritual life. For example, we all know that words like "Pentecostal," “Episcopal,” and "Baptist" are adjectives. Way back in the seventh grade, Mrs. Beeker told me back that “an adjective is a word that modifies a noun.” If we are not sure what a noun means, what can an adjective, which is a word we use to modify, qualify and specify that noun, do but cause more confusion?

Therefore, we must know what the word "church" means before we add a modifier to it.

That’s what the last few blogs have been trying to address: defining the word “Church.”

Most Christians agree that the universal (we won’t make them say catholic!) church is a spiritual organism. Only God knows exactly where it is. Only He is sure where it is not. Most Christians these days would also agree, even with some hesitation and reservation, that the universal Church contains believers scattered throughout all the denominations of Christendom. There are even followers of Christ outside of Christendom, for that matter. Most Christians would further agree that there are people scattered throughout every denomination (sometimes in leadership) who do not have divine life in them. Such people are not therefore, members of the Lord’s Universal Church. (Of course, the Lord told us that we cannot distinguish true believers from fake ones. God and the holy angels will separate them at the end of the age.)

So we can all agree that the Lord’s church is a spiritual entity. It consists of all those who believe in Christ and who seek to follow Him. Most of us believe that this includes even many heretics, people who do not believe rightly because they have been taught incorrectly or who in all sincerity have misunderstood the teachings of the Holy Scriptures and the Lord’s Church.
Most of us also believe that local congregations throughout the world (and through the centuries) are mystically united within, to the universal, or “catholic,” Church.

We will all agree that the Lord Jesus Christ founded the Church.

We agree that the Holy Spirit filled the church at Pentecost and that he has continued to guide it since the days of the apostles.

All believers of every era and in every place are, therefore, a part of God’s Church. Believers are, in the words of St. Paul, “seated in heavenly places with Christ.”

Since only God knows for sure who is or is not a part of the Church, much of the life and work of the church is invisible to us. God sees the Bride of Christ adorned as a bride for her husband. He sees the wheat. He sees the unfolding of the Kingdom of God.

We experience mess.

We see mixture; the collection of what Christ called “the tares and wheat”.

Down here on earth, we deal with a lot more than angels, saints and cherubim.

I once heard an old preacher say “to live with the saints up above, that will be wondrous glory. To live with the saints here below, that is a different story!” If you have been around church very much, you know what he was talking about!

While most of us have wonderful stories of Christ-like people who have brought joy and understanding into our lives, we also tell less inspiring stories about those who claim to follow Christ but make our lives difficult!

The saints up in Heaven are now beyond the reaches and effects of the fall.

Down here, we are not.

The church, as we experience it in the day to day, is a collection of tares and wheat, led by fallen men and women. It makes mistakes. It takes wrong turns. It often disappoints. Sometimes, parts of the church even goes into heresy, (teachings that deviate from the ‘faith once and for all delivered to the saints.”)

It takes something of a sanctified imagination to see the church as God sees it: as it will be and as it really is for those who love it.

So why is the church a mess?

Because Jesus Christ receives sinners, of whom I am chief.

Latte Communion?

Believers through the many centuries have held different views about the church.

Some have believed that the Church achieved its most ideal form in its earliest days. People who hold this opinion think that we should return to the government, doctrine, and mode of operation that characterized the Church in its earliest stages of development. These believers attempt to eliminate everything from public worship or church government that they believe does not to have the specific authority of the New Testament. “Speak where the Bible speaks; be silent where the Bible is silent,” such Christians say.

Other Christians have taught that the early church pragmatically developed its form of government and style of worship to meet the needs of the time. Although we must be faithful to the words of Christ and His apostles, the church is free to evolve to meet the needs of people in whatever era or location it finds itself. “By all means, save some” is the cry of these believers.

Yet others have insisted that the traditions that come to us from the early Church and which have developed through time, are our best guide. Thus, we should interpret the Word of God and practice our faith as it was defined in the first few centuries and developed through the ages.

This school of thought interprets church government and doctrine thorough the long lens of history, much like our American legal system used to do. In this view, the development of the church has been like that of a growing child; we can't return to the primitive innocence of the early church any more than a man could return to his childhood.” “We hold to that which has at all times and in all places been believed by the people of God,” claim those who hold this view.

These different views of church affect how we receive our faith. Did the Lord Jesus establish the sacraments and ordinances of the church? Have these been faithfully passed through the generations from teacher to teacher? If so, such things are valid for all time and we have no authority to tamper with them. However, if practices of the church – such as the use of wine and bread in communion – were culturally conditioned expressions of faith for the first century; then
we can accomplish the same intention by sharing coffee and pastries at Starbucks.

Most Christians will express some sympathy with each view of the church. Finally though, one must decide which of them the most faithfully carries out the Lord’s teaching.

How one makes his or her choice about the way he or she views the church creates denominations.

One Christian insists that we should meet in homes because early Christians met in homes. The same person may disagree with a friend over whether or not one should use a piano in worship since early Christians had no piano. Both of them may uncomfortable with a third Christian who argues that we should all speak in tongues because early Christians spoke in tongues. As these three argue among themselves about church buildings, pianos and tongue-speaking, they may suddenly unite against an Orthodox Christian who uses incense in worship. “After all,” he will say, “God told Moses to use incense in worship. When did God change His mind?”

As these four argue, another Christian from the “seeker sensitive” sort of church will roll his eyes and remind the others that seekers are lost; they cannot understand all these complex arguments about “trivial things. We must present the gospel in ways that unbelievers can understand.”

Likely, all the previous arguments will now cease as the others gang up on the new guy.

Perhaps it is getting clear that the particular way we envision “church” will lead us to all sorts of conclusions about what church should look like. These conclusions can separate us from sincere and godly believers who disagree with us.

It can be frustrating!

On today’s date in 1954, Edward Murrow and Fred Friendly aired a show called See it Now, in which they exposed the political witch hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. A Communist scare had blazed through the nation and left everyone implicated that did not dot every ‘I” and cross every “t” of Senator McCarthy’s definition of patriotism. Leaders had been smeared in the arts and sciences as well as in political life. No one had seemed immune from the fiery ignorance of McCarthy’s uninformed populism.

None of the organs of government seemed capable of stopping the daily slander against dissent and difference. What signaled the beginning of the end was a television program made possible by the founding documents of this county. Fortunately, a free press was as sacred to Americans as our three branches of government. The living tradition of freedom, passed down from our revolutionary forefathers in countless poems, stories and fourth of July celebration picnics, erupted to protect some of the citizens from the mob spirit of the rest of the citizens.

This has occurred in the history of the church as well. Church leaders do not always get it right. Power can corrupt and wealth can even blind otherwise great leaders. Evangelists, priests, pastors, presbyters, superintendents, popes, elders, vestries, monks and theologians can err and have erred. The masses can err too and fall prey to snake oil and smoke for a generation or two. Sometimes it is the church structure that corrects the mob; sometimes it is the piety of the pew that corrects the pulpit. Sooner or later though, the truth prevails and err is rebuked.
The Lord told us that this would happen. He said that Hell would try but would not succeed at stopping His Church.

I haven’t answered the questions I raised earlier in this blog. I have my opinions. However, in the end, it is a mystery how the church continues its way from century to century and from culture to culture. Saints have emerged from all parts of the church and when one consults them, he gets many different opinions about how it’s all supposed to work. Nonetheless, the work continues.

Most Protestants believe that Mother Teresa was a Christian, although they disagree with her doctrine. Most Roman Catholics believe that Billy Graham is a Christian, although they can’t understand why he doesn’t make the sign of the cross when he prays. Most Pentecostals believe that the Holy Spirit was at work in the Reformation, although they are hard pressed to discover which reformer spoke in tongues. Spurgeon was a great preacher, even though he smoked a pipe and C. S. Lewis was a saintly thinker even though he drank too much wine. General Booth did a good thing when he founded the Salvation Army, even though they don’t receive Communion.

What a mess! What a fascinating, confusing mess!

(I called this blog Latte Communion, because hopefully it caught your attention! My daughter wrote a blog last week called Chocolate Communion, in which she talks about chocolate, children, and Communion. You can read her blog by clicking here: http://www.beatriceblount.blogspot.com/ )

The Name Game

Moira Naomi Cagle is my oldest granddaughter. Today is her birthday.

Her first name has several meanings, depending on what language you consult. For the Greeks, “moira” meant fate. For the Celts, it was a variation of “Mary” or “Miriam.”

Her middle name, Naomi, comes from my paternal grandmother, Naomi Scott. Sometimes as I pass my grandparent’s picture on the wall, I will point to it and say to Moira, “look; that was the first Naomi. You sort of look like her. I wonder if you will be like her when you grow up.”

She always asks, “What was she like?”

And I say, “She was kind. She was a good Christian. She loved her family. She prayed for all of us, even the ones who had not yet been born.”

“Like me,” she asks?

“Of course. You have to remember that you have her name. So she would especially want you to be a good person.”

Names are important. Although we think our parents name us, I believe it is God who names us. That’s why when I am counseling someone I will often ask them their full name. Then I will ask if they feel attached to their name. I’ll discuss what their name means and from what it derived. As the conversation progresses, that person will nearly always give me important information about their sense of identity.

Words – especially names -- have personalities. Like all personalities, some words appeal to us and some do not.

In my last blog, I alarmed some of you by trying to define “church.” I asked if human beings even have a right to define “church,” since God is the One who birthed it and named it. In that case, I suggested, perhaps our definitions are kind of beside the point.

I reminded us that the English word “church” has several meanings, including the one we don’t use much but which the New Testament intends nearly every time it uses the word.

In the Bible, “church” refers to the universal body of Christ: the people of God scattered throughout all time and space. When ancient Christians spoke of “church” in that sense, they usually added the word “catolica.”

I use the Latin because the English word “catholic,” provokes a lot of people. The largest and one of the oldest Christian communities is commonly called “The Catholic Church.” However, the word “catholic,” was not meant to refer to a single group of churches, even to one as large as the Roman Catholic Church. For first century believers, ‘catolica” meant something like “international,” although that English word also limits the concept too much.

“Catolica” actually meant something like “everyone, in every culture and in every period of time who belongs to the body of Christ.”

In the Apostles Creed, we confess our belief in “the holy catholic Church,” although, in the church I serve, we use the word “Christian” in the place of “catholic.” We try to avoid the emotion that the word “catholic” generates. Perhaps someday we will be more mature, who knows? I hope so. But whatever word we use to express the concept of catholicity, I am sorry to say Christians differ widely in the ways they define both the word “church” and the word “catholic.”

Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of the differences.

Consider the following questions and you will see why we Christians define the word “church” differently. Is the word “church” merely another way of saying “the collection of people who claim to follow Christ?” Or, does “church” mean God’s spiritual family?”

If you will look carefully at the two definitions for church in the last paragraph you will see that they are not expressing the same thing at all.

The first definition begins with the individual believer. In that view, the church is to the believer as the ocean is to a drop of water; the ocean being billions upon billions of water drops.

In the second view, we begin with the community. It implies that God created the community first and then invited individuals into it.

Now try to answer the following questions.

Is the church a useful thing, an important thing, or an essential thing in the life of a believer?

In our times, the popular idea is that the church is helpful for most believers but hardly essential. In this view, the plan seems to be get saved, walk with God, and, if you can, find a good assembly that will meet your needs. That way you will have good company on your way to Heaven. This is the most modern and up-to-date way to look at “church.”

I believe that way of looking at church is terribly flawed. In fact, I believe it ends up destroying the concept of “church” altogether. Having that opinion puts me into a decided minority. That doesn’t make me wrong but it does make me outnumbered; at least in this century.

At any rate, the answers we give to such questions produce vastly different definitions for the word “church”. We call the study of such questions, ecclesiology.

Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Anglicans and Baptists differ with one another in several ways, including the way they define “church.” So we say that they have conflicting ecclesialogies.

Moira Naomi Cagle doesn’t yet have an ecclesiology. She does however have a story and the story is older than she is. It had been in progress long before she got here.

I told you about her first name. I also told you about her middle name. I didn’t tell you about her last name.

Her last name is Cagle, which is, appropriately enough, her father’s gift to her. I first met her father when he was a little boy. I had just arrived at Christ Church, where I now pastor. The assistant pastor, Dennis Cagle, had invited me to lunch. He introduced me to his young son, who was uninterested in me because he was busy provoking his sister to wrath.

The next time I saw him was fifteen years later, when his father and mother were visiting someone in Phoenix and came by to see me.

The third time I saw him was through my daughter’s eyes, who informed me that she intended to marry him. She hadn’t told him yet but I just shrugged. She had already made up her mind and so it was settled.

I saw him again the day he married my daughter. I saw him once more when he held my first newborn granddaughter, Moira Naomi. Then I saw him the day he said goodbye to his father, who had abruptly left this earth. He’s a good man. I’m glad his story joined with mine.

As it turns out, a hundred years ago, the Cagles lived just an hour from here, in Hickman Country. They lived there for a hundred and fifty years after a male Cagle came from North Carolina with his Indian wife, Bird. Before that, their name had been Kagel. I think the Indian woman made the family change the name because they had used it in reference to a part of the human anatomy that had been previously unidentified. That’s just a theory though.

Austin’s mother had a story too. For years her father was Billy Graham’s secretary. He preached the gospel all his adult life.

If I go any further with this, it’s going to be a terribly long blog.

The point is that Moira was born into a family. The family has been on a journey. She can add to its history; she can’t change it. When that family gave her birth, it placed it genetic material in her. All of its past members now live through her because their choices defined how she would begin life.

We can make her heritage a bit clearer by sharing pictures, stories and genealogies but whether we do or not, the very color of her eyes reveals who she is.

What she will do with all of that is up to her.

Human beings do not create themselves. They never have. They never will. We can only interpret what the past has given to us by adding to it, ignoring it, or rejecting it.

I don’t understand how being born into the family of God could possibly be any different.

Moira, like all of us, will have to decide if her name will be mere fate or if she will choose to respond as the most famous Mary did, “The Almighty has done wondrous things unto me for Holy is His name.”

A Church By Any Other Name

Nearly every person in the world who claims Christian faith at any level went to church yesterday. On that day at least,very few believers went to a park to meet with their believing friends or just hung out with fellow Christians at Starbucks. Whatever they do throughout the year, yesterday they were at church.

I know. I already have some of your hackles up. You’re ticked off at me for equating church attendance with piety.

But if you’re going to be mad at the way I define church, then you ought to at least read far enough to figure out why you disagree with me. After all, you don’t want to disagree with me just to be cool and fit it with everyone else that’s mad about church.

What is “church” anyway?

Say the word “church” and most people will think of a stone building with a steeple.
Others think about the Sunday gathering where they worship.

A few will think of Biblical phrases such as “the body of Christ”, “the communion of saints”, or “the pillar and ground of truth”.

The word “church” calls up all sorts of images and definitions.
Some of this is the result of linguistics.

The English word “church” derives from the German: “kirke.” Evidently, ancient German-speaking pagans heard Christians in worship repeating the word “kyrie,” Greek for “Lord”. Soon, Germans were calling the building where Christians worshipped a “kirke.” In time, most Germanic languages adopted that word to refer both to the mystical body of Christ and the building where Christians worshipped.

Early Christians did not use the same word to mean both their spiritual community and the building where they met. They met wherever they could, often in synagogues, but also in private homes, marketplaces and public gathering places. The Greek word they used to refer to their spiritual community was “ekkesia,” from which the Spanish word “iglesia” derives. The word meant “assembly,” or “people called out.” It was nearly synonymous with the word “synagogue,” which is what Jews called the buildings in which they met to study and pray.

The English word, “church” covers a lot of ground then! It can be a building, a spiritual community, a denomination, or the Christian community of a given area. To specify the meaning we have in mind, it would help to attach modifiers to the word “church.

When we mean the building where we met to worship and study, we could say, “church building.” When we mean a local body of believers, we could say “local church.” When we mean the Body of Christ, we could say, “the church catholic,” or “the universal church.”

Whatever we mean by the word “church,” it has become popular now, even within Christian circles, to mock its usefulness. We have brought some of this on ourselves. Many Christian leaders have not acted very responsibly the last few decades.

But is it possible to love the Lord without honoring His Church? Does the Bible ever insinuate that a believer can have a meaningful spiritual life without the church?

Perhaps another question would help: is the church a name we give to a collection of Christian believers or is it something that God created before there even were any believers? Do believers create churches or do churches create believers?

Consider this quote from G. K. Chesterton:
“When we belong to the Church we belong to something which is outside all of us; which is outside everything you talk about, outside cardinals and popes (and pastors, evangelists and prophets.) They belong to it, but it does not belong to them. If we all fell dead suddenly, the Church would still somehow exist in God”.

That statement is so naughty! I’m not sure it’s even legal to say such a thing nowadays.

We feel free these days to create and recreate churches to meet our felt needs. We change churches like we do supermarkets – the new one carries Zippo Crisps!

On the other hand, the churches compete for market share by setting clowns on fire and filling the air with parachuting dogs carrying American flags. Carnivals that masquerade as churches don’t talk about suffering, sinning or sodomy. They sing happy songs that one can learn in three minutes – and it’s a good thing because the song will not be sung again after a few months airtime – and deliver sermons that make people laugh.

Yeah! Church is sooooo cool!

No crosses – that upsets new people. No scripture memorization, repentance and for God’s sake, no church history.

Church as enterprise counts noses and nickels and has no time for rooting people to the faith once and for all delivered to the saints.

But what if “church” is not a human invention at all? What if it doesn’t belong to the people? What if it is the Bride of Christ, the pillar and ground of truth, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy Nation, or the Israel of God? Those are all New Testament phrases and seem to indicate a pretty high view of the church. What do we do with that?

If the church belongs to God, then shouldn’t we figure out what he wants? Should we create worship that meets our needs, or should we study to know what God said about worship so we can meet His needs?

We have gradually developed a theology that leaves little room for a believer’s responsibility toward the Church. In our new theology, a believer with a Bible meets other believers with a Bible and then they create a community with their friends.
This begs the question: how did we get the Bible to begin with? By the time the writings for Bible were collected and assembled, the last apostle had been dead for three hundred years. Who did that work? How did they have the authority to do that work? Why did all the other Christians agree with their decision?

If you read the internet articles about such things, you get the theological equivalent of Big Foot, UFO conspiracy theories and garlic enemas that cure cancer: ignorance as piety and catechism.

If you take the time to read the Bible and the writings of the early Christians, you get quite a different picture.

The picture I get is that of Christ the moment after his impetuous, big mouth disciple has just blurted out: “Thou are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Jesus smiles and says, “Flesh and blood didn’t tell you that! You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hell with not prevail against it.”

And they haven’t. And they won’t.

FINISHED!

When I was a boy in Quito, it was our custom on Good Friday to attend church and listen to various meditations on the Lord’s seven last words from the cross.

I still remember Pastor Limones preaching about the last one: “it is finished.”

I asked us “what did this mean? Were these words the sigh of a suffering man, relieved that his hellish ordeal was about over? Do the words refer to the redemption that He had just purchased? Was it the Old Covenant that was finished?

In Greek, the words actually refer to completion. Something had been accomplished.

What was it?

For one thing, the antidote for sin had been successfully offered, not only to humanity but to the universe itself. It was just a matter of time now before all things would heal from that wound suffered in the garden so long ago.

God had just “downloaded” Himself into the fabric of the world. The incarnation of God in Christ had now penetrated the veil between Heaven and Earth. The body of Christ, that for thirty three years had been a single human being was about to become a growing wave of redeemed persons throughout the world. The crucified body of a dying man was about to become a quickened body of millions of believers.

The dying words of the suffering Christ acknowledged that the eternal Word had entered the earth to remain until all would be utterly redeemed.

Soon, the Holy Spirit would visibly enter that Body, like tongues of fire.

A body was dying; a Body was about to be quickened.

In Hebrew, words have consonants but no vowels. The word for God YHWH (which scholars call the tetragrámmaton -- Greek for “having four letters) is connected to the Hebrew verb “to be.” That is why our Bibles translate it as something variation of, “I am who I am.” That fact is, no one is sure even how to pronounce the tetragrámmaton, much less know what it really means.

Just try to pronounce the consonants “YHWH.” What happens? What do you hear?

You just hear breath!

Think of the history of that Breath.

Moses was the first one to hear God’s name, as he was preparing to go to Egypt. There, he would confront a four hundred year old situation that seemed to have no solution. The powers against change would come from both Egyptian authorities and Jewish leaders. Slavery felt like the very laws of nature to both slave and slaveholder.

Then the Breath in the desert spoke, “I am Life and Existence!”

At the annunciation, (when the angel told Mary she would become the mother of Messiah,) the angel told Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you (Luke 1:35).” That’s why we confess in the Apostles' Creed that our Lord was “conceived by the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit was announcing the birth of something new and mysterious, as He often does.

When Jesus was about to go into Heaven, He took His disciples to the town of Bethany. There, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” So they did.

In the book of Revelation, St. John hears the Holy Spirit wooing creation back to its Creator. Then he listens as the Church joins her voice to that of the Holy Spirit, inviting all people everywhere to come and meet the living God.

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”(Revelation 22:17)
The Holy Spirit is the voice of God; He “haunts” the deepest part of our being! He moves through the universe creating, mysteriously calling, and purposefully guiding Godward all who dare follow. He is the Divine witness within the human heart who will not let us rest until we find our rest in the Living God. With each breath we hear Him calling us.

How can we relate to such an uncontrollable, indefinable being?

But we must. We must get over our fear. We must walk with confidence toward the uncertainty the Spirit is sure to bring to our lives for it this uncertainty is an indispensable part of our joy and wonder, and of our recreation and reformation.

Knowing all of this, how could we run from the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is God untameable, indescribable, and unpredictable. He is our divine helper. He is God living within us. He is God living in and through His church. He is God guiding us through constant transformation, preparing us to live eternally in the presence of God.

We cannot afford to ignore the Holy Spirit.

However difficult to describe Him or to understand Him, Christians are called to confess: “We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.”

The Lord’s final words on the cross would not really be His last words. Jesus had much more to say! In a few days, He would tell his disciples:

“Go to Jerusalem and wait for the promise of the Father. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses.”

Oh, and then another word: “I am with you always, even to the end of the world!”

The “I AM” is with us, even to the end of the word.

That promise was made possible by the events we remember today, as the one who loved us gasped in pain, with perhaps as much of a smile as his condition would allow:

“FINISHED!”

I like to think that this word means something else.

A few minutes ago, a dear friend wept as she told me about a loved one in caught in the grip of addiction so strong that it is tearing her family apart.
Behind that addiction is a dark being – our ancient foe who seeks to work us woe. His crafts and powers are great and armed with cruel hate; on earth he has no equal.”

I like to think that when Jesus groaned and spent his last measure of strength to say one final word, that he addressed that word not to human beings, nor even to the Father in Heaven. I think He said it to the Prince of Darkness Grim: “Finished! You are FINISHED. It’s just a matter of time now. “

Fire is coming to the earth. It will light the way for those who suffer and it will destroy the deeds of darkness that afflict the souls of humankind.

The Demon gloats because he does not know the secret. The Son of Man has kept it until now, revealing it with one dramatic whisper before he closes his eyes to rest for three days. He takes a labored breath “YHWHHHHHHH” And then forms a final word:

“FINISHED!