A Few More Thoughts on the Church

My last blog drew some interesting comments - in particular, one affirmation and one critique, both of which I felt missed the point. I had attempted to write about how church - the actual local body where Christians worship - disappoints and even hurts us. What I wanted to say is that this is just as it should be; what Jesus went through to birth this church and what he still suffers to redeem her should be our clue.

One person assumed I agreed that “the precious church is also HIS body which is so often unrecognizable.” Another called me to task and pled for certain actions on the part of the church (very good actions, let me hasten to say), warning of disaster if we neglect these things and adding that, “I have only to look around at most churches I know of to believe this is the case.”

Now, I see the point in both responses and let me be quick to deny any kind of quietism which would imply that any local expression of the church fully manifests the face of Christ to the world. What bothers me, though, is the very American idea that we can “fix” her if only we hit on the right combination of spiritual disciplines or slick promotions. I sometimes think I hear (and this could be more a revelation of my own heart than an insight into anyone else’s) a running subtext which believes that if “those people” in the church would just get their stuff together I could be a part of the life of the church without having to bear all the aggravation and pain that such community always seems to involve.

Is Christ’s church imperfect? Is Christ’s church “unrecognizable”? Are the answers to both questions the same? What I sense behind this kind of inquiry is a yearning for the good old days when the church was “really” the church. Generally, if I look very far into this kind of thinking, I discover that the speaker pines for the New Testament era. Well, if I read Acts and the Epistles, then put the average local church in a lineup, can I spot her from the written description?

Let’s see: The church in Revelation 1-2 - only two congregations out of seven (Smyrna and Philadelphia) receive a clean X-ray. In the others we find hard work laid alongside dull routine (Ephesus), martyrdom laid alongside syncretism (Pergamum), increasing works laid alongside decreasing doctrinal purity (Thyatira), seeming life laid like a tablecloth over spiritual death (Sardis), and tepid prosperity in the place of true fire (Laodecia). Total score: a little better than twenty-five percent. A church that scores an “F” in spiritual health? Yes, I recognize that.

Let’s see: The church in Corinth, perhaps? Divisions, power struggles, beer bashes at the Lord’s Supper, behind on their stewardship pledges and a guy shacked up with his step-mother. Yes, I recognize that.

Let’s see: The church in Philippi, maybe? Two powerful female pastors causing such a stink that Paul, from the safe distance of his Roman dungeon, tells them to work it out and throws another pastor into the ring to act as referee. (Phil 4.2-3) Yes, I recognize that.

Let’s see: The church in Thessalonica, then? People skivving off their jobs in the name of a debased eschatology that says there’s no point working to pay next month’s electric bill when Jesus may come back by the weekend. (2 Thess 3.10-13) Yes, I recognize that.

Let’s see: The church in Galatia, possibly? Falling away from the real gospel, embracing works salvation, bad-mouthing the one who originally brought them to Christ? Yes, I recognize that.

And in general, a quick overview of the churches we find in Scripture: disrespect for pastoral leadership, gossip, false doctrine, right alongside heroic faithfulness, undeniable love of the brethren, and even martyrdom. Yes, I recognize all of that.

What matters more is that Jesus recognizes all of that. In fact, THAT’S what he considered worth dying for. Yes, he will present her one day without spot or wrinkle, and yes, we who are the church should be passionate about bringing to bear all the spot-remover and wrinkle-cream we can get our hands on, and yes, the New Testament contains an endless supply of both. But we must never forget that we are to love the church who IS, not the one we have imagined and believe we will one day create. Ralph Wood of Baylor University writes eloquently on this subject when he states that “for the church to be a faithful remnant - a frail and frayed thing, often suffering prsecution and barely keeping alive from one generation to the next, even at best offering a minority report within in an overwhelmingly larger world - is not for the church to be stunted and eclipsed but for it to have real life.”

Eugene Peterson, in his wonderful and under-appreciated little book “The Wisdom of Each Other,” writes to an imaginary friend who, as an adult convert, has just begun worshiping with a local body of believers. “Well, that didn’t last long, did it? I mean your romance with the church. Did you so easily forget that is is sinners that God calls to repentance, and that a lot of them, having heard the call and decided that they like the sound of the good news of salvation, somewhere along the way ditch the repentance part?” Peterson, writing as a seasoned pastor, neither denies nor apologizes for that local body’s failures. Instead, he recommends them to his pal as the means of grace. “Go back to the company of those seventy or eighty people on Sunday, listen believingly to the Scriptures read and preached, offer your prayers, receive Jesus in the sacrament, and bless your neighbors. And wait for the Kingdom. It’s the Holy Spirit’s style to fashion holy lives among the inept.”

Which brings me to the comment from the person who says she has “only to look around at most churches I know” to see what a pitiful thing the body has become. I won’t deny the results of her survey; I’d probably lose the argument if it moved to the ground of raw data. What troubles me is the idea of a devout and sincere Christian speaking of “looking around at” the church. It sounds to me a little like a husband saying, “I have only to look around at most wives I’m married to to know that marriage fails to reflect Christ.” The statistical veracity of the claim becomes a non-issue in light of its relational dissonance. The church is not an organization a Christian examines; she is an organism a Christian inhabits!

Karl Barth likened this objective evaluation of the church by the church to Mrs. Lot’s backward glance at Sodom! “The Church also lives by the fact that it looks out above itself. As soon as it looks into itself it finds only the religious community. But it must not do this. It, too, must learn from Lot’s wife what must not happen. As the earthly body of Jesus Christ it may - as is believed and proclaimed in the Lord’s Upper - be nourished by its own eternal truth in its form as the heavenly body of Jesus Christ. It cannot be nourished in any other way. If it nourishes itself in any other way it can only die as the Church. But as it lives by this nourishment, as therefore it realises the unity of its earthly with its heavenly form, the fact that this is already realised in Jesus Christ and actual in the work of the Holy Spirit, means that, as the Church of God, it is already perfected even in its imperfection, that even as a religious community it is already the tabernacle of God among men and therefore the answer to the question of how we come to participate in Jesus Christ and His person and work.” (Dogmatics, Chapter V, 26.2, “The Readiness of Man”)

If anyone is to blame for the prominence of this kind of objective thinking about churches, it is our own leaders! The megachurch rock stars have fully adopted the corporate model which (rightly, in the case of a business) looks at any system as a sort of machine, where efficiency rules and productivity determines success or failure. This has led to what Peterson powerfully condemns as “ecclesiastical pornography,” an airbrushed centerfold of the perfect local church which offers the individual member endless ecstasy and never has a headache or wants us to go shopping with it. Why should we preachers be surprised if the folks in the pew assume they have a right to critique, even to waive their receipts and demand a refund when the product fails to fulfill its propaganda? We have somehow taught ourselves that dogging the church is a mark of spiritual maturity. Just as well to say that a man criticizing his wife proves how good a husband he is.

I much prefer the description of George Bernanos’ marvelous character, the crusty old Cure of Torcy in the novel “Diary of a Country Priest.” The Bride of Christ rightly understood, the Cure insists, is “a sturdy wench who’s not afraid of work, but who knows the way of things, that everything has to be done over and over again, until the end . . . .For all the efforts of Holy Church this poor world won’t turn into a shining altar for Corpus Christi day.”

So I guess I’ll just grab my mop and go on slogging ahead, realizing at the same time that the very water of life I slop on the floor touches the dirt of my own filthy boots, meaning the one who comes behind me has to mop up my muddy footprints. I rejoice that I’ve been made eternally clean, and that some dear servant of Jesus is willing to wash my feet.

This entry was posted on May 26, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.