THE CHURCH AS WORK IN PROGRESS
I Peter
2:1-5
John
17:25-26
"...like living stones, let yourselves be built
into a spiritual house."
"I made your name known to them, and I
will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me maybe in
them, and I in them."
How often I have heard people
say, "I don't have a problem with Jesus but I do have a problem with the
church!" Yes, for many people, the
church is a stumbling block to faith, an obstacle on the path to believing in
God and discovering human wholeness. It
is by no means the only stumbling-block, but it is one of them. In fact, if we had to judge by church
attendance in Europe and Britain today we might conclude that the church is
dying, despite evidence of vibrant life in many places. Yet, ironically, at the same time churches
are full to capacity throughout Trump territory, not known for its Christian
compassion, and on the African continent and in Latin America, well known for ongoing
conflict and corruption. All of which
begs the question, well what is the church?
If we were asked to define the church, many of us would be hard pressed to do so. Is it a building, an institution, a bunch of
clergy, a denomination? Deciding what
the church is seems to be as problematic as answering the question "is
there a God?' or "who is Jesus Christ?" And yet, every week, millions of Christians
around the world declare that they not only believe in God, but also in
"one, holy, catholic and apostolic church" even though it is divided
into many denominations, not particularly holy, and we are not quite sure what
it means for it to be catholic and apostolic! So what goes through your mind if and when you say the Creed or when you hear the word
"church"?
I know this all sounds Greek to
you, but the word "church" or "kerk," "Kirk" or
"Kirche," comes from the Greek word kuriakon which means "belonging to the Lord." It was originally
used to describe a church building so you won't find the word in the NT. In those days there were none. Christians met together in each other's houses. Only much later were some buildings dedicated
to the Lord and called churches. But we
all know that the church is more than a building and, clearly, it existed
before there were any church buildings.
The NT uses a different word to describe this church without walls: not kuriakon but ekklesia. Ekklesia means an assembly of people, in
this case a community of believers. If kuriakon
refers to the church made of bricks and mortar, ekklesia refers, as the first letter of Peter puts it, to the church built of "living stones,"
that is, a "spiritual house." This does not mean that it is invisible as
some have said, or that it does not need buildings in which to gather, or that it does not require institutional
structures to sustain and guide its life and work; but it means that before and
above all else it is a living community of those committed to Christ.
There are many metaphors and
analogies used in the NT to describe this Christian community. St. Paul's favourite description is "the
body of Christ" which is made up of many members each of whom needs the
others. A community united in the
Eucharist because, as we say with Paul, we all partake of the same bread, the
body of Christ broken for us. On this understanding of the church, it is not a
bunch of likeminded individuals, like a photographic or bridge club but, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, the church is
"Christ existing as a community of persons," or the church is
"Christ taking form in a band of people." So where Christ is, we could say as some early
theologians did, there too is the church,
recalling Jesus' words: "Where two or three are gathered together in my
name, there am I in the midst of them." (Matthew 18:20)
But the church is more than a
gathering together of Christians, it is also God's experiment in creating a new
humanity that transcends race and nationality, religion and gender, a new humanity in which, as Paul puts it, the
divisions that normally separate people are transcended. As such, the church is a work in
progress. It is not yet one or holy,
fully catholic or faithfully apostolic.
It is a community of people on a journey. Some people today even speak of the
"emerging church," that is the
church that is emerging within and beyond denominations and finding its
identity as a community committed to God's mission of reconciliation and
justice, to God's will for human flourishing and wholeness, to God's will to
care for the environment and to share the earth's resources. As such the church is both an end in itself, and
also a means to an end. It is not just a bunch of individuals who like to sing
hymns , pray and then go and have coffee, but an assembly of people embarked on an
audacious God-inspired experiment to build what Martin Luther King jnr.
referred to as "the beloved community."
King's description of the
church is based on Jesus' "high priestly prayer" in John's Gospel
chapter 17 in which Jesus prays that his community of disciples may be one and
that they may be filled with the same love of God for the world that was
embodied in him. This is the "new humanity" that God is seeking to
bring into being. a "beloved
community" of peace and compassion, reconciliation and justice. A community striving to be one, holy,
inclusive and engaged in serving the world.
This is Christ existing as church-community.
Yes, the church is a work in
progress, an emerging church, building on all the resources that we have
received from the past, but journeying into the future with fresh vision and commitment
inspired by the Spirit of Pentecost. "Our
goal," as Martin Luther King said, " is to create a beloved community."
But he went on to say: "this will require a qualitative change in
our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives." In other words, the church cannot be the
church unless we who claim to belong are daily being transformed more fully
into the likeness of Christ. The church
is only the church as we together are being transformed and participating in
God's purpose of making all things new. Yes,
despite all its faults and failures, which is true of any experiment, I believe
in the church as God's work in progress to make the world more just, more
compassionate, and so reconcile all things in Christ.
John de Gruchy
Volmoed 26 May 2016
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