BLOG 10/5/14 QUESTION: HOW CAN GOD’S ‘NEW HUMANITY’ PEOPLE GO TO CHURCH, IF … THEY ARE THE CHURCH?
The total confusion of so many of us about the ‘church’ could be amusing if it weren’t so misleading. It could even be humorous, were it not so consequential. The other ‘Calvin’, the Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, invented his transmorgrifier (which was a cardboard box with dials printed on the side) by which he, in his imagination, transmogrified himself into all other humorous kinds of reality. The mistaken, or transmorgrified, conception of the church is that it is a ‘place’ to which one goes to observe certain expected rites and liturgies.
That is exactly why such a misleading understanding—misunderstanding—of the church renders it into something that has no basis in the purpose of God in Christ. The word church (as I have noted from time to time in these blogs) was a common term in Jesus’ day for a people, or an assembly, called out for a purpose. It is rooted in the concept of one’s calling, and in the purpose of that calling. It has nothing to do with creating religious institutions … and everything to do with Christ’s calling of individuals to himself and to his new creation. This, in turn, brings about his calling into being of communities of those who have responded to his calling to be the bearers of his life, and to be the communal demonstration of that new creation.
… all of which means that we cannot go to church, because we are the church—wherever we are, individually or corporately, there is the church. We are individually and corporately the flesh and blood incarnation of God, the Body of Christ, in whatever neighborhood we happen to be inhabiting at the moment. We, if we have responded to Christ’s calling, are those also inhabited by his Spirit, which gives us a total love and bonded-ness to those others who have also responded to his calling. Those called by Christ out of darkness into his marvelous Light, find each other in all kinds of venues.
When the young church was seduced into accepting the favors of the Roman empire (Constantine in his enthusiasm for his ostensible new found faith) and being provided with sanctuaries and priesthood so that it would, reportedly, have the prestige of the pagan religions, a huge subversion too place. One then went to the sanctuaries where officially designated persons performed the rites. That was the beginning of the era, which we call Christendom, and that has persisted until recent times. Such a concept is so alien to New Testament teachings.
But I want to add my voice to those who challenge that misunderstanding. The church consists of those who have responded to Christ and through repentance and faith become the bearers of his life, heirs of his reconciling work on the cross, and the missioners of his design to make all things new. They meet each other, to be sure, around scriptures, in prayer and in the Eucharistic partaking of the bread and wine given them by Christ, and in mutual responsibility for and accountability for one another.
Yes, I know, I may be oversimplifying this, but you catch my drift. We are a pilgrim people and the colonies of us who find each other takes on many forms. In our day it will be quite different in places that are now post-Christian … from places that are quite alien to such Christian faith. The church in this post-Christian (often hostilely anti-Christian) generation will be communities boldly calculating how to function and prosper without buildings and church professionals—but rather by being colonies of believers contagiously and spontaneously growing and evangelizing and spawning new colonies wherever we sojourn.
And finally, too much of the traditional ecclesiastical tradition we have inherited from Christendom, along with its training centers, has totally missed this point. Don’t be transmorgrified.
In my next blog I will attempt to speak to our indebtedness to the Christendom era.
