BLOG. 1/21/15. IT’S A PUZZLE OF WHY THE CHURCH EVEN EXISTS!
Did you ever stop and ponder how ridiculous it is that the church even exists? Those two millennia ago, out there on the remote corner of the Roman Empire, in a small-occupied country that was dominated by the religious hierarchy of Judaism, there quietly appeared a modest peasant figure from the margins. Now granted there had been some interesting stories about his birth circumstances, and some knew that his family had been in exile in Egypt for a few years. But then his family settled in as a working family in a small city, where they were known by all of their neighbors. There was in the traditions of Judaism the expectation of some kind of a divine visitation in the form of an especially anointed deliverer from their enemies, … but that expectation had about it some expectation of a dramatic figure with power and grandeur.
But then … this peasant, Jesus, as a mature adult quietly comes onto the scene, and joins his countrymen in responding to the preaching of his cousin, John the Baptizer, who was preaching that they should all shape-up and make ready for the Lord’s visitation. So what does this have to do with Jesus? Well, again, inexplicably, John sees in Jesus the very one about whom he had been preaching, the one whom God had promised, … that he was God’s anointed. This didn’t register with expectations.
But it gets more ridiculous. After spending some interesting forty days in solitude (and evidently in an encounter with another mysterious being who tried to divert him from his mission), Jesus returns to his home synagogue and is asked to read the scriptural lesson for the day, which was from the Prophet Isaiah, and which prophesies about the role of the coming anointed one/messiah/Christ. When Jesus had finished the reading, he handed the scroll back to the leader and announced that he, himself, was the fulfillment of that prophecy. The home folk went ballistic with anger. They knew this kid. He was a local boy. The very idea that he was ‘messiah’ was ridiculous.
Well, if so, it gets even more ridiculous as he begins quietly wandering about preaching to any who would listen the reality of God’s new creation that was now being inaugurated through himself. He called God his Father, and then is audacious enough to say that to have seen him (Jesus) was to have seen the Father, … and that he and the Father were one, that he had come to do the Father’s work. So he preached to whoever would listen, but he also healed the sick, and did lots of other miraculous works that had been predicted by the prophets.
What resulted was that some curious folk began to follow him, and to respond to him. They weren’t especially religious folk. They weren’t even looking for religion. They were a diverse bunch of working folk, probably some were profane and of questionable ethics, and a diverse set of personalities … but they heard something from Jesus that spoke to the deepest needs of their very earthy lives. Along the way he would puzzle them even more by speaking about the necessity of his forthcoming tragic execution, which they couldn’t comprehend. Then even more puzzling was his word that after he was killed, he would rise again. Again, they had no category for all of this, but still he had captivated them.
That is the unlikely, even ridiculous, beginning of what we know as the church. An unlikely teacher and object of their trust, and an unlikely bunch of followers—first twelve, then seventy, and very shortly thousands. Then came persecutions, martyrdoms, … but global expansion. Why?
Skip down two millennia, and the followers of Jesus are now the largest ‘religious’ community in the world, and growing in huge numbers to this very day in the most unlikely and hostile places, and very much ‘under radar’ even in anti-Christian and oppressive nations. There is a growing movement of Islamic followers of Jesus (Isa in the Quran), and Hindu followers of Jesus. House churches are out of control in their proliferation. Why? There is no human reason why this should be so … unless it is Jesus himself building his church (as he said he would), which church is not conceivable or explainable by merely human means. So, why does this unlikely phenomenon continue to exist and grow out of control? Go figure?
