What Can We Believe about the Church?
Sermon
What Can We Believe?
Second Lesson Cycle A Proper 23 through Thanksgiving
What can we believe about the church? That is an important question for us to ask and to answer. An awful lot of people today have a very low opinion of the church. Many people think that it is, at best, unimportant and unnecessary, and at worst, something that is a real hindrance to everything good. You have heard them. Some say, "I am a spiritual person and I believe that Jesus was a great teacher, but I don't want to have anything to do with organized religion." Others delight in cataloging all of the failures of the church and its people so they can feel righteous about not going to church.
Our scripture lesson makes it clear that Paul had a very different attitude toward the church. He was deeply committed to the church. He was committed to spreading the Christian gospel and building up the church in spite of the hardship and persecution he had to endure to do it. When Paul first came to Thessalonica to preach, he had just come from Philippi where he had a bad experience. It seems that there was some opposition at Thessalonica too. But in spite of all of that he came and preached the gospel boldly. He was committed.
Paul was also very careful to maintain his personal integrity for the sake of the church. Apparently there were already some religious teachers who were exploiting the people who were drawn to them. (Some things don't change.) Paul reminded the people that he was not one of those. It would have been perfectly appropriate for Paul to have received a salary for the work he did. But he chose not to so that there would be no question about his motives.
Most important of all, Paul related himself to the church in love. He came representing the God who loves us. He came teaching the people a life of love. So he related himself to the people and to the church in Thessalonica in love. They knew that he loved them. He said, "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us" (v. 8).
Why did Paul feel that way about the church? It was because of what he believed about the church.
Paul had no illusions about the church. He knew well the humanity of the church. As we read all of the letters of Paul, we find he had to deal with all of the shortcomings and failures and temptations that churches have to reckon with today. Yes, Paul knew about the humanity of the church.
However, Paul believed that the church is more than a human institution. He believed that the church is of God. In the addresses of his letters to the church at Corinth, he spoke of them as "The church of God in Corinth" (1 Corinthians 1:2 and 2 Corinthians 1:1). He believed that the church is part of God's plan and that God is present and at work in and through the church.
In the first of those letters, he spells out his belief about the church. He calls it the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). The image of the church suggests two things. One is that the church is made up of many different people with different talents and functions who work together like the different parts of a human body with Christ as the head. It also suggests that the church is a body of people to whom God has entrusted the mission of carrying on the work God was doing in the world through Jesus Christ.
What is that work? To give the world hope. To enable the world to trust. To teach the world to love. In that way, God can use the church to save the world from all the things that distort and destroy life in its fullness.
Does the world need that? Look around.
Look around at all of the fear, hate, and conflict in our world. Look at the wars and the terrorism, the tyranny and the other forms of violence that are always waiting, threatening to break out and tear our world apart. Remember that the threat of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism is not gone.
Look at the communities and families being torn apart or kept in crippling tension because of deep conflicts and mistrust. Look at the structures of business, industry, and community life that are falling apart because of a loss of integrity. Look at our inability to trust the things we ought to be able to trust.
Look at all of the human suffering in our world, the results of wars, displacement, and exploitation. Look at the widespread poverty in our world. One sixth of the world's people are malnourished. Thirty-six million people, including thirteen million children, in the United States live in homes where there is not enough to eat.1There is something wrong with a world like that. What would it take to fix it?
Take a closer look. There are some things that your pastor knows that you probably don't know. He knows how much suffering there is among the people who live on your block, the people whose children go to school with yours, and the people you see standing in the line at the grocery store. Most of us don't see the amount of marital stress, the child or spousal abuse, the clinical depression, the addictions, the growing desperation, the inclination toward suicide that are all around us. But they are there. What will it take to fix that?
Take an even closer look. Look within your own life. Is your own life all that it could be? Is it all that you want it to be?
When we look at needs like that we ask what it would take to fix them. We are accustomed to thinking first about some change in the circumstances of our lives and of our world, something to which we could probably assign a value in terms of dollars. And those things are important. Before we come to those things, there are some even more basic needs that cry out to be met.
There is a need to be able to rise above discouragement and despair and take hold of hope, a need to believe that something really good can happen.
There is a need to be able to relate to life in basic trust, to see behind all of the things that disappoint us, something greater that will always be there for us, something that loves us, something in which we can have faith.
Most of all, when we have taken hold of hope and learned to trust, we need to be able to move out into life in love, in a basic commitment of our lives to all of life, a willingness to give ourselves to the well being of our own lives and the lives of others and the life of the creation as a whole.
If those intangible things are alive and at work in our lives, in our communities, and in our world, they will make the differences that need to be made in the lives of the people who are hurting. Eventually, they will change those circumstances that are hurtful to human life.
Where do hope and trust and love come from? If we believe the Christian gospel, we believe that God is at work in our world and in our lives to make those things happen. That is an important part of what it means that God is at work in our lives and in our world to save us. Yes, salvation does have to do with a hope that reaches beyond this life. It also has to do with something God is doing to make a difference in our world and in our lives in the here and now. And the beginning of that saving work is in the growth of hope, of faith, and of love.
Where does God do that saving work? Everywhere. God is not limited. God works through families, community agencies, friendship groups, and political action groups. God works through all of the great religions of the world. But we believe that God has made his saving work known to us most perfectly in Jesus Christ. There is only one agency in the world that is intentionally and completely committed to doing the work of Christ, only one agency in the whole world has taken that as its primary purpose. That is the church. The primary purpose for which the church exists addresses the deepest and most basic needs of humanity in this world. It addresses our own most basic needs too.
So, is the church important? Those people who say they don't want to have anything to do with "organized religion" are either deeply disillusioned or they have just chosen other purposes for their lives and don't want to be bothered with anything that doesn't serve that purpose. If we recognize that the deepest needs of the world can be best met by what the Christian faith has to offer, then we will know that those who believe will need to get organized to offer the world what it needs to keep it from dying -- or self-destructing.
Paul saw that and that is why he related himself to the church as he did. Can we see that? If we do, how should we relate ourselves to the church? If we follow Paul's example, our response will have to take the shape of commitment. Commitment is not a very popular thing in our culture. That is part of what is wrong with our culture. Acall to commitment is part of what our faith offers us for our salvation. Love is really a matter of commitment. Love is the main thing most of us need to make our lives into real life. Committing ourselves to something greater than ourselves can make us bigger people. Our commitment must be to God and to all that God is doing in our lives and in our world. That commitment will have to be invested in lots of different ways. But part of our commitment to God will certainly have to be invested in the church, the agency on earth to which God has entrusted the work he began in Christ.
What shape should our commitment to the church take? It can start by taking the shape of expectancy. Paul didn't say anything about it in today's passage of scripture, but he must have looked to the church for the nurturing of his own faith. He must have remembered Barnabas and the other members of the early church who took him under their wings and shared the faith with him. He must have been fed spiritually by his relationships with the Christians in Thessalonica and in all of the other churches with which he worked.
We will do the church a service by going to the church to have our own spiritual needs met. Yes, that can sometimes set us up for disappointment. But, what would happen if you would speak up someday in Sunday school and say, "I have come here hoping to be saved. I have come here hoping to get hold of some hope, hoping to learn to be able to trust, and hoping to learn to live in love"? The expectation just might bring about some real spiritual renewal in your congregation.
Then, insofar as you can, by expectation and by action, you should work to build up the integrity of the church. When we get honest about things, we have to recognize that the church has not always lived up to its highest calling. Some people say that the church has become so preoccupied with its own institutional success that it has forgotten its mission. That is certainly something that has been a temptation for the church in every age. If you are a member of the church, a functioning part of it, you can work to keep that from happening. We all should.
Finally, your commitment to the church must take the shape of love. That was really Paul's most important commitment. The Christian faith is about love. It is about God loving us into the ability to love as God loves. That is what should be going on in the church and through the church in the world. Love is a giving of self, a commitment of life to life. Paul said, "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us" (v. 8). The more we do that, the more the church will really be the body of Christ that God calls it to be.
So now look around you. Where are we? We are in church, aren't we? This is the building we have been accustomed to calling the church. These people around us are the people we have been accustomed to calling our church. We have been doing the things we are accustomed to doing in church. We see around us the things about our church that have sometimes annoyed us -- and also the things about our church that we have always loved. Here we are in church. And we have been talking about what it means to be church. So let's do it. Amen.
__________
1. George McGovern, Bob Dole, Donald E. Messer, Ending Hunger Now (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. viii-ix.
Our scripture lesson makes it clear that Paul had a very different attitude toward the church. He was deeply committed to the church. He was committed to spreading the Christian gospel and building up the church in spite of the hardship and persecution he had to endure to do it. When Paul first came to Thessalonica to preach, he had just come from Philippi where he had a bad experience. It seems that there was some opposition at Thessalonica too. But in spite of all of that he came and preached the gospel boldly. He was committed.
Paul was also very careful to maintain his personal integrity for the sake of the church. Apparently there were already some religious teachers who were exploiting the people who were drawn to them. (Some things don't change.) Paul reminded the people that he was not one of those. It would have been perfectly appropriate for Paul to have received a salary for the work he did. But he chose not to so that there would be no question about his motives.
Most important of all, Paul related himself to the church in love. He came representing the God who loves us. He came teaching the people a life of love. So he related himself to the people and to the church in Thessalonica in love. They knew that he loved them. He said, "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us" (v. 8).
Why did Paul feel that way about the church? It was because of what he believed about the church.
Paul had no illusions about the church. He knew well the humanity of the church. As we read all of the letters of Paul, we find he had to deal with all of the shortcomings and failures and temptations that churches have to reckon with today. Yes, Paul knew about the humanity of the church.
However, Paul believed that the church is more than a human institution. He believed that the church is of God. In the addresses of his letters to the church at Corinth, he spoke of them as "The church of God in Corinth" (1 Corinthians 1:2 and 2 Corinthians 1:1). He believed that the church is part of God's plan and that God is present and at work in and through the church.
In the first of those letters, he spells out his belief about the church. He calls it the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). The image of the church suggests two things. One is that the church is made up of many different people with different talents and functions who work together like the different parts of a human body with Christ as the head. It also suggests that the church is a body of people to whom God has entrusted the mission of carrying on the work God was doing in the world through Jesus Christ.
What is that work? To give the world hope. To enable the world to trust. To teach the world to love. In that way, God can use the church to save the world from all the things that distort and destroy life in its fullness.
Does the world need that? Look around.
Look around at all of the fear, hate, and conflict in our world. Look at the wars and the terrorism, the tyranny and the other forms of violence that are always waiting, threatening to break out and tear our world apart. Remember that the threat of nuclear war or nuclear terrorism is not gone.
Look at the communities and families being torn apart or kept in crippling tension because of deep conflicts and mistrust. Look at the structures of business, industry, and community life that are falling apart because of a loss of integrity. Look at our inability to trust the things we ought to be able to trust.
Look at all of the human suffering in our world, the results of wars, displacement, and exploitation. Look at the widespread poverty in our world. One sixth of the world's people are malnourished. Thirty-six million people, including thirteen million children, in the United States live in homes where there is not enough to eat.1There is something wrong with a world like that. What would it take to fix it?
Take a closer look. There are some things that your pastor knows that you probably don't know. He knows how much suffering there is among the people who live on your block, the people whose children go to school with yours, and the people you see standing in the line at the grocery store. Most of us don't see the amount of marital stress, the child or spousal abuse, the clinical depression, the addictions, the growing desperation, the inclination toward suicide that are all around us. But they are there. What will it take to fix that?
Take an even closer look. Look within your own life. Is your own life all that it could be? Is it all that you want it to be?
When we look at needs like that we ask what it would take to fix them. We are accustomed to thinking first about some change in the circumstances of our lives and of our world, something to which we could probably assign a value in terms of dollars. And those things are important. Before we come to those things, there are some even more basic needs that cry out to be met.
There is a need to be able to rise above discouragement and despair and take hold of hope, a need to believe that something really good can happen.
There is a need to be able to relate to life in basic trust, to see behind all of the things that disappoint us, something greater that will always be there for us, something that loves us, something in which we can have faith.
Most of all, when we have taken hold of hope and learned to trust, we need to be able to move out into life in love, in a basic commitment of our lives to all of life, a willingness to give ourselves to the well being of our own lives and the lives of others and the life of the creation as a whole.
If those intangible things are alive and at work in our lives, in our communities, and in our world, they will make the differences that need to be made in the lives of the people who are hurting. Eventually, they will change those circumstances that are hurtful to human life.
Where do hope and trust and love come from? If we believe the Christian gospel, we believe that God is at work in our world and in our lives to make those things happen. That is an important part of what it means that God is at work in our lives and in our world to save us. Yes, salvation does have to do with a hope that reaches beyond this life. It also has to do with something God is doing to make a difference in our world and in our lives in the here and now. And the beginning of that saving work is in the growth of hope, of faith, and of love.
Where does God do that saving work? Everywhere. God is not limited. God works through families, community agencies, friendship groups, and political action groups. God works through all of the great religions of the world. But we believe that God has made his saving work known to us most perfectly in Jesus Christ. There is only one agency in the world that is intentionally and completely committed to doing the work of Christ, only one agency in the whole world has taken that as its primary purpose. That is the church. The primary purpose for which the church exists addresses the deepest and most basic needs of humanity in this world. It addresses our own most basic needs too.
So, is the church important? Those people who say they don't want to have anything to do with "organized religion" are either deeply disillusioned or they have just chosen other purposes for their lives and don't want to be bothered with anything that doesn't serve that purpose. If we recognize that the deepest needs of the world can be best met by what the Christian faith has to offer, then we will know that those who believe will need to get organized to offer the world what it needs to keep it from dying -- or self-destructing.
Paul saw that and that is why he related himself to the church as he did. Can we see that? If we do, how should we relate ourselves to the church? If we follow Paul's example, our response will have to take the shape of commitment. Commitment is not a very popular thing in our culture. That is part of what is wrong with our culture. Acall to commitment is part of what our faith offers us for our salvation. Love is really a matter of commitment. Love is the main thing most of us need to make our lives into real life. Committing ourselves to something greater than ourselves can make us bigger people. Our commitment must be to God and to all that God is doing in our lives and in our world. That commitment will have to be invested in lots of different ways. But part of our commitment to God will certainly have to be invested in the church, the agency on earth to which God has entrusted the work he began in Christ.
What shape should our commitment to the church take? It can start by taking the shape of expectancy. Paul didn't say anything about it in today's passage of scripture, but he must have looked to the church for the nurturing of his own faith. He must have remembered Barnabas and the other members of the early church who took him under their wings and shared the faith with him. He must have been fed spiritually by his relationships with the Christians in Thessalonica and in all of the other churches with which he worked.
We will do the church a service by going to the church to have our own spiritual needs met. Yes, that can sometimes set us up for disappointment. But, what would happen if you would speak up someday in Sunday school and say, "I have come here hoping to be saved. I have come here hoping to get hold of some hope, hoping to learn to be able to trust, and hoping to learn to live in love"? The expectation just might bring about some real spiritual renewal in your congregation.
Then, insofar as you can, by expectation and by action, you should work to build up the integrity of the church. When we get honest about things, we have to recognize that the church has not always lived up to its highest calling. Some people say that the church has become so preoccupied with its own institutional success that it has forgotten its mission. That is certainly something that has been a temptation for the church in every age. If you are a member of the church, a functioning part of it, you can work to keep that from happening. We all should.
Finally, your commitment to the church must take the shape of love. That was really Paul's most important commitment. The Christian faith is about love. It is about God loving us into the ability to love as God loves. That is what should be going on in the church and through the church in the world. Love is a giving of self, a commitment of life to life. Paul said, "So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us" (v. 8). The more we do that, the more the church will really be the body of Christ that God calls it to be.
So now look around you. Where are we? We are in church, aren't we? This is the building we have been accustomed to calling the church. These people around us are the people we have been accustomed to calling our church. We have been doing the things we are accustomed to doing in church. We see around us the things about our church that have sometimes annoyed us -- and also the things about our church that we have always loved. Here we are in church. And we have been talking about what it means to be church. So let's do it. Amen.
__________
1. George McGovern, Bob Dole, Donald E. Messer, Ending Hunger Now (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), pp. viii-ix.
