“Church, Why Bother? 2004”
April 25, 2004
Dr. Jerry Nelson
Today we begin a four-Sunday series that will culminate with Dr. Larry Crabb speaking on May 16.
On that Sunday we are suspending Adult and Student Communities but will have a very special program for all children.
We are all invited to a catered brunch that will be served throughout the morning.
I hope you will let nothing interfere with you being with us on that day.
The subject of the four-Sunday preaching series is “Spiritual Community.”
That term, “spiritual community” is made up of two words each with so many definitions that the meaning of the entire phrase becomes obscure.
I went “on-line” to see what came up by searching for “spiritual community.”
I was surprised and chagrinned to see that most sites were “New Age” or “Buddhist.”
The slogan of one
site was, “Through this process WE the people
become I the ONE achieving our ultimate goal –ONENESS”
But in spite of that and its other uses, we use the term because we are talking about relationships with God and each other that connect at the very core of who we are.
· We are talking about genuinely belonging and about truly mattering.
· We are talking about what Jesus offered when he said he came to give us life – life to the full.
Dori Sear of our staff has prepared a journal for our next three weeks – a journal that invites us to reflect on our place in “spiritual community.”
You can get a copy in the Welcome Center or access it
on our website.
When he’s in town and his own or his kids’ athletics don’t conflict, he usually attends church on Sundays.
But if I pressed him as to why he attends I’m guessing he’d have a hard time coming up with something that sounded significant. I might hear:
· “Well, I’ve always gone to church.”
· “Going to church is what Christians do.”
· “Doesn’t the Bible say we are supposed to go to church?”
· “I want my kids in church.”
Maybe you have a better answer than that, right now, but at times even for many of us we wonder, “Church, why bother?”
Or maybe it isn’t
even thought – we just slowly, quietly disengage and we hardly notice it
ourselves until we realize we don’t really miss it when we don’t go.
Why bother?
Most of us want very much to be
different.
I’m not talking about being richer, smarter or more famous.
We probably wouldn’t mind that either but I mean that most of us know we are not, within, the kind of person we want to be and should be.
You don’t have to be very old before you begin to understand that self-help programs aren’t likely to make the changes we need.
We tried enough times to change with little result that we realize something is broken.
Not only do we wish we were different, but most of us long for relationships that are much deeper than we experience.
We long to connect at ways far deeper than the superficial we usually experience.
At a certain level we are lonely and it hurts but we have even a greater fear of trying to connect and being rejected.
And so we live in uncomfortable isolation, simply putting on a happy smile much of the time.
But according to God’s Word, the change we long for and
the relationships we covet are found in the church because that is the
way God made us.
And when I say, “change and relationships are found in the church,” I must quickly add that I am not defining church as the building or the institution or the program.
I am using a biblical definition of the church as God’s new community – people spiritually connected to each other in committed relationships.
Something very unhealthy has developed in the evangelical church over the years – something we have adopted from the culture.
That unhealthy value is “individualism” and it has resulted in an “individualistic Christianity”.
We ask, “Church, why bother?” because we have reduced Christianity to a private affair between God and the individual.
William Willimon has written,
“American Protestantism often impresses observers as a highly individualized,
privatized, psychological affair… Individual conversion experiences (in which
individuals are saved from individual sins in order to have individual
relationships with Jesus) are viewed by some evangelicals as the end rather
than the beginning of the life of faith. The church becomes (little more than)
a conglomerate of like-minded individuals who find it useful to congregate in
order to keep the flame of individual religious experience alive and to foster
it in others.” (Willimon in What’s Right with the Church
15)
I think he’s right.
We speak and act as if getting our personal sins forgiven and getting our own ticket to heaven is the sum of what it means to be a Christian.
And furthermore we sometimes think the only reason for church is to tell others about their need for getting their sins forgiven and getting to heaven.
Church gets reduced to an assembly of individuals emphasizing an individual religion.
But as Willimon points out, individual, personal conversion is not the conclusion of the life of faith but simply the beginning.
We are converted, saved, born again, into a community – a community of faith, the body of Christ, the church.
An Asian Indian by the name of George David, wrote an
excellent little book, I came across recently, entitled, The Eclipse and
Rediscovery of Person.
“Community is what we in our generation, who have been
socialized in a secular culture, are conscious of having lost. We need to realize afresh that we have lost
community because our very personhood is being eroded by secularism. Our self-understanding has sub-consciously
shifted, so that we (see ourselves most importantly as) autonomous
individuals.” (David
46)
We are so intent on being individuals, having autonomy, that we have sacrificed our personhood.
George David, following Paul Tournier and others, makes an important distinction between being merely an individual and also being a person.
The concept of “individual” speaks of number – you are one, alone, separate from.
That word “individual” emphasizes autonomy, freedom, independence.
In and of itself, being an individual is not wrong but when it excludes the more important aspect of what it means to be “person” then individualism is harmful.
We are not just individuals; we are, more importantly, persons.
You say that just sounds like semantics.
Listen, and I think you will hear a real difference in the distinction.
As I just said, the word “individual” refers only to number – the number “one” and by definition “individual” emphasizes our separateness from others.
The word “person” speaks of relationship and “personhood” doesn’t exist apart from relationship.
“The ‘I’ can have no real knowledge of itself apart from others. When two selves interact mutually they develop common attitudes, interests, beliefs and goals. When the interaction is such that the individuality of each is not lost but rather respected by the other, they (each) develop a relational self. It is (this relationship) that transforms an individual into a person… A person possesses not only an individual self, but also a relational self, which is possessed in common with another, making them persons to each other.”(David 43,44)
Yes, God made us individually but he created us to live in relationship.
Genesis 2:18 “The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone.
God created human life to live in fellowship (not just alongside but in relationship) with him and with others.
Derek Kidner writes, “(A person) will not live
until he loves, giving himself away to another...” Derek Kidner Genesis
65
And when God created us to live in relationship, to be persons, he was mirroring his own personhood.
Genesis 1:26-27 “Then God said, "Let us make man in our
image, in our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of
God he created him; male and female he created them.
God, as “three persons in one”, is central to who God is.
Even before we existed God was love.
It is not just that God is love in some abstract conceptual way but that God loves and love necessitates relationship – in this case the relationship was between the three persons of God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is interesting how Islam defines Allah; of the 99 attributes given to Allah in the Koran, never is there a mention of love.
In great contrast, the
CENTRAL self-revelation of God is that he is love.
Love is impossible alone.
Love is only meaningful if there is some other to
love. (David, 49)
God would cease to be God if he was not a Trinity.
Catherine
LaCugna writes, “The doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately a practical doctrine
with radical consequences for Christian life.… (Our purpose) is to participate
in the life of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit… Divine life is therefore
our life. The heart of the Christ life is to be united with the God of Jesus
Christ by means of communion with each other.
The doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately therefore a teaching not about
the abstract nature of God, nor about God in isolation from everything other
than God, but a teaching about God’s life with us and our life with each
other.” (Catherine
Mowry LaCugna, God for us: The Trinity and Christian Life found in
Bolsinger It takes a Church to Raise a Christian, 61)
Yes, God would cease to be God if he was not a Trinity.
And while we might remain individuals, we would cease to be persons outside of relationships.
To be fully human, to be “person”, is to bear the image of God.
And thus to be truly human or fully human we must live in relationship with others as God does – again, not simply among others but in genuine connectedness to others.
That is why Jesus prays to the Father in John 17:11 “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name…so that they may be one as we are one.
In the 14th Century a Russian monk by the name of Andrei Rublev painted what became a very famous icon – a pictorial representation of a deeper truth.
It is called “The Holy Trinity.”
It obviously has much symbolism in it.
But the most basic intent was to communicate the relationship of the three persons of the Trinity.
· The faces are exactly the same noting the oneness of God.
· The three figures note the “threeness” of that one God.
· And the head of each inclined toward the heads of the others, denote intimacy.
Rublev quite obviously painted the three figures within a circle.
If you think of that circle not in two dimensions but in three dimensions like a sphere, the relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit reach out to include us.
That is what true humanity is about – a relationship with the Triune God.
And a humanity that necessarily includes each other.
As I said earlier, God would cease to be God if he was not a Trinity.
And while we might remain individuals, we would cease to be persons outside of relationships.
But what do we have instead?
Years ago when the late Mother Theresa visited the United States she was asked about the wealth of America in contrast to the poverty of India.
She responded that while it is true that India has poverty of body, America seems to have a poverty of soul.
“She said that in the United States she had seen such
terrible loneliness. Thirty years ago
that loneliness was relegated mostly to convalescent homes and college dorms.
Now it is the epidemic that is behind cell phones, full day planners, and the
manicured lawns of the middle and upper-classes: the abject loneliness of
people who lives in cities teeming with people or, even worse, in homes where
people are close but increasingly disconnected.” (Bolsinger, 42)
We have too much adopted the culture’s priority of individual autonomy.
We have placed individual freedom as the highest valve to be achieved and sustained.
We are so convinced that autonomy must have priority that we will sacrifice everything else to have it, including the sacrifice of true community.
When that happens “church” becomes merely a congregation of individuals, each striving to maintain his or her freedom, and being part of a congregation only to serve his or her own interests.
We don’t really give, serve or love others for others, we just act in certain ways to get for ourselves.
And when it is merely a collection of individuals bumping up against each other in self-serving ways there is no community, no church.
William Dyrness said, “Freedom to
be left alone has become the curse of being alone.” (In
Bolsinger, 44)
· Sin has done that.
· Sin has turned persons into merely individuals.
· Sin has isolated us and keeps us apart and keeps us from being fully functioning persons made in the image of God – connected to one another, living in real community.
And that is what Jesus came to change.
· He came to give us worth, based not on what we do but who we are by his grace.
· He came to change us, to free us from our self-protecting individualism.
· He came to set us free to be persons, persons who are loved and who love.
Ephesians 2:19-22 “Consequently,
you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people
and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy
temple in the Lord. And in him you too
are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his
Spirit.”
It’s important to notice that the Apostle Paul here is not writing merely of a Christian as an individual but of Christians in relationship with Christ and each other; he is addressing us in the church.
We, together, are God’s temple.
Earlier I said God would cease to be God apart from the relationships and that we would cease to be persons apart from relationships.
Now I add, we cannot be
Christians apart from the church.
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 “Don't you
know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is
sacred, and you are that temple.”
Here Paul is not describing your individual body but the church – the body of Christ.
And in 1 Corinthians 12:27 he writes, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.
Christians are not just born again individuals; we are born into a family. We become the new spiritual community, the new people of God in Christ.
The only context for being Christian is the church – the community of believers.
I’ve quoted it often but it is so true: Paul
Tournier wrote “There are two things you cannot do alone. One is to be
married and the other is to be a Christian.”
Some may say, my church is watching Charles Stanley or James Kennedy on television.
Or others may say, my church is standing on the top of peak 8 at Breckenridge and praising God for all he has made.
I hope they don’t mean what they are saying.
It would be like saying my marriage is watching videos by Gary Smalley or James Dobson.
The church is God’s people living in relationship with each other.
But this is where the definition of church gets “down and dirty”.
It is not church when all it includes is individuals attending the same programs.
It’s church when the individuals, as persons are connecting, knowing each other, caring about and for each other, and investing in each other.
And that is where it gets hard because while no one objects to the idea of community, it’s people that make it hard.
It’s a variation on the old Charlie Brown theme - “I like church, it’s people I can’t stand.”
One author wrote, “When it comes to the religion called
Christianity, it’s the scandal of particularity that bothers us. The thing that sticks in our craw is not
that the gospel is about love, peace, freedom, liberation or any other loveable
abstraction. What sticks in our craw
are the particulars, the messy side of Christianity, imperfect people and an
imperfect church. Many approve of both the idea of following Christ and the
concept of the church. But they are horrified by the particulars. It was the romantic poet Southey who said,
‘I could believe in the Christ if he did not drag behind him his leprous bride,
the church.’ Jesus has many admirers who feel that he married beneath his
station. They love Christ but are unable to love those whom he loved.” (William Willimon in What’s
Right with the Church 2-3)
But it is precisely those brothers and sisters in Christ that we are called to love.
Rarely does the Bible speak of the church abstractly.
Almost always the word church is a reference to a specific group of people in a specific location.
These were real people with all kinds of real differences, conflicts, hard-to-get-along-with personalities, questionable pasts, annoying habits, and the rest that drive people apart.
We are a church.
A church made up of
professionals and laborers,
highly educated and barely educated,
short and tall,
slim and not-so-slim,
kind and selfish,
liars, thieves, adulterers, gossips, murderers,
the gentle and the angry –
all kinds, those you’d love to spend time with and those you wish you never had to be around.
But it is us with all of our abilities and warts and brokenness that God has called to be part of this church – to be in relationship with each other.
Robert Saucey wrote, “It is in fact, God’s purpose through
the miracle of redemption to weld together a divided and estranged humanity
into a living unity where differences…are all transcended in Christ.” (The Church in God’s Program
p102)
There have always been some who have understood what church is about but for too many of us we have seen church as something we attend rather than a people we are truly a part of.
The Bible’s definition of church is not a building or a program but a community.
This is not a YMCA where you simply pay your dues and keep the rules.
The church is people who are asking you to become part of their lives.
I began this message by saying most of us desire to be different.
Within each one of us there is a spiritual battle going on – a battle for our souls – and that battle will only be won with the help of other Christians.
That is how God made us – to be persons living in community, real community where people not only know your name, they know your heart.
Larry Crabb has written powerfully of this need in his book, The Safest Place on Earth:
The cry from the heart is to “be part
of a true church, to participate in spiritual community, to engage in spiritual
conversations of worship with God and of co-journeying with others. You yearn
for a safe place, a community of friends who are hungry for God, who know what
it means to sense the Spirit moving within them as they speak with you. You
long for brothers and sisters who are intent not on figuring out how to improve
your life, but on being with you wherever your journey leads. You want to know and be known in
conversations that aren’t really about you or anyone else but Christ.” The Safest Place on Earth 19
That is what I want for you, for me, for us!