This Is My Church

The church Trustees had a great deal on carpet.  If they were willing to go with a mixed pattern of square carpet tiles, they could save a few dollars per square yard of carpeting.  So from Friday to Saturday the carpet layer worked almost ‘round the clock in order to get the carpet down in the hallways of our building before Sunday morning.

The reaction of the Sunday morning crowd was not pretty.  Nor was the carpet.  The mixed pattern of carpet squares looked AWFUL, according to many (although many of the children seemed enthralled, as if they’d never considered carpet to be so interesting!).  Many people were so incensed by the carpet that they became (they said) almost physically sick.  The Trustees were chastened and the poor carpet layer had to come back and undo his hard work and lay down a pattern that MATCHED!  And the initial savings the Trustees intended was lost.

What’s this story got to do with Jesus?  Maybe more than you think.  I mentioned in my last blog/article that somehow we’ve got to make a personal claim on the gospel, like the apostle Paul when he writes, “according to my gospel.”  I believe that same personal claim is necessary for our relationship to the church.  So much contemporary conversation about spirituality seems unattached to anything real, as if we can have our spiritual experiences without relationships to actual people and institutions.  This disembodied spirituality is a copout, an avoidance of the sometimes hard work of living in community.  Authentic spirituality involves relationships with other people and the institutions to which they belong – in Christian terms – the church.

So, when folks get mad about the pattern of the carpet, they are actually making a personal claim about their faith – “This is MY church and I CARE about what happens here.”  While we may think that carpeting is really a small thing in the grand scheme of things, I would rather have people upset about carpeting than for them not to care about their church. 

Sometimes I get frustrated by church folks who get upset about what I consider petty matters.  But at least it means they care.  I’d rather have a dozen people in church who care about what happens in and to their church than to have one hundred people who don’t.  You see, the church belongs to Jesus, and therefore, even for all its failings, it is worth caring about.  And because it belongs to Jesus, it also belongs to me, because Jesus has invited me in on what he’s doing in the world.  The church of Jesus is MY church and I want everyone to care.   

According to My Gospel

There is a phrase that the apostle Paul uses only a few times in his letters in which he refers to “my gospel.”  For instance, take a look in your Bible at Romans 16:25.  I love his use of that possessive pronoun.  In claiming “my gospel,” Paul is making a personal commitment to the good news that he has received in Jesus Christ.

Now surely the gospel that Jesus proclaimed transcends any one person’s individual claim on its message.  The gospel was a good word about a new order of life which Jesus initiated in his preaching, in his wonder-working, in his life, death and resurrection.  So, gospel is a bigger story than how it affects any one person.  And yet, if we do not make a personal claim, or allow the story to claim us, then we have missed the whole point it seems to me.

Jesus invites us in on the establishment of God’s reign “on earth as in heaven,” but if we skip along the edges and never let this godly reign rule in us then we have missed the opportunity for the good news to become our news.  John Wesley was a devout churchman who nevertheless was missing out on the joy that accompanies the good news until one evening during a Bible study on Aldersgate Street - he writes, “I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”  The claim of the gospel finally hit Wesley personally.

Of course, the gospel does not belong to the apostle Paul or to John Wesley, but the use of that possessive pronoun is like the language that lovers use when they say to one another, “You are mine.”  Such language is simply an attempt to express the personal claim that comes in a loving relationship – the same kind of relationship in which the gospel invites us to participate.  Because to belong to the kingdom that God is establishing requires just such a relationship with Jesus Christ who says to us, “You are mine.”  And for us to enjoy the full measure of gospel joy requires our personal response to him, as in the words of the old Fanny Crosby hymn, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!”

When I say, “My Jesus,” that does not negate the possibility that he is also “your Jesus,” while also not being limited by our personal claims on him.  God in Christ is able to be all things to all persons for the sake of their joy and ultimate salvation.  May Jesus Christ be yours.

Words to Live By

“Of the writing of books there is no end.”  These words from the Biblical Ecclesiastes, suggests a certain futility in the art of literature.  Words piled upon words --- and has anything really come of it?  “There is nothing new under the sun,” expresses the opinion of this Biblical writer.

In the Gospel of John, the evangelist gives his own spin on the limitations of literature.  As he concludes his version of the life and ministry of Jesus he implies that he could have written much more but he had to stop somewhere (John 21:25). The books that have been written about Jesus since John’s epilogue testifies to our human need to get in the last word, and is proof of the wisdom of Ecclesiastes.

The book of Revelation, traditionally attributed to John but likely written by one of the members of the Christian community influenced by John, adds a more strident warning about the limitations of words.  He ends his Revelation by cautioning anyone from adding or taking away anything to his words.  His counsel, coming as it does not only at the end of his book, but also curiously placed at the end of the Bible, has been interpreted as a warning against messing with scripture unnecessarily.

Still, well-meaning Christians have been “messing with” scripture from its very beginnings.  There is no end to the words that have been added to and taken away from the original texts.  In some measure this is healthy.  These books of the Bible and the way we respond to them witness to the fact that words on a page actually are a living testimony.  They breathe with life and continue to breathe life into the Christian community.  And we cannot help talking and writing about it. One of the liturgical responses that Christians make in response to hearing the scriptures read in worship is, “The Word of God for the people of God!”  To which the people respond, “Thanks be to God!”  This Word from God has so shaped the Christian community that gratitude is the appropriate response. 

But there are so many words in this Word.  Sometimes, perhaps often, people get so lost in the words that they lose any sense of The Word.  Kathleen Norris, in her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, describes a woman celebrating her 101st birthday and being asked her favorite Bible verse.  She responded with a verse she had memorized while a child, Mark 14:8, “She hath done what she could:  she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.”  In the verse Jesus is defending a woman who has done an extravagant act of kindness for him. When the 101 year-old was asked what it was about the verse that had captured her attention for over ninety years, she responded, “She did what she could.” (Page 256, Riverhead Books, New York).

So many words.  But sometimes all one needs are a few to sustain a life.