01. Three in One and One Another

Posted by Chris on May 27, 2012 under Front Page Posts, Sermons

Over the next two Sundays, we will have groups out for summer activities.  I’m mindful of these things because it has an

effect on our Sunday attendance here, but we should all be encouraged that these groups are serving the Lord elsewhere. I’m never discouraged because church is about more than just occupying a space.

Church is about something else, and I think that sort of concern lies behind statements like “Love Jesus, Hate the Church.” Perhaps you’ve seen this statement or one like it somewhere. It is popular right now seems to be the mantra of our times.  At one time there was a sign posted around town that was advertising a different group and actually had this phrase as a question: “Do you love Jesus but hate the church?”  Obviously it was an attempt to reach out to those who had had a bad experience with church.

It is not my intent to criticize any of these groups who used the slogan.   Actually they make fairly reasonable points including some points that our heritage has made over the last 200 years.

The two images on the screen are from a book and video.   The first is a book titled “Love Jesus Hate the Church,” written by a man named Steve McRainie.   He is of the pastor for the Church Without Walls in Georgia. The book is a statement of how the institutional church is failing to truly represent Christ and the Church Without Walls is calling people to a different kind of fellowship.

Some of you may recognize the second image as a fellow named Jeff Bethke, who at the first part of this year gained attention with a spoken word performance on YouTube. He actually loves the church but he says in his poem that he hates religion.  If you follow his poem, some of it sounds quite familiar.  He says that Jesus didn’t call us to be an institution and Jesus didn’t call us to be hypocritical or Pharisaical. I would say that you can go back and find sermons from 100 years ago in the Restoration Movement that say something similar.  We ought to pay attention to the fact that this slogan is being renewed and revived because it represents an interest in our times.  That interest is focused on a discipleship that is not encumbered by the of the demands of institutional religion.  I believe that we have something to offer in this discussion.   The worst thing that could happen to us is that we start picking up all the of all of the baggage of institutional church and start dressing ourselves up in it and lose out when the rest of the world is having the conversation that we’ve been trying to have over the last 200 years.

Back to this slogan, I can understand that it’s a harsh an offensive statement.  I don’t think there’s any mistake that they are trying to be provocative with a statement like “Love Jesus Hate the Church.”  Hate is strong word, but at least when they’re saying that it is still better than a passive aggressive hate of the church which comes across as a neglect of the church.  I see that sort of contempt for the church when we show no desire, no energy to make a better way.  We may be all for loving Jesus but the church becomes easy to neglect.

To any who say that there is no neglect of the church, why is it that even within the church we have to make gargantuan efforts to boost attendance, promote membership, and increase involvement?  It seems to me that sometimes the church fails to do what the church is meant to do because we must spend so much energy on remedial tasks like getting people to attend a gathering, promoting membership, or getting people to sign up for activities and increase involvement.  Are we trying to overcome a passive aggressive contempt for a bad notion of church?  Our lack of awareness about what it means to truly be church has allowed us to treat church as if it is no more than membership in a social club in which we place membership and all that is required is attendance.

You and I have encountered this in one form or another.  We have either asked the question ourselves or we have been asked this question by others.  If you’re a parent you know you’ve heard this question from your children: “Why do I need to go to church?”

Let us imagine a dialogue with someone who is asking that question.  He will our questioner.  Along comes an adventurous soul who ventures to reply.  He will be our defender and answerer.

Given the question, “Jesus saves me so why do I need to go to church at all?” our defender may say “You are right Jesus our only salvation but you need church because church is going to help you get to heaven.”

To which our questioner may say something like,”Really? That group is going to help me get to heaven? But some of them seem like the very people to keep me out of heaven! Some of them are constantly angry, some of them are constantly rude, some of them are just not happy at all and I’m not talking about being hypocrites because they are not at all hypocritical about it!  They are straight up and face-forward about it all.

Now, our valiant defender says, “Okay so I get that.  But we certainly need you then. We need you to be a part of church.”   The questioner comes back with, “Why is it that you need me? You say that but often when I’m there you ignore me you don’t pay any attention to me. You want me to sign up and be involved in activities which you don’t really seem to have any real interest in what is going on in my world and in my life.”

So our defender drives it home with authority and says “Alright, you must go to church! God says you have to go to church right here — Hebrews 10! It’s a commandment!  Don’t forsake church attendance!  There, that settles it.”

Yet, our questioner is not convinced.  He says, “What exactly is it that I’m not supposed to forsake?  What is the assembly after all?  Is it an appointed meeting time or a community of people?  I can devote myself to people and their needs without showing up for appointed meeting times.”

Now, our exasperated defender comes back and he says, “Listen here, you need to show up because this is where the Lord’s supper is served.  You do want to get your Lord’s supper, yes?  Well, it is served right here only in this time and this place and you cannot get it anywhere else.  Accept no substitutes!”

Our questioner asks the defender, “Have you now gone in for the Holy Mass? You’re saying that this is the only time and place that I can get the special bread and wine?  But you are also telling me that church is people rather than a sanctuary?  Now you are being inconsistent!”

I want to help you because I’ll admit our defender in that little one-act play did not do a very good job.  He tried to make the case that you need to go to church for some sort of salvation but was forced to agree that that is not the case and once we scratch that off the list we have to wonder why do we need to go to church.  Is it for security because church is what checks us in with God and we must make sure that our salvation is still holding up?  Is it for obedience? If so then we just attend church because we are marking time and we have to put in attendance somewhere thus we have to do the things we are told and there really is no other reason.  It becomes obedience to an empty command that degrades into a slavish obedience. Is it for worship? Is attending church about going to the one place of worship where worship happens and it only happens right here and so attending church is all about a worship club?

In the interest of helping, let’s notice that it’s hard to come up with an answer for a question that is invalid. It’s very hard to find biblical answers for questions that are not biblical.

The real problem is the question why do I need to go to church?  When church has been viewed as something that we have to go to we are missing what church is really all about. In the era of the “Love Jesus Hate the Church” slogan, we need a renewed vision of why we are church.  And I say renewed because the answers are very biblical, we just need to renew them for ourselves and we need to embrace them.   Let us recognize that our best defenses for the church, even our best arguments for our love for the church is too often filtered through this view of church as a building, or a place, or an organization.  We may find an answer but we have to go for more than church. You can’t find the rationale or the reason for the church within the church, you have to go higher.  And you may have to go higher than Christ.  It may seem a bit unusual.  How can you go higher than Christ? If the people of God would understand what it means to be church then they must look at Jesus who points to something greater than himself.   He himself is part of something greater.

In John 14 there are at least two statements (verse seven and verse ten) in which Jesus points to something higher.  He says the only way to the father is through me if you really knew me you would know my father too.”  And “ the words I say to you don’t come from me, but the father lives in me and does his own work.”

Regardless of how you think you may feel about the church, if you do love Jesus then you have just cast yourself into love with something more than Jesus.  For if you know Jesus, then you cannot help but know the father.  C.S. Lewis warned us about the nonsense of regarding Jesus as nothing more than a religious teacher.  There’s more to him than that.  Likewise, the notion that Jesus is a good and kind Savior and he’s all you need to know will not suffice.  If you know Jesus, then you already know much more than Jesus.  Jesus himself says that if you know him, you know the father. If you’ve seen him you have seen the father.  A relationship with Jesus means you have a relationship with the Father.  This is why it’s very difficult for those who say “I respect Jesus and I appreciate Jesus, but I just appreciate Jesus from a human standpoint. I think that he is a good moral teacher.  He’s a good man.”  How can you have a relationship with Jesus and overlook God the Father who is a part of Jesus?  As we have observed in our Lord’s Supper, the relationship between father and son is so close, intimate, real that any separation of that relationship brings pain and suffering.  This is why Jesus says, “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”   If you know Jesus, you know the father also.

If you know Jesus you have the spirit as well.  It all comes together and you cannot separate.  You will not be able to pick out the parts you do not like. You decide that you are all for Jesus the Son part of it and so the father makes some sense but the spirit is scary.   You cannot ask God to keep that on the side as you sample it or choose only to have a little of it.  Good people that we are, we are used to having full-service. In John 16, Jesus is once again teaching about who he is, and that a relationship includes the spirit.  Jesus reveals that it’s through that spirit that we have the connection with the risen Jesus.  You need not understand everything there is to understand about the spirit (as if that’s possible).

In John 17:21 Jesus is saying a prayer that same night that he sweats those drops of blood that we focused on in the communion. On that same night that he’s in anguish and agony he’s thinking of us.  During a time when we would’ve forgiven him totally and completely understood if he only cared to focus on himself, he remembers us.  All of God’s children are included in this prayer. He says, “Father just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  When we are in Christ we are also in the Father and we are also in the Spirit. there is no distinction and no compartmentalization. We are then united one to another.  Our relationship to one another and our relationship to all the earth, at least what it should be, is seen in this prayer of Jesus.

I there are controversies in the past about the word Trinity. It is not a biblical word, but we use a lot of words that are not biblical words because they are good words.  Trinity is just an idea of saying that there are three and yet there’s a unity.  It simply means that the “threeness” of God the Father, the son and Spirit does not mean that there are three separate entities in the sense that they are not connected at all.  Rather, that there is a oneness.  Yet, teachings that get into the mechanics of the Trinity do not always help. In fact, we may have missed the significance of the Trinity because of an over emphasis historically on the mechanics.

What does the reality of Father-Son-Spirit say to us about God?  It tells us that God is in himself all about relationship.  Stop and think about what that means. God is, as the apostle John says, love.   How often we use that statement: we sing it, we teach it, we pray it. We must mean that God is more than a warm fuzzy emotion or just feeling good.  Within himself, as the father loves the son and the son loves the father and the Spirit is the love of both in action, then God himself is characterized by love that’s what it means for us.  That view of God is our source for our unity and for our one another community

When we commune in the name of the Lord, we commune in his love and as we are drawn together by his love we love him and it causes us to love one another.  God’s project of salvation is not focused on me or you alone, as he desires to not only save individuals.  He wants to save me and you. He wants to save our relationships with one another.  All of his rescuing and saving is forming community so we begin to see the church as God does.  God’s love pours out into the hearts of many and God draws them together as his children

Ephesians 4: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace!”  That means everybody get along and everybody build on those relationships, but not just because that’s a good sounding thing to do or because we do not care for troublemakers.  There’s a much better reason rooted in Trinity! Why do we keep the bond of peace and unity of the Spirit? Because “there is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”  In that text you see the Trinity: Is God mentioned in that text? Is Jesus mentioned in this text? Is the spirit mentioned in this text? Yes all three.

We are mentioned as well.  All in all.   The unity of the spirit and the bond of peace is the basis of all of our relationships.  Husbands and wives love one another the way Christ loves the church. The model of marital faithfulness and devotion is not the image of a happy couple, but Christ and the church. It all keeps going back to the Trinity.  Marriage is not just a civil union or social contract, it is not simply a hedge against loneliness, but it participates in the relationship with God. Likewise the relationship with parents and children, likewise with all members of the household, likewise with all of us and all relationships route back into the relationship of the father-son and the Holy Spirit.

My hope is that a new view of the Trinity relationship gives us new perspective. I hope you leave here today with new perspective that the church is not a building, the church is not a place, the church is not even a style of worship (people always want to sort out churches by their style of worship. Jesus never said that his church would be known by their style of worship.  Just that the worshipers seek him in spirit and truth). Church is not an organization, the church is not an institution, church is not something external to us. It makes no sense to say, “Let’s all get together and go to the church” when the fact of the matter is we are church.  One cannot have this building without the materials that make it up.  Likewise, you can’t have church without the people who are the church and who are connected to the Father, Son and the Spirit

Church is not a 501(c)(3) entity.  We are not defined by the IRS, we are defined by God.  Tax-exemption is not who we are and it is not what makes us special.  It is fine and good that we have this status and we can use it to accomplish God’s purposes, but we must use this as a tool and not as a definition of church. In the mission field, believers sometimes have to use government registration with the state to function as the church, but those groups understand that that registration is not their spiritual identity and that registration with the government powers is not what makes them church.  If we understand that in the mission field, then let’s understand that in this mission field. IRS qualifications and government definitions are not what makes us God’s people. It may allow us to do certain things according to the laws of this nation, but let’s not assume that we cannot be the church without the state’s blessing.  We must wear those things as lightly as we can just as we see those in the mission field wear it lightly.

Jesus says you will be known as my disciples if you love one another. That’s how we are known as church.  According to Jesus (John 13) the church is those who keep Christ’s ways and keep his commandments.  His teaching is a way of life that brings blessings to us and blessings to others and even when it’s hard we know it is the way of Christ. It is the way to live that honors him and glorifies him. The church are a group of people who are living along the way in relationship with the father and relationship with the son in relationship with the spirit and then in relationship with one another. I hope you love Jesus, and he hopes you love the church.   Because you are the church!  And if it is hard to love the church (and it is because sometimes the church is unlovable, because each of us is at times unlovable), then we have a way to see our love increase.  Our love can increase because we will share in his spirit and it won’t be up to us to come up with it on our own.