More About the Church.

It's about time for another post. I missed last few weeks. My goal to start with is to add something once a week. Mondays seems like a good day to do so.

I have been teaching a Sunday School Class for the last 4 weeks. The name that we have given the class is Presbyterian 101. The outline I am using for the class is the Apostle's Creed. So the topics in order are: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, The church and the sacraments, The Presbyterian Church, The Presbyterian Church on Edisto Island.

Recently, We talked about the image of the body of Christ (I Corinthians 12). Perhaps I'm making too much of this image, but it seems to suggest that the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the church is mirrored in the relationship betwen the Holy Spirit and Jesus. We discussed how the sending of the Holy Spirit to the Church at Pentecost is what made it possible for a dispirited group of outcasts, runaway disciples, to become the church described in the book of Acts. Dr. Andrew Purves at Pittsburgh Seminary gave me a helpful summary of the work of the church in a lecture at the Seminary a few years ago.

"The Church," he said, "is supposed to do the things that Jesus did." That's a significantly different view of the work of the church than I was working out of. I think many people think that the church is a place where like-minded people gather and reinforce each other's thinking so that they can go out and withstand the onslaughts of a hostile or indifferent world until they get back together. That is closer to the image of the church's mission that I was working out of.

It's sort of a defeated aproach to doing the work that we have been given to do. We are under seige and our job is to hold out until Jesus comes back. In the mean time if we can persuade anyone to join us in our cloister that's even better.

If we now say that we are supposed to do the things that Jesus did, it changes the character of our work entirely. Jesus didn't hide out in a safe place and try to persuade people to join him. Jesus went out and like a sheep in the midst of wolves.(Luke 10) He wasn't a sheep in wolve's clothing. He went out among the people without hiding who he was or what he thought. He observed that some were hurting and confused. He saw that others were misusing people or indifferent to the pain of others. Jesus observed that some people were grasping what they could take and refusing to share what they had.

Jesus observe that the people were like sheep without a shepherd.(Matthew 9:36) He didn't see vicious wolves, he saw hurting desperate confused people. Jesus moved out from where he was, beginning with his birth in bethlehem. Jesus left heaven and laid himself down in a manger. The rest of his 30 odd years were about moving out, taking risks, extending himself for others. Early in his ministry, Jesus took those whom he had gathered to himself and sent them out.

Those whom he sent out were an extension of himself. Toward the end of his ministry Jesus told the disciples, "Go into all the world." (Matthew 16:15) God is always moving out from the center. Jesus was sent. His followers were sent. I am sent. I am not made to hide behind the church walls and think and perfect my understanding of who I am and who God is. We are sent to be the body of Christ. We are an extension of Christ himself expanding outward from God's throne, out into all creation. I think this video does an excellant job of describing the difference between my old image of church with the new one that Dr. Purves shared with me.