THIRD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

Isaiah 9:1-4

Psalm 27:1, 4-9

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Matthew 4:12-23

Prayer of the Day: Lord God, your lovingkindness always goes before us and follows after us. Summon us into your light, and direct our steps in the ways of goodness that come through the cross of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

^“From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Matthew 4:17.

“As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishers. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” Matthew 4:18-22.

Alfred Loisy, French biblical scholar, linguist, philosopher and a founder of the modernist movement within the Roman Catholic Church is credited with saying that “Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God and what came was the church.” In his view, as in the view of many other modernist scholars since, the church was an unintended consequence of the historical Jesus’ prophetic ministry and preaching. In its creeds, theology and various institutional forms, the established church represents a betrayal of Jesus’ insistence upon the nearness of God’s impending reign that promises to transform human existence.

I have in previous articles expressed my views on the futility of chasing the so-called “historical Jesus” supposedly lurking behind the New Testament witness. I am far from the only one to have observed that the Jesus such people find turns out to be remarkably amenable to their own social, religious and political preferences. In my view, the only Jesus we have is the one to whom the New Testament witnesses in all of its textual messiness, theological diversity and cultural bias. Do these diverse voices witnessing to Jesus in this remarkable document nevertheless faithfully portray a coherent testimony to him as God’s Son and the world’s savior? That is a question neither historical criticism nor any other hermeneutical method can resolve. We are left with the Apostle Philip’s invitation to Nathaniel: “Come and see.”

While Jesus is no doubt dismayed with much of what the church is today, I do not believe it can be said from the perspective of the New Testament witness that the church was a mistake or unintended. In Sunday’s gospel, Jesus begins his ministry by announcing the nearness of God’s reign. In the very next breath the evangelist Matthew narrates the call of the first disciples. The church, albeit in embryonic form, and the kingdom are together from the beginning. They remain so throughout the gospel narrative. Sometimes the church is manifest in the work of the twelve, the faithful women who supported them and nameless others who followed Jesus throughout his ministry. Sometimes it is glanced fleetingly as in the people touched, instructed and healed by Jesus whose identity and destiny we never learn. Sometimes the church is found lurking on the sidelines in people like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who will not openly identify with Jesus, but show up unexpectedly for Jesus when his own closest disciples have abandoned him.

The New Testament reflects a church whose borders are porous. That comports with my experience of church. In every church to which I have belonged, there was a faithful core of disciples who were always present to assist a family coming to the sanctuary with needs for food, clothing or heating bills. If the discretionary fund was exhausted, they reached into their own wallets. They were the first to volunteer for every church ministry and event and the last to leave after the cleanup was done and the lights turned off. There were folks who worshipped regularly, contributed modestly but seldom, if ever, showed up at any other time. There were people who attended sporadically, never contributed significantly and disappeared for months at a time. But they returned often enough for us to know them by name and understand a little bit about their circumstances. There were folks who showed up only on Easter and Christmas. Finally, there were people who never showed up until someone needed to be baptized, married or buried. Yet even these folks had a sense that this church was “theirs” in some attenuated way. All of them belonged to our part of Christ’s Body in some sense.

I think the church has always been uncomfortable with its “open border” policies. Throughout the church’s history, there have been movements with leaders intent on closing the borders, drawing clear lines between the church and the world, the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned. The church, they argue, is to be counter-cultural, formed by thick practices and the teachings of apostles and prophets. Church is the furnace in which a new way to be human is forged. It is to be a community that operates as a “demonstration plot” for the reign of God, as Clarance Jordan once observed. I agree wholeheartedly with Jordan on this point. I would add, however, that the chief characteristic of God’s reign is inclusivity and hospitality. Those same attributes must also be present in the church. What distinguishes the church from a cult is its openness. Anyone can come in off the street and into our worship services. There is no secret initiation rite. Baptism, holy communion and confirmation are all public events. There are no secret esoteric teachings known only to the inner circle. What we believe is set forth in creeds that are confessed publicly at our public worship services. What you see is what you get.   

The church is not the reign of God, but only its less than perfect witness. Confession of sin is a central part of Christian worship and a reminder that disciples are no less in need of God’s redemptive love than the rest of the world. The diversity and inclusiveness confessed for the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” is frequently more aspirational than real. But aspirations are important. If a student’s aspiration for achieving an A in physics results in receiving a B instead of a C, the student’s efforts were not in vain. The reign of God is revealed in the lives of those who believe in it, love it and live for it. Though painfully aware that their lives do not measure up to the new humanity revealed in their Lord, they nevertheless discover at times that they are capable of doing more and being more than they ever imagined they could do or be. Like John the Baptist, the church is not the savior of the world or the reign of God. Yet, again, like John, it is always pointing beyond itself to the one who is the savior of the world and who announces the nearness of God’s reign. In their flawed witness, the world sometimes gets a glimpse of what God has in store for it.

It is important to point out that there never was a “golden age” of the church. The New Testament does bear witness to great acts of faithfulness and courage by the church and its leaders. That, however, is far from the whole story. In the gospels, Jesus’ disciples consistently misunderstand him and the reign of God he proclaims. They argue and quarrel over which of them is the most important. They show a nasty intolerance for small children, Samaritans and foreigners they regard as unworthy or simply not important enough for Jesus’ attention. One of them betrays Jesus, all of them desert Jesus in his time of greatest need and the one he considered his “rock” denied knowing him when the pressure was on. The Book of Acts is rife with ethnic tensions, disputes over doctrine and practice as well as personality conflicts. Saint Paul’s letters to the various churches he founded and served demonstrate that these communities, too, fought over money, power and ecclesiastical order. In short, the first century church looks very much like the church of the twenty-first century. It was a mixed bag then as it is now.

Here is a poem about the church’s imperfect but precious witness to God’s reign.

Prayer at the Closing of a Church

Source: Anonymous