“Blinking Church”
In the Gospel for today, Jesus preaches his first sermon. It was something that, for him, came natural – as if he were born to it. Those that knew his family said Jesus had a gift for preaching, even as a young boy; he could talk to anyone, anywhere, and they would listen to him and connect with what he was saying. What he said made people think about things, about themselves, about their faith and about God.
And yet, we are told that many of those who heard that first message did not really appreciate his gift and may even have thought, “This is only Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary. He is one of us. Where does he come off telling us that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled - ‘our long wait is over’? This young man needs to understand “his part” in this congregation - and it is not standing up in front of all of us and talking all this nonsense!”
Looking back in hindsight, especially right after the Christmas story, we know this IS what Jesus was born to (this and a greater thing), but for the people then, in the small town of Nazareth, living in the moment, they seem to have had no idea. Just as today we may have little idea of what we (as the body of Christ) have been born to, what gifts we have been given, or what part we are to play in living out the church’s call.
John O'Donohue, in his book To Bless The Space Between, writes this about our call:
“We were dreamed for a long time before we were born. Our soul’s, minds and hearts fashioned in imagination. Such care and attention went into the creation of each person.... The great law of life is: be yourself. Though this axiom sounds simple, it is often a difficult task. To be yourself you have to learn how to become who you were dreamed to be. To be born is to be chosen. There is something that each of us has to do in the world. The call is to find it."
What O’Donohue points out is of great value to us, both as a church and as individuals, in understanding what we are being called to. We are to be our self, to become who we were dreamed to be, to recognize we were chosen for something, and to discover what that something is. Imagine this church being itself – unique from all others, fulfilling God’s dream for it, and doing what it has been chosen for. Jesus knew. Do we?
Well, if we are not sure, how do we know, how do we find out? Or can we really ever know? After all unlike Jesus we are not God. And yet Paul consistently refers to the church as, ‘the body of Christ’ – which makes us like Christ, in a way. It is important to understand God becoming fully human in Jesus Christ – and perhaps equally important to realize God’s incarnation (and everything that means) in ‘the body of Christ’ as well.
If God became human in Jesus Christ, I can’t imagine Jesus naturally knowing his calling any more than you or I. We know that following his baptism, Jesus took some time to sort things out, to discover his calling and where God was calling him to go. As we would, he struggled with it. He didn’t know right away, so he prayed and he looked to scripture. It took time, forty days and nights, small step by small step, for God to lead him through the wilderness. It was not an easy journey and there was a cost (all that he had) but when all was said and done, Jesus, being human like all of us, finally knew. And with his knowing, there was a transformation – a redirection of sorts.
It is crazy to think God would have called such people as us to God’s ministry and mission, here in this place, in this community and in this world. We are a collection of people, some might say a “motley crew,” you and I – a congregation, a church – as human as human could be. We are fragile; open to the many distractions in our lives; timid and fearful of what tomorrow may bring; and confused as to what we should do. How odd it is then, that we should be the ‘body of Christ’ – and yet, how appropriate.
The Reverend Debbie Blue, House of Mercy in Saint Paul, Minnnesota, writes:
“God reveals God’s self most fully, the Christian church professes, not as a rational system or a set of ethics, not as an unchanging principle or some magisterial deity, but as a vulnerable human being. How could God so recklessly inhabit such a contingent, fragile, volatile, potentially destructive thing: a human body with teeth and tempers and some seemly useless flaps of skin.”
If this then is to be our understanding of the incarnation, what are we to believe about Paul’s statement about the church, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” – and its implication for all of us? Think about ourselves, and this church, and how we need all the parts – extroverts, introverts, doers, encouragers, cooks, and musicians – all functioning together as the body of Christ. Think also about what it would mean if a few necessary parts were lacking or not functioning properly?
Paul said, God chose what is foolish in the world, what is weak. God chose what is low and despised. God chose all of us: sick and beautiful and broken people. God chose even me. We are all chosen to love God and each other, even when we don’t always agree. Yet love in the “real world” can be hard. Dostoevsky’s father, in Brothers Karamazov, says, “Love in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” To be our selves is not easy. To be the church, in love, can be hard. To be the church, God is calling us to will no doubt be difficult because we are human.
We have been chosen by God, Paul says, not because of how good or perfect we are, but because of God’s great mercy and because God is God. And Paul says there is absolutely no reason to think because of it we are somehow better than everyone else, because we are not. We are just a church of human beings, shinning its light and love into the world like a neon sign with half its letters burnt out, as Rev. Blue points out, and blinking: “hurch…urch…hurch…urch.” It may be broken, its light dimmed as it witnesses to the need for God’s grace… but there IS hope it may someday blink, “Church.”
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