This Is The Church

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies?” That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-30)  

When I think back, when I’m looking at the world with the eyes of God, or even looking back at myself in the way that I try to look at others, maybe I was in my most beautiful state there, when everything was falling apart at the seams, because I wasn’t strong. There’s this weird Christian truth, it’s all throughout the Bible, and we forget about it all the time. It’s called reversal. Mary’s song tells the story.  God will bring down the mighty from their thrones and will exalt the humble and meek, the hungry will be filled, but the rich will be sent empty away.  

Maybe it was me who experienced the gift of reversal. 

In my state of chaos and weakness, I was living out the gospel in a way I could have never imagined beforehand. I was able to let God’s people walk along with me in ways that I had formerly been unable to. 
And it was these relationships, the Church that let the light in. The things that I held dear, the things that I valued, the good virtues of our society, two happy children, a professor husband, staying married, some kind of semblance of a home life; all of it fell away. My heart that was closed was now open and bare, because everything had been stripped down. All my idols were smashed, and I was in front of my community, naked. And that’s when they ministered to me, feeding me when I was starving, loving me when I didn’t even know who I was. 

The Church. It’s the body of Christ in the world. And there’s so much mystery about all of it, so much strangeness, especially if we put our own values on the Church. And this is easy to do. We all come amped up on our ideas of what Church should look like. Beautiful people, doing God’s will, living fully in the light of God, not arguing, loving one another as Christ loved us, doing important work in the world in such a way that they will know we are Christians by our love, not insecure, always able to see the best in people, living lives worthy of Christ.  

This is not the Church I serve, nor is it nearly as beautiful as the Church I serve. The Church I serve is full of quirky people with quirky ideas, people I wouldn’t be friends with in another other genre of my life, strange agents -- the inaccessible wonder of something beyond myself, a way of describing the functionality of so many of the people in the Church, people you wouldn’t be friends with in any other genre of your life.

That’s what the Church is.

God’s presence, God’s gift to the world, the people that show the deep truth of the world, where my personal “standards” are always overruled.

There’s this secret about the church, one that we don’t tell at every juncture, at every family picnics, when we get together to tell stories.  We tell the good stories then, or we complain about what isn’t.  

Here’s the secret: the Church is always hanging on by a thread. 

This is exactly what makes it so otherworldly, so mysterious, so powerful. Because like the King of the Universe taking on flesh and being born into a barn, the Church’s strength isn’t in its buildings, its wealth, its perfection. The power is found in the weakness.  

The Church as the body of Christ.  The body that took on humanity, the body that healed the sick, made the blind see, blessed the children, loved the woman at the well, the woman with oh so many husbands, the body that talked smack with his friends, the body that multiplied the loaves and the fishes so that the 5000 didn’t go hungry, the body that loved the lawyer and his questions, the body that cleared out the temple, the body that was broken for our salvation upon the cross, the body that was raised again from the dead after being wrapped in the tomb, the body that appeared to Mary on that first day of the week in the garden, that brought her such joy. 

The Church. The Body of Christ. Eyes open to the hungry. Stealthy. Hands serving others. Feet walking to do the good of Christ in the world. Hearts open to the needs of others. A body made up of many members, all with different functions, all with different roles, always strange and awkward, always mysterious and amazing.  

This is the destiny of the Church, to be this body in the world, to heal, to love, to bless, to share, to clear out, to be broken, to be raised, to bring joy. 

The Church, the body of Christ in the world, for all the world for all to see, isn’t some sort of impenetrable fortress, strong beyond expectation, able to withstand all the devil’s wiles with perfect wisdom, no.  It’s not like that.

It’s stranger.  Funnier. Weaker. Filled with quirks and unsightly warts. Uglier.

And it’s beautiful. So beautiful.

The Church is the reason I believe in God.  

Never more than just a rag tag group of believers, with problems, quirks, embarrassing weaknesses. And yet. Suddenly they rise up, strong and do the right thing. Like Fred who hires ex offenders in his business. All the time. Quietly. Without formality or really letting anyone know. 

Or Suzanne who called and apologized when she’d accidentally let a secret out, something that hurt another church member, something she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but something she told everyone. But she apologized. Knowing herself and her weakness. 

Or Leila Ruth taking it upon herself to buy me a fake grass Easter basket so I wasn’t the only child in the 2nd grade who didn’t get chocolate for Easter. 

Or Tilly who told me that she thought I was a goodgirl, not like “good girl” when someone does the right thing, but good girl, as in she saw my goodness and she appreciated it. 

Or my small students who hugged me and told me I was beautiful. All the time. Every day. And greeted me with gladness and joy when they saw me. 

Or Joan, who told me the story of how she’s fallen in love, and even though it’s not a forever kind of love, this love has opened her heart to the possibility of something more, after she’s been closed off for so many years.  

Or Fran, who gave my kid a gecko night light because she knew how much he liked reptiles. 

Or Charlotte, who makes baked goods and leaves them in the office every Thursday because she loves the church staff. 

Or Leslie, who showed up at Bob’s house with a meal after his wife fell and broke her hip, without asking or telling.

Because without the Church, it’s just me, and that is a lonely, dark, and unpredictable reality, one that I can’t even begin to face.  

It’s easy to see the weaknesses especially when they are rising up all the time. It’s easy to see all the ways that the Church has hurt and wounded people, keeping them out, damning them to hell, embarrassing them, not holding them in a place of love. It’s easy to remember and hold on to these parts of people.  

It’s less easy to remember the goodness, mostly because the goodness is small, less obtrusive, small, almost pathetic in its gesture.  And if you didn’t know what it was you might mistake it for something else entirely.  And plus. We have a hard time remembering goodness, especially the small gestures. But it happens all the time, these gestures, bumbling, almost embarrassing. Small. But it happens all the time.  Many of them are only the size of a mustard seed.

This is the church, in all its brilliance and it doesn’t get better than this.

This is the community that holds me up, when I can’t do it myself, when it’s impossible to think properly, when I can’t even move without someone else, when I can’t pray, when I am at my worst. 

I am not alone. 

I am a member of the Body of Christ, loved by God and by the Church, fed by its actions and its sacraments, so that I too may be the Body of Christ to the world.