What Church Is
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
September 4, 2005
Exodus 12:1-14; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
Exodus 12 1 ¶ The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: 2 This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the passover of the LORD. 12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
14 ¶ This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.Romans 13 8 ¶ Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
11 ¶ Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; 13 let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.Matthew 18 15 ¶ “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
BEGINNING
We are not sitting in a church right now. No we are sitting in a chapel—which comes from the Latin word capella, that came to refer to small rooms dedicated to prayer, usually within the context of a church or other building. (Music sung in chapels was a capella.) This particular chapel sometimes functions as a church, but it also does extra duty as a synagogue, a mosque, a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple, a place of meditation, and of course a classroom and lecture hall. So, whatever else this building is and however it may function from time to time, it is not a church.
But what is a church?
What do we mean when we say “church”? It is undoubtedly more than the building, especially since we talk about going to church here, and as I pointed out at the outset, we are not sitting in a church.
Is church a sphere of influence over the individual—such that we can talk about ‘church’ and ‘state’ as separate realms of influence and power. Is the church the apparatus of religion, the way that the state is the apparatus of politics? Is it the hierarchy, the tradition?
The English word “church” comes to English through the Germanic languages ultimately from the Greek word kyriakon, which is an adjective meaning “of the Lord”, referring to the building: “the Lord’s house.” Interestingly, however, kyriakon is not the Greek word for church. That word is ekklesia—a word that means ‘assembly’ and is itself a translation of the Hebrew word qahal, which means the same thing.
Well, to tell you the truth, the observation that the church is an assembly—a community—is nothing particularly new. This observation might have been left until the end of the sermon and we could all be contented with lifting up a fairly common platitude about the church and gone home to our dormitories, houses, and apartments without having experienced any particular new revelation or the discomforts that invariably come with such revelations. That would have been easy. That would have been safe.
But there is something about the church that is inherently unsafe. Inherently risky. Far too many Christians have died over the millennia for the church simply to be a social club or a gathering of like-minded individuals who meet regularly to say nice things about God. That kind of behavior doesn’t generally get people thrown into the coliseum to be eaten by lions or arrested in the middle of the night by secret police or shot on hotel balconies.
THE TEXT
For insight we must look back into the scripture lessons we heard tonight.
Israel
The Hebrew word qahal that lies underneath the word for church is an ancient word. It evokes the image of the desert assembly of Israel—the congregation of Israel in the Wilderness following the Exodus. It was not a coincidence. The early Christians saw themselves as the same kind of community as that desert assembly. What do we learn about this community?
First, they were a community in peril—a community in bondage, in exile—a community liberated from slavery to freedom by God. A community commanded to celebrate and commemorate God’s saving work perpetually.
But there was more than that. Israel was called to be an alternative community.
3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it.
The household is expected to eat the whole lamb together and if a household is too small for a whole lamb, it should join with the household nearest it. In the eating of the Passover meal, the food is to be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. That is, everyone eats an equal share of the food that is available. Everyone will receive an equal portion, regardless of rank or station—regardless of wealth or influence. In fact, those households with more members, will in fact, eat less, because there will be smaller portions.
In the eating of the Passover, we see how God calls Israel to model a different reality than the one the world is usually governed by. Everyone is invited into community of sharing and mutual concern.
The New Testament Church
It is easy to see why the ancient church looked to the assembly of Israel as a model for their own self-understanding. They, too, had been in bondage—slavery to sin and death—and had been liberated by God. They too had been commanded to celebrate and commemorate the saving work of God.
And, they, too, modeled an alternative community. In the passage we heard from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus instructs his followers on how they are to resolve differences with one another. They are to try to resolve differences directly with the person who has sinned against them. If that fails, they are to bring others—not as intimidation, but as witnesses. If, and only if, those efforts at reconciliation have failed, then they are to remove the person from the community. Jesus is reminding them of the importance—even the power—of their assembly. A power that requires responsibility and that should not be taken lightly.
It is also a recognition of the fact that the church is a community that is governed by one principle and one law: the law of love. A community that is reflective of St. Paul’s words: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
It is an understanding of Church that goes beyond being merely a separate community—as many Christians often think—to being analternative community.
THE DANGER
And therein lies the danger. For the church’s witness to this alternative community is not always easily ignored. It wasn’t ignored in the first century when fidelity to God required refusing to participate in the worship of the Emperor. It wasn’t ignored in Nazi Germany when the confessing church under leaders like Niemöller and Bonhöffer reminded Christians that unswerving loyalty to the state—a state engaged in rampant violence and idolatry—was incompatible with Christian faith. It wasn’t ignored in Communist Europe when the church spoke out for human dignity and freedom of conscience. It wasn’t ignored in America when it spoke out for racial justice and an end to Jim Crow and segregation. In every age, the church has been called to model an alternative community to the dominant culture—to reject the dominant culture’s idolatry, bigotry, fear-mongering, or hate—and in every age it has been a risky proposition for the Church. In every age, the church is called to this task.
CALLING AND THE GOOD NEWS
And we are indeed called. The roots of the Hebrew word qahal and the Greek word ekklesia mean ‘to call’. The church is a community that is called.
Proclamation
We are called to proclaim the Good News. We are a community that is built on the foundation of the Good News of Jesus Christ and that is a message that matters. It is a message that has consequences.
For it is a message of Liberation. Jesus Christ came in our midst, lived, died, and was raised so that each of us—you, me, all of us—might have the gift of life and life eternal. That we all might no longer be dominated by our brokenness, but would be freed by the grace of God which pardons us and calls us to be a new creation in Christ. Liberating us from slavery to sin and death and making with us a new covenant by water and the spirit. Liberating us from fear to be freed by hope.
That message changes the way we see the world. It takes the world out of the light of fear and despair and casts it in the light of Easter—the light of hope and love. In that light, there are few things that can scare us or deter us from our proclamation—no matter the array of powers in the world aligned against us. It was in this light that the martyrs saw the world, that Bonhöffer, Niemöller, Wojtila and King saw it.
Hope
We are called to hope. Having experienced the power of resurrection in our midst, we no longer encounter the world as others do—but we have hope, hope in God’s final victory when sorrow and sighing will be no more, when mourning will be no more, when death will be no more—for the first things will have passed away, and God will wipe every tear from our eyes.
Remembrance
And we are called to remember. Remembrance in theological language is an active verb—it means that we live lives of memory. We remember in ways big and small. We remember when we partake of the Eucharist—the perpetual celebration that we have been called to—the commemoration of the Exodus, the Last Supper, and the Heavenly Feast. In the Eucharist we remember the past and the future toward which we hope. And we remember by adopting lives of justice, compassion, mercy and love.
The Body of Christ
For, most importantly, we are called to be the Body of Christ, called to witness to the reality of Christ in our midst to a broken and hurting world with our actions and our very being. To model the alternative community as the Body of Christ, the way that Christ himself modeled an alternative to power and violence with self-sacrifice and grace.
It means, too, that we have to be Christ for the world–a world that is very often hurting. Right now, there are millions of people hurting and suffering in the world. In recent days we have seen the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and we have seen how the lives of so many people have been torn apart, changed forever. And it is at times like this of great crisis–especially when the poor and the innocent suffer the most–that you hear people ask where God is? Where is the merciful Christ in all this?
And that is when it is most important for the church to be the Body of Christ–not just to echo the words and the sentiments of Christ, but to be the hands, the feet, the heart of Christ. To show a hurting world that God is present and in their midst. To show through individual and collective action what the love of Christ looks like. There are enough people out there talking about Jesus and not enough people showing the world what Jesus looks like. That is our job.
And like Jesus’ human body, the Body of Christ may suffer from time to time for the work of the Kingdom. Our witness as the Body of Christ will not always be easy for us, but we have been called to model Christ for others–and his way is a way of self-sacrificial and steadfast love.
People may be convinced by tracts and pamphlets. They may come to powerful understandings of God by reading the Bible. But they will only truly understand the God we know when they encounter Christ in their midst through us. Jesus himself tells us that “where two or three are gathered” there he is in the midst of us.
That is what Church is–that is who we are.
END
No, we are not sitting in a church right now. We are the church. And that church is called to a life of fellowship, a life of compassion, a life of mercy and justice, a life emboldened by the gospel, and a life that will, through our witness, our embodying Christ, help to transform the world itself.
