Micro and Macro, Over Space and Time
My family and I for the last couple of years have been necessarily somewhat preoccupied with questions regarding the church: how to understand it biblically, how to engage it locally, what constitutes proper human authority within it, what's healthy and unhealthy (as much as I despise therapeutic language) and so on. Why this has been so is well-documented here and on other related blogs. Fortunately, the study is challenging and enriching and a wealth of resources are available over space—via media and the internet, and time—via 2000 years of writing. I continue to discover good thinking and good writing that open the Bible in new ways on this topic.
Which leads me to my first thought: In all the analysis and questioning about church, I don't want to forget to first appreciate it.
Biblically, job one is to engage it and be part of it "...not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near." Hebrews 10:25 (ESV) The church is an amazing thing even in it's most basic and rudimentary micro form, gathered simply around the Word.
Luther said in that regard:
"The only mark of the Christian Church is following and obeying the Word. When that is gone, let men boast as much as they please: 'Church! Church!' There is nothing to their boasting anyway. Therefore you should say, "Do the people have the Word of God there? And do they accept it too?...wherever one hears the Word of God, there is the church of God, though it be in a cow stable, the place where Christ was born."
WHAT LUTHER SAYS: VOL I, Selection 780, Concordia
But over the last year the amazing treasure of the Church in the macro sense has come home to me in a new way too. We live in a privileged time when the insight and ministry of gifted teachers around the globe and back through the centuries all the way to New Testament times are at our fingertips. This is amazing when you think about it.
The writer of Hebrews calls those that went before him (listed in chapter 11) a "great cloud of witnesses" 12:1, and in a sense that cloud extends throughout the centuries A.D. I've just read a series of simple and moving prayers from The Didache, a collection of Christian teaching and liturgy dating back to the early 2nd century, and one from Clement of Alexandria around the same period. We would be at home with those forgotten saints. Their words could be ours, there is no disconnect between their Christianity and genuine faith in the 21st century. And of course from the apostolic fathers through the mystics to the reformers and beyond comes so much that most of us have never explored. I suppose we could think of it as the Church over time. Finding our place in the meta-story of the church is a humbling and correcting exercise. There is, by the way, an enormous amount of even the ancient stuff available to us amateurs. I just saw advertised at CBD a 38 volume hardcover set of the writings of The Early Church Fathers. I may wait for the CD!
The story of the church over time is not all rosey, to say the least. Yet from the reality of all the error, the incursions of human arrogance and apostasy repeated throughout the years, we learn what not to do, and how truth is strengthened when error is challenged. Or at least we should. Even with as little command of church history as I have, I'm struck by the repetitious nature of error—particularly with regard to the church. There is not much new out there in the field of heresy. But then there is not much interest in history either. As David Wells so masterfully points out in his Above All Earthly Pow'rs, our Emergent friends, for example, seem to have no idea that their "new discovery" of subjective, man-centric incarnational gospel is virtually identical to that which eviscerated mainline churches in the mid-1900s.
But they are not the only ones who put at risk this wonderful thing called the church. And here it is not even quite correct to say "put at risk" because what is truly amazing about the church after all is that "...the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Mt. 16:18 (ESV) Consequently she persists and endures and thrives and triumphs through good times, and most remarkably, even more so through bad times. Jesus declared this so we know the story ends well. Still it is important to identify her enemies and the recurring mistakes from within that damage the church's unique position. And of course, finally she is Jesus' own bride. Our primary motive and holy fear should be to do no harm, to be terrified lest we insert ourselves between the Groom and his Bride. There is a wedding underway and this is a dance where no sane man dares "cut in."
Which brings me to my next set of musings based on Matthew 23:8, the relationship between believers, and I Timothy 2:5, the priesthood of the believer. The reformers and the post-reformers thundered on these points, I will squeak about them in my next post.
The writer of Hebrews calls those that went before him (listed in chapter 11) a "great cloud of witnesses" 12:1, and in a sense that cloud extends throughout the centuries A.D. I've just read a series of simple and moving prayers from The Didache, a collection of Christian teaching and liturgy dating back to the early 2nd century, and one from Clement of Alexandria around the same period. We would be at home with those forgotten saints. Their words could be ours, there is no disconnect between their Christianity and genuine faith in the 21st century. And of course from the apostolic fathers through the mystics to the reformers and beyond comes so much that most of us have never explored. I suppose we could think of it as the Church over time. Finding our place in the meta-story of the church is a humbling and correcting exercise. There is, by the way, an enormous amount of even the ancient stuff available to us amateurs. I just saw advertised at CBD a 38 volume hardcover set of the writings of The Early Church Fathers. I may wait for the CD!
The story of the church over time is not all rosey, to say the least. Yet from the reality of all the error, the incursions of human arrogance and apostasy repeated throughout the years, we learn what not to do, and how truth is strengthened when error is challenged. Or at least we should. Even with as little command of church history as I have, I'm struck by the repetitious nature of error—particularly with regard to the church. There is not much new out there in the field of heresy. But then there is not much interest in history either. As David Wells so masterfully points out in his Above All Earthly Pow'rs, our Emergent friends, for example, seem to have no idea that their "new discovery" of subjective, man-centric incarnational gospel is virtually identical to that which eviscerated mainline churches in the mid-1900s.
But they are not the only ones who put at risk this wonderful thing called the church. And here it is not even quite correct to say "put at risk" because what is truly amazing about the church after all is that "...the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Mt. 16:18 (ESV) Consequently she persists and endures and thrives and triumphs through good times, and most remarkably, even more so through bad times. Jesus declared this so we know the story ends well. Still it is important to identify her enemies and the recurring mistakes from within that damage the church's unique position. And of course, finally she is Jesus' own bride. Our primary motive and holy fear should be to do no harm, to be terrified lest we insert ourselves between the Groom and his Bride. There is a wedding underway and this is a dance where no sane man dares "cut in."
Which brings me to my next set of musings based on Matthew 23:8, the relationship between believers, and I Timothy 2:5, the priesthood of the believer. The reformers and the post-reformers thundered on these points, I will squeak about them in my next post.
1 comment:
And of course, finally she is Jesus' own bride. Our primary motive and holy fear should be to do no harm, to be terrified lest we insert ourselves between the Groom and his Bride. There is a wedding underway and this is a dance where no sane man dares "cut in."
That's good imagery.
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