Explorers' Club

Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.  – Isaiah 43:18-19

There is always going to be tension between tradition and process.  Tradition is of great value.  We can live full lives in keeping with tradition.  Those who came out of Egypt kept the memory of the Passover, of the crossing of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Law.  Joshua had each of the tribes bring a stone from the bed of the Jordan to commemorate that miraculous passage.  The history of Israel told of the trials and triumphs of King David and of the wisdom of Solomon.

Religious tradition anchors us in the same way the past anchors us.  We have to be careful about the past, though, for while it provides us with a firm foundation, it can also become a trap for us.  We should not allow it to obsessively control our actions in the present or so tightly restrict and define us that we cannot adapt to new circumstances.  I see that danger in myself as I grow older.  My best days have already been, as far as this earthly life is concerned.  Yet I have no choice except to look forward. 

God did not stop working miracles when the last Apostle died.  He did not stop pouring out His Spirit after Pentecost.  He did not stop building the kingdom when the Church was born.  History rolls on.  Lives are transformed every day.  Every day, we must rise to face new challenges, and some of us feel compelled to seek out the new trail God is blazing through the wilderness, to advance the kingdom and claim new ground.  The place where you and I meet the Lord, where Christ has brought us may not be the land to which our fathers in the faith lay claim.  We are always pushing the frontier – or we are holding the fort. 

I think there are legitimate Christian settlers.  There are those who are meant to people the settled lands, to live more in the security of tradition.  I’m not criticizing them.  They are, as far as I know, doing their job.  I’ve been attending church with them the past few weeks.  I need them.  They may not need me, but that’s all right.  I’ll keep quiet about some things.  You start talking about Unknown Friends, Raccoons, and Upper Tonga, and people start looking at you funny and remembering jeeps they have to re-primer. 

I am in no way better than these brothers and sisters.  I am simply not of that kind, though I thank God for them.  They offer us stability in unstable times.  We can go out into the desert places in search of the new things God is doing because they hold the ground behind, because they offer a secure retreat when we are exhausted and weakened by our ventures.  We ought to recognize and appreciate them, and if they make us smile from time to time, that is part of their work as well.  We are all in this together.

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift (Ephesians 4:4-7).

Holy Wholly

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope at your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. Now grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of the Messiah's gift. – Ephesians 4:4-7

Victor Frankenstein took pieces of various bodies and put them together in one larger, more powerful, transhuman form then animated it through some chemical process to create his monster. The Body of Christ appears to have been chopped up, though each piece still lives and thinks that it is the whole body as it wonders why its functions are often frustrated. As I first thought of this, I felt pretty pessimistic. It sounds as monstrous and macabre in its own way as Frankenstein’s creature. God is certainly calling us to unity under one Lord and one King without which we are a mockery of the Kingdom. Yet He said where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I. Each piece really is a whole. Each one of us is part of the Body of Christ, but we are also the Church locally.

It would be ideal, of course, if there were only one “brand” of Christianity, if there was just the Church at Dallas or the Church at Peoria as there was the Church at Ephesus to which Paul wrote. The word “church” arrived in the English language by way of Germanic from a Greek word that meant, originally, “of the Lord”, or “belonging to the Lord”. It’s too bad we couldn’t keep it clean and free of the taint of buildings, hierarchies and organizations. We are supposed to be the called-out, consecrated property of God. Instead we have become a plague of competing corporations with politics, schemes, and programs. We market our “product”. We advertise.

The corporate marketing model may work out all right for the men and women who are effective in their efforts and are the leadership – I can’t quite call them the shepherds – in those churches. Even that isn’t always the case as the leaders’ lives are often wrecked in the process. Individual members of the congregations of these monster churches may find rewarding ministry opportunities, just as individual students may occasionally get a decent education in government schools. But in both cases they are doing it more or less on their own. The marketing model is great for building facilities and/or monuments, for holding big events, concerts, and outreaches. It will fill auditoriums, but does it fill hearts? Sometimes, no doubt, though mostly it is a superficial religion of works and self-sufficiency.

On the other hand, I am just about as put off by small churches and intense “fellowship” with believers in cell groups or men’s prayer breakfast groups. See, I got this crazy idea that when Jesus said, “Go, and make disciples of all nations …”, He meant something like wherever we wind up going, we are to interact with the people around us, living as disciples and witnesses while doing whatever it is we do. I don’t think I need an evangelism program or a college degree to teach me how to do that. I think that’s what the Holy Spirit – that One Spirit mentioned in the verse above – does in believers. I’m the clay pot to carry the Water of Life around. He flows out of me to those I meet. I really don’t have much to do with it.

It’s not that I don’t need to know how to live myself, but that’s also part of what the Spirit does – teach me and guide me. It’s good to have a Communion, to gather with others in Christ and get the occasional fresh rush, but that’s not to be our primary focus. The inflow is a given if we have the outflow.

We were not all given the same calling, but we were given the same hope when God called us. And we should have no doubt that God has called us. That’s the only way we can get here. We enter the world, and He calls us. Perhaps He even calls us into the world in the first place. We have heard something that stirs us and draws us. We respond to a hope of wholeness, a hope that our lives are more than meat and drink -- that our relationship with the Lord will make us whole, but also that we will find our place in His wholeness. We have a hope that, as we are redeemed, we are catalysts or elements in the redemption of Creation. We become part of the transforming of the fallen into something even greater and more glorious that it could have been had it never lost its first state.

Man’s best efforts at unity are burdened with stumbling and laden with danger. I don’t put much faith in ecumenical councils or moves to bring us all back to Rome or to reunite East and West in some great single, worldwide Church. I do, however, trust the Holy Spirit to bring us all together in a way that turns barriers into connections. In that unity our diversity of gifts and understanding will no longer separate us but we will regard them as the hand and the eye regard one another.

Our Father is above us all, but He is also through all of us to all of us and in all of us. The unity of the Body may not be obvious but it is surely evident. As we are filled with and led by the Spirit, we are doing each the small part that moves the great whole.