Go out into the world...

For people to encounter Christ in the Body of Christ, they must believe that he is indeed present. Otherwise they will come and see a community that may meet some of their expectations but will inevitably fail to meet others leading to disillusionment. No human community, including the church, can ever meet our projections of what we think the community should offer us.

Our idealization of community is too self-centered and dependent upon the fluidity of our emotions. At one moment I want the people in the community to be close and supportive but in the next moment I want them to give me space. Sometimes I need the structure of their expectations and other times I want them to accept my rebellion. It is in this fickle community, which never achieves our idea of perfection, where Christ encounters us. That encounter is only possible if we expect Christ to be present. Otherwise we will focus on our expectations and neglect to listen for what Christ is saying to us in this very human experience.

Hans Kung states, “the church is essentially more than what it appears to be. It is not an ordinary people or group, but a chosen people; it is not an ordinary body, but a mystical body; it is not an ordinary building, but a spiritual building.” (The Church; Hans Kung; p. 62; Image Books, a division of Doubleday & Co.;Garden City, NY;1976) In a world where people are very cynical about the church, how do we come to experience the church as something more than one more human organization?

When the disciples went up on the mountain with Jesus, they saw him transfigured. In their perception, they saw him move from a wonderful man to the Son of God. The pattern of that transformation is what must take place for Christians who move from seeing a church to experiencing the Body of Christ. It will not be obvious to the world around us that what is happening in a church is the revealing of the Word of God. To the outside observer what takes place in the church will continue to be seen as nothing more than the ordinary interactions of a group of human beings.

To understand how the believer experiences a transfiguration, one must look at how that took place in the life of Jesus. There were many who saw Jesus and did not see the Christ but only another human being. Most of the world did not understand that anything significant had happened when Jesus was born or when he walked the dusty roads of Galilee. Even when people came in direct contact with Jesus, most asked, “Is this not the son of Joseph the carpenter? Wasn’t he the little child who used to run through the streets with my cousin’s boy? How could he possibly be the Son of God?” It was an act of faith that enabled some to open their eyes and see more.

In the Gospel of Matthew when Peter acknowledges, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus responds, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” In a similar manner to the first disciples, it requires an act of faith for members of the church to encounter something divine in the church.

Too often we think of the Christian community as the church which we attend. We forget that the Body of Christ transcends the barriers that humans construct.

Philip was in a daze and more lonely than he had ever been in his entire life. He was having trouble remembering exactly how it had happened but what was very clear was that he found himself in a jail in a country whose language he did not even speak. He had come here on a business trip but had decided to indulge himself in what he thought were some of the exotic pleasures of the night life in the city. He knew he had gotten drunk, probably had tried some drugs, but in any case had lost consciousness.

As hours passed into days and then weeks, he realized that this was not some little misunderstanding that would be quickly cleared up. Then one afternoon he just happened to glance out of his cell towards where one of the guards was standing and he saw the guard cross himself. Philip had been raised in the church but had drifted away as he became an increasingly successful single adult. Now, seeing that simple sign of the cross made by the guard reminded Philip of the Christian community back home and he longed for the simple pleasures of that community. He began to pray, at first secretly but then openly. One day he found himself humming the tune to one of the hymns he used to sing as a boy and he heard from another cell someone humming the tune back to him. Another day an English version of the Bible suddenly appeared on his tray when a guard brought him his food. While he would be in that jail for several more months, he was no longer alone. Despite the language barrier, human community began to be formed and he rediscovered the power of Christ to break down the dividing walls of hostility. It was clear to Philip that he had not discovered Christ but that Christ had discovered him.

Bonhoeffer, in his book, Christ the Center, emphasizes that our central question must be “Who is Christ for me?” (Christ the Center, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. by John Bowden, Harper & Row, New York, 1960.) Christianity is not a set of ideas which we accept, modify or reject but an encounter with the risen Christ. Christ comes to us and asks of us a personal response. But this is not the individualistic encounter of pietistic religion divorced from community. Rather, we meet Christ in community in the Body of Christ. As has been amply demonstrated in history, the individual is capable of endless illusions and delusions. It is in our encounter with others that the validity of our thoughts and experiences are tested for reality. The individual believer both receives God’s revelation in community and also needs the community to test the validity of that revelation. The first level of that validation takes place when we meet in Christian community and test our understanding in the hearing of others.

Of course human communities can also experience collective delusions which need to be tested through an encounter with a greater reality. Thus the church encounters God in its relationship with Scripture, Christians from other cultures, and the world outside. In the church, Christ comes to us and asks for a response that requires us to decide who we are in relation to God and neighbor. Through the Scriptures, the creeds, tradition, the needs of others, the diversity of understandings that we bring from our respective cultural experiences, and the movement of the Spirit through worship and the sacraments, we continue to test our faith in an encounter with a reality that is greater than any of us. Often it is only through such contrasting experiences that we can grasp the universal nature of God’s saving truth.

In my next blog, I will try to give you a concrete, though fictional, illustration of this.

While I believe it is important that we reexamine the divine nature of the church, this is not to suggest that the human, physical, horizontal aspects of the church should be neglected or are unimportant. Because we believe that God is the author and affirmer of creation, there is no duality which suggests that the spiritual needs to be divorced from the physical. The Word of God finds expression in the physical world according to Genesis. Genesis 1:1-1:4a emphasizes that creation emerges from the word of God or is an expression of God.

In the Gospel of John we are told that that same Word finds expression in the person of Jesus. John 1:1-5 ties the incarnation and creation together and sees the incarnation as the physical expression of God. In both cases the Word needs to find expression in the physical aspects of our world in order to be appropriated by humanity.

We also understand the importance of community because God declared that it is not good for a human to be alone. Genesis 2:18. That the divine finds its expression in community also finds its foundation in the concept of the Trinity. We live in and discover who we are in relationships including our relationship with God. The church becomes God’s gift of community where we encounter not only each other but also each other in the presence of the Divine.

We have all had the experience of being in a group and experiencing the impact of a newcomer on the group. We all become different because of the presence of this new person and we have to become acquainted with each person all over again. The presence of God reveals us in a different light as well as revealing others in our community in a different light. When the church is most fully itself, we come to know who we truly are.

As a friend who has been alienated from the church reminded me, when the church is at its demonic worst, it can also prevent us from knowing who we are. One of the realities which we must face is that the physical church is not always the faithful church but the faithful church can never be separate from the physical church.