How many times, have you seen someone else do a job and thought, if I were doing it, I’d have done it better?
Have you ever thought that about the church?
If I had control, I could do a better job.
Might say, there is the problem, no one has absolute control.
But God does and God was the one who chose to establish the church through Jesus Christ and his disciples.
So if you were God, could you have done a better job with the church?
I think we might have had a problem if we were designing the church.
Our problem is that we would have tried to design a perfect church.
No petty jealousies and power games allowed.
All General Assemblies would make perfect decisions.
Every action would reflect perfect love, justice, and Kindness.
Members would perfectly demonstrate God’s purpose on earth.
What’s the problem with that, you ask?
Well, for one who could be a pastor of such a church?
Or members?
And there would certainly be no opportunity to practice forgiveness.
Love wouldn’t even be a challenge.
Do you remember that passage in Matthew where Jesus asked the disciples who people said he was and they responded that some thought he was Elijah, or Jeremiah, or perhaps John the Baptist.
Then Jesus said, and who do you say that I am.
And Peter spoke up, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Then Jesus blessed him and said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
When you think of Peter, what type of person do you think of?
I always think of Peter has having a terminable case of foot in mouth disease.
He’s the one who tried to walk on water and then sank.
Right after this wonderful declaration, he makes another declaration and Jesus turns around and calls him Satan.
He boldly declares that he will never turn his back on Jesus and shortly thereafter he denies him three times.
On this rock I will build my church, said Jesus.
From the beginning, Jesus did not build his church on spiritual supermen.
The problem is that we approach the debate about the church from the wrong direction.
Like the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we keep trying to identify the weeds among us and trying to get rid of them so that we have a pure church.
Of course the problem is that we all know who the weeds are –
They are the other person, the one different from us; the one who has the wrong idea.
Having engaged in this debate for most of my ministry, I can tell you quite clearly who the people who have the wrong ideas are.
Of course, they can also tell you who has the wrong ideas and pretty soon we have a pretty small church.
When we return to the Bible and who God chooses, it seems to have a different story.
Take the Jacob story.
Jacob, you will recall is the man who had 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel.
Along with Abraham and Isaac, Jacob is the father of our faith.
This is the one God called to establish a faith community on earth.
Jacob was one half of a set of twins; the other being Esau.
Esau, you may recall was a very physical person who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
Jacob was more a home boy.
One liked to earn a living by the sweat of his brow and the other by the cunning of his mind.
Jacob, with his cleverness, cheated his brother out of his birthright and then later, with the help of his mother, both cheated his brother and dishonored his father in order to secure the blessing that belonged to Esau.
In short, Jacob, our father in the faith, was not the most honorable of men
Where we pick up the story, the consequences of his life have caught up to him and he is running for his life.
The thing about con-artists is that all of life is a game and the object is to see how you can manipulate things to your benefit.
You are the center of the universe; everything revolves around how it benefits you.
But there came a moment when Jacob let his guard down.
He fell asleep and when his defenses were down, God penetrated his self- centered life.
It was at that moment that Jacob began to be aware that he was part of something much greater than himself.
Our church is not founded on or led by those who are spiritually pure.
Think of our spiritual ancestors—Abraham, Jacob, David, Peter, Paul.
These are not people who had spotless records either before or after they were called.
That which marked them is that they were called by God to be a part of ` something bigger than their own personal lives.
Like Peter, we sometimes get our declarations right and our behavior wrong.
But like Jacob, God doesn’t give up on us.
And, like Paul, God can use even the worst enemies of the church, those who have got it completely wrong, as saviors of the church.
I say that we have approached this debate from the wrong perspective.
I believe we need to do our best to determine who God has called.
And we need to do that with humble awareness that God can upset our most sacred traditions and our firmest convictions about who is right and who is wrong.
I once heard of an interview of a couple who were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary.
The interviewer posed the obvious question, “To what do you attribute your long marriage.
The man got a twinkle in his eye and said, “I think it is because we have both learned the magic phrase.
What’s that, questioned the interviewer.
The woman chuckled and said, “We both have learned to say, ‘You may be right.’” Imagine if the world wide Body of Christ learned to say that to each other
Susan Becker Peterson
I’m already on the mailing list, Steve. But I want you to know that I enjoy reading the posts. They are thoughtful and also provoking. I’m happy to have become a subscriber!! We share a past either at Muskingum College or Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Blessings, Susan Becker Peterson!!