We Believe: In the Church

I got an email Thursday with the subject, “Why MegaChurch Pastors (and other Leaders) Keep Failing and How You Can Avoid it.” Their conclusion? It is about the inner life. We become vulnerable when we are not paying attention to our inner lives: not paying attention to our body’s signals (stomach pain, back pain, pain in your jaw, feeling like you can’t take a full enough breath…all tell you that you are risking going off the rails); not paying attention to the signals we are getting from our relationships (letting days go by without really looking your child or your spouse in the eye, getting frustrated over small stuff, feeling ready to explode – or exploding); and not paying attention to God (not slowing down to listen, not opening your Bible, not worshiping regularly – and not just being present but really being engaged in worship and letting your spirit soar).

It happens all the time. Life gets busy; we live in constant crisis mode; we think we will get to it later, and we don’t tend our inner life. It’s not just megachurch pastors and leaders who fail. We all fail. In big ways and in small ways, we fail. People get hurt. Relationships get broken. Community suffers.

And yet, the Apostles’ Creed does not say I believe in “the sinful local church” (Killinger). Instead, we say we believe in “the holy catholic Church.” Now, that is confusing! The church, we often say when doubters bring up that they got hurt by a church member or a church committee or a pastor and they aren’t going back, or say that they would go to church but there are so many hypocrites and sinners there , the church is a hospital for sinners.

And it always has been. Jesus told Simon Peter, when the words “You are the Christ” just tumbled out of his mouth, you have a new name, Peter, it means rock, and you are the rock on which I will build my church. But, it was just a couple of days before Peter took Jesus aside and rebuked him for talking about going to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed and on the third day raised. “God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you,” he said. And Jesus turned, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” Already, the church’s leadership was in need of healing, and that need would continue as he swore he didn’t even know Jesus the night Jesus was arrested – not once, but three times. Jesus supplied the bandages for healing after his resurrection as he asked Peter, three times over, “Do you love me? Then tend my sheep, feed my lambs.”

And THAT’s why we say the church is holy – because it isn’t ours. It is the church of Jesus Christ! Jesus said, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” The word holy in Greek means “set apart by God.” The church isn’t dependent on our actions, it is not holy because we are special or good. It is holy because it is set apart by God to be Christ’s body in the world.

I have a book on the Apostles’ Creed by Dr. John Killinger that contains a passage that must be from one of his sermons, over and over again the refrain comes, “But the church will prevail!”
“Of course,” he writes, “there is division in the church. It is comprised of human beings, and human beings are notoriously fractious. But the church will prevail! Of course we have confused our buildings and altar furniture with the kingdom of God. We have our “edifice” complexes just like everybody else, and we forget that the Spirit does not dwell in earthly houses. But the church will prevail! Of course our worship services are often dull and unimposing. Christians are not necessarily more imaginative than reporters and lawyers and members of civic clubs. But the church will prevail! Of course the people who comprise our congregations are sometimes mean and heartless and insensitive to the needs of others. Jesus had trouble keeping his own disciples in line, and there were only a dozen of them. But the church will prevail! Why will it prevail? Not because it is perfect. Not because its liturgies are so compelling that no one can resist them. Not because its members are so loving and true that everyone wants to join and be like them. But because it is based on the confession that Jesus is the Christ, and because he said it will prevail!”

Congregations will come and go. Denominations will come and go. But the catholic church will prevail – lower case “c,” catholic. The Greek word “katholikos” means “universal,” and it isn’t in the New Testament. The first time it is used in reference to the church is by Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, about 80 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. He wrote in a letter to the church at Smyrna, “…wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.” John Calvin would call this the “visible church” – the Body of Christ active in the world now.

He would call the communion of saints the “invisible church,” the whole body, all who have been, are, and will be, gathered from all times and places as one with Christ as head.

We hear the invisible church in the passage from Revelation we read this morning. When he was exiled on the island of Patmos, John received a revelation from God of what must take place so that he could bear witness to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, and share all that he saw. He heard an invitation like a trumpet, “Come here and I will show you what must take place after this,” and at once he was in the Spirit. He describes a throne room, filled with worship, and a Lamb, who had been slain, and the Lamb was worthy to open the scrolls with God’s will that were sealed, and only the Lamb. And he saw and heard the communion of saints, “I heard,” says John, “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!” The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.”

What does that look like today? Rev. Gardiner Day, an Episcopal rector, told the story of a 12 year old boy who was asked by his teacher in Sunday School, “What is a saint?” He says it just so happened that “the boy had been taken the previous summer by his parents to see many of the cathedrals in Europe…As he searched for an answer to the question, he remember the saints he had seen depicted in the stained-glass windows, and he replied, ‘A saint is someone who lets the light shine through.’”

Interestingly, saint and holy come from the same Greek word. Saints are people who are “set apart.” In the New Testament, saints are mentioned 62 times. Only once is it singular. Saints are not just individuals set apart for God, saints are people who are so devoted to Jesus Christ that they have become part of a fellowship, the New Testament describes it as the household of faith.

When I visited Paris, France, I expected to be awed by the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I walked around and appreciated the architecture, Rose windows, the light streaming in and the dark shadows. Then we went to Sainte-Chapelle, known as the “jewel box church,” 1, 113 stained glass windows, depicting 1,113 scenes from the Old and New Testaments, light dancing all around, I stood in awe as tears overflowed their banks. It wasn’t any one window, it was the impact of all of them together. This is the power of the Communion of Saints.

I believe in the church visible and invisible, the Body of Christ active in the world now and the eternal unity of believers past, present and future letting the light shine through us, holy because we are set apart for God as one catholic, universal, household, a family, of faith, serving and worshiping God together.