Rev.
Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
Church
#1 - What Is Church?
Jan 5,
2020 Epiphany
Happy
New Year! I hope we all had good times
over the past week with family & friends.
I enjoyed being with my grandchildren in Seattle - can’t say it was
exactly restful, although I loved it - and it was certainly different from my
usual days! Now I’m ready to jump back into things here at Jamesville, and move
forward with our Transitional journey.
Jamesville
CC is on a journey, somewhat like the Wise Men we’ve talked about in Children's
Time. So far in our journey, we’ve done a good job looking at our
congregation’s history. I saw folks at
the Christmas Eve services enjoying the timeline we put together in the
Fellowship Hall. As I wrote in the last
newsletter, the next step of our journey together is to begin to think about
our church and community, and what God is calling us to in our future. We will look at the neighborhood God has set
us in, its needs and projections of its future.
We will hear from some of the community leaders. We will look at our own congregation, our own
gifts, and the ideas the Spirit gives us. We will pray for our minds to be open
and receptive to the vision God gives us
I will be preaching towards our understanding of what a church truly is
and does. We will have some house meetings to talk with one another about our
ideas. Putting it all together, we will set some goals and maybe put some
things into practice.
It’s
always good to periodically take a look at ourselves, take stock of where we
are, see if that’s where we hoped we would be -
readjust, reimagine, and reorient. Looking to the future and pondering
what plans God may have for us is an important aspect of preparing for the
future.
It
occurred to me that a starting point might be to spend some weeks talking about
“Church.” What do we mean when we use
the word “church”? Are we all thinking
about the same thing? Do we all agree
on what “church” is? What “church”
means? Do we all know what is said in Scripture about “church”? I’ve put in some time pulling my own thoughts
together. I’ve also been collecting articles
and ideas about what other congregations are involved with. I call it my IDEA
file, and it includes articles from magazines and e-zines, as well as things
that have popped up from my clergy facebook sources. These are going to be
available and maybe distributed somehow, in order that own creativity is
sparked - not that we have to copy, but to let our own minds open up to the
creativity of God’s Spirit.
Our
starting place in this sermon today has to do with a very basic discussion on
what “church” means. I’d bet that most of us here immediately formed a picture
of our church building here, or a former church building we loved. But the
church Jesus started wasn’t about buildings - it was about people. I did a children’s sermon a while back, based
on that little hand thing - “here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the
door and see all the people.” We did it
with our hands like this (illustrate), and when we opened the doors, I joked
that all we saw were people’s feet! So I
showed the children another way of doing their hands - a little more
complicated, but when we opened the door, there were the people!!!
Friends,
the church we need to ponder and think about is made of humans, no matter what
kind of building or structure we gather in - or if we gather in any structure
at all. To be scholarly a moment, the
word translated “church” in our Scripture is the Greek word ecclesia, or a gathering for a specific
purpose. It originally meant a political
assembly, like for a debate. Its close
relatives include the words for “summoned” or “called out.” So a “church” is a called-together group, for
the purpose of following Christ Jesus, and all that that means. We’ll talk more
about the ways we address this purpose in other sermons, like learning, praying,
acting, worshipping - all sorts of ways we grow into following Christ better.
In other words, a “church” is basically a community of people who all are
basically going the same direction - following God by hook or by crook, as best
we can, with all our foibles and personality differences.
I
wish our English language had separate words for the group of Christ-followers
and the various structures that we build for our centers! It’s confusing to our speech and our thinking
to use the same word. “Church” in the scriptures isn’t a physical
building. We could gather anywhere and
still be the church of Jesus Christ.
Early Christians gathered in catacombs - which were the underground
cemeteries of their time and place. That
sounds icky, but the church had to gather in secret at that time, and meeting
in the catacombs was safe. Other early churches, like the ones the Apostle Paul
started, gathered in peoples’ homes.
Churches in other countries have met under trees or in nice clearings.
When I attended the Presbyterian General Assembly, where people come from all
over the country and the world, we’ve worshipped and prayed and shared the
Lord’s Supper in huge convention centers!
Places that the next week have Tractor Pulls!
I’ve
had fun thinking up what other words we could use to differentiate church as
people from the common usage of church as building. I’d like to keep the word “church” to mean
the gathered Christ-followers, because that’s what it means when we read it in
the Bible. For our building, now, we
could use words like the ‘meeting place’, or ‘center’, or ‘facility’. Some newer congregations with several
locations talk about themselves as one church meeting in two campuses, and name
the campuses. We could refer to the
‘sanctuary’ and the ‘education room’, although I think education is not the
right word for the kind of learning and character formation that goes on
there. Let’s work on that, shall
we? Let’s get creative and make a good
new word.
It’s
not that it’s bad to have a nice place to worship and gather, or a nice
building to offer to the larger community for good things. And our buildings can become significant to
us - when we have met and worshipped or studied or prayed together in the same
place many times, it can become special to us. A place can take on good
associations ( or bad associations, depending on our experience there). And a building can become a marker of sorts
in a community - it reminds the community that Christ-followers are here and
meeting. If our building is open for
community use, it tells the community that Christ-followers are interested in
the well-being of all people, and their common human needs.
So
as we ask God to help us envision the life of our church (ie our local group of
Christ-followers), part of our thinking could be the use of our facility as a
means of facilitating the ministry and mission God is calling us to do. But I do want us to focus more on ourselves
as an arm of the Church Universal, a part of the Capital-C Church of Jesus
Christ that lives and works here in Jamesville, NY. And how we, in our unique way and setting,
can carry out the purposes of Christ’s
church here.
Part
of our concept of ourselves as Christ’s church is this connection to the
larger, universal Captial-C Church. Its good
that this Epiphany Sunday reminds us that God calls to all people, including
those we might call foreigners. God is
the God of the world. And the Capital-C
Church includes all Christ-followers from every time and every place, like we
say in communion. The early believers,
the apostles, those in the 6th century, the 11th century, the 15th century and
so on. Those in Russia or Japan or
Europe or South Africa or wherever - - in Christ, we are all one. Their suffering is our suffering, and their
joy is our joy. And visa versa. Those who are part of the denominations of
Presbyterian, United Methodists, Roman Catholics, 7th Day Adventists, Greek
Orthodox - all who believe and seek to follow Christ. The Capital-C Church goes on even if various
local congregations fade away or if denominations split. It may be even larger than this, too. It may
include all who seek to worship and serve God, period.
We
here in Jamesville CC, NY, USA are a local manifestation of the Capital-C
Church of Jesus Christ, which the Bible also calls the Body of Christ. This is where we live and serve God to the
best that we can hear and follow.
So
this is the context I want for us to understand when we seek the direction of
God for our “church.” What is in the
Scriptures about Christ’s church is true for the church overall. It’s rather in large and broad outlines, and
not detailed for whatever country or century or community the specific
congregations find themselves. So we
have some work to do in interpreting and envisioning how we live out what
Scripture says. This is the work of this
group gathered here - I can’t tell this church exactly what to do - that’s our
group’s discerning., and what we’ll be working on in the coming months. So this week, think on these meanings of
“Church” ...work on recognizing when we’re meaning the people or the building,
and look for words to differentiate them.
Imagine lines connecting us to Christ-followers around the world, or
through the centuries. See that our
denominations are more ways of organizing ourselves and governing ourselves
than they are written in stone, and ways of handling different understandings
of what living for Christ looks like. Be
in prayer for the Capital-C Church as well as
the local bodies that gather in all the towns and cities, and especially
for us in this journey now.
AMEN.
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