November 13, 2014
Guest or Host
I visited a friend’s church
and as I sat in the auditorium people around me visited with one another, but
no one spoke to me. When I told Dave about my experience he said, “I know what
you mean. I go in and sit down and no one ever comes around to talk to me
either.” Dave wasn’t being critical, but he was serious. It cracked me up
because he has been a member of his church for about two years. It occurs to me
that even as we sit in the pew we resemble our namesake body parts — feet,
hands, ears, eyes, unpresentable and presentable parts. “But in fact God has
arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be”
(1 Cor 12:18 NIV).
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----If what happens in church is just what He wants us to be, then there is some affect other than godliness to one another He means to achieve. I look at the body seated on Sunday mornings and see basic affinities it shares with a Broadway play, or the local movie house, and maybe even a little closer with a basketball crowd. They’re all there to sit and watch. No wonder we don’t do a lot of talking.
-----Honestly, there are times for sitting and watching amongst God’s people. Crowds sat and listened to Jesus. A great crowd stood and listened to the apostles on the Day of Pentecost. Paul had to raise one of his listeners from the dead, he kept them just sitting and listening for so long. (Ya, I know. I baited with "watch", then switched to listen. Please forgive.) But as church has reached us in this current era, it’s a little apparent from behaviors and beliefs that a lot of church folk have switched to watch.
-----History is God’s story. He has a lot to tell by it. In eras past, the listening was even worse than now, especially amongst church leaders (who amazingly considered themselves as speakers, not listeners) and kings of people who were actually eaters of people (why am I feeling all of that needs stated in the present tense?) Sometimes I get these words that knock on the inside of my head like Poe’s crow outside the door. They’ll knock for years, then I will stumble across the reason why. I never forget thereafter. “Bangor” is one. It knocked around in my head for decades. Then, the other day, I read about the Catholic treatment of twelve hundred Welsh and Briton monks and scholars at 6th century Bangor. You would think “welcomings” there would be in order after greetings, but instead, Augustine brought slaughter to his hosts. Seems they didn’t want to be Catholics. Through the centuries Christians murdering each other continued until eighteenth century philosophy decided Christianity needed kicked out of relevancy for its bloody welcome. And still God says He shows through the church His manifest wisdom to the principalities and powers of the heavenly places!
-----The old adage is that we only use ten percent of our brains. In the auditorium (which is actually meant more to be a sanctuary, but we’ll keep that under our hats,) maybe we use less. If the speaker really engaged the Word to bring highly relevant concepts to the body, the fewer listeners remaining might engage more of their minds to connect with those concepts. But they don’t. We don’t. And like a good audience in any auditorium, we still wait quietly for the show to start.
-----Something about it knocks at the inside of my mind - a concept that maybe it is well. For God Himself shows His manifest wisdom through these sitters in auditoriums who centuries past were murderers of brethren. It makes me ponder that maybe the wisdom is His endless mercy for even these rapscallions calling upon His Son’s name in the best they are willing. For “…a bruised reed He will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not quench; He will faithfully bring forth justice.” (Isa 42:3) Among all the mean things we do to each other, besides all of the inattentiveness we give in the sanctuary regarded as an auditorium, when we begin to move about the streets and sidewalks of life, little scintillations of godliness show up in our affairs attesting that regardless of our suffocating selves, He is yet our fiber, He is our life. And His wisdom showing here is to forgive, otherwise, none would survive.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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