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Where is “THE” Church? The Quest of a Naive Cynic
Devotional Thought of the Day:
15 Then he asked them, “But who do you say I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. 18 Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.”
Matthew 16:15-19 (NLT)
40 Learn this article, then, as clearly as possible. If you are asked, What do you mean by the words, “I believe in the Holy Spirit”? you can answer, “I believe that the Holy Spirit makes me holy, as his name implies.”
41 How does he do this? By what means? Answer: “Through the Christian church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
42 In the first place, he has a unique community in the world. It is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God. The Holy Spirit reveals and preaches that Word, and by it, he illumines and kindles hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it.
Catholic theology must state more clearly than ever before that, along with the actual presence of the word outside her boundaries, “Church” is also present there in one form or another; that, furthermore, the boundaries of the efficacy of the Holy Spirit are not congruent with those of the visible Church. For, on the one hand, the Spirit, the grace, on whose action the Church depends for her very existence, can be wanting even to those within the Church; on the other hand, it can be efficacious in those outside the Church. To borrow Congar’s cogent phrase, it would be both foolish and perverse to identify the efficacy of the Holy Spirit with the work of the ecclesial apparatus.
Yesterday was the day that many of God’s people celebrated what is called the Confession of St. Peter. The celebration that God the Father revealed to Peter that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Father. Like Pentecost, it is one of the formative days of the Church, for it is that day when the church received it’s first “creed”.
A creed is simply a statement that describes what you depend upon in life. It is not a complete statement of doctrine, of that which people intellectually know. For while a “belief statement” or “doctrinal statement” expresses what is contained in our mind, a Creed adds to that what is in our heart, our soul, and is the source of our strength. It is what we depend upon, the truth we believe we can base our entire life upon. It is what distinguishes the church from every other group.
And so, like Pentecost, yesterday was a celebration of the church, and what it is built upon.
Christ, the Son of the living God.
With that being understood, I must confess a different problem, which is caused in part by both my naivete and my cynicism. Naivete because I expect the church to be the church. And I expect its leaders to strive to limit the politics and power struggles. I naively expect them (and myself) to live according to this truth we hold dear, this Man, who was the Messiah, the one Anointed to save us. My mind tells me logically; there must be that church, led by those striving to be like Christ, who’ve set aside everything and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and focus on Christ, the author, and perfecter of our faith.
Can’t there be such a thing, a group of people who are gathered into one Body who live and breathe based on what they believe in?
My cynicism says, “Uhm, no.”
Yes, we can find congregations where this is a focus and priority. Or a Bible Study. But there doesn’t seem to be a denomination out there where this is true. I have to admit a lot of frustration in this, because why can’t it be so? I can look at one denomination, where the leadership is struggling to help people live like Christ, yet their doctrine gets in the way. I look at another where the doctrine is as good as it can be, and yet the power struggles are so blatant, so extreme that it sickens me. I’ve seen too many crushed by it while seeing others rejoice over the pain caused to their “enemies.”
Is it foolish and perverse to want to identify an “ecclesiastical apparatus” with the efficacy of the Holy Spirit? My naivete calls for such a church; my cynicism wants to find a cave and lock myself into it. The option is not to spout that I want a relationship but not a religion and head for the beach. If ti were, Christ is a liar. He said nothing couldn’t prevail against His church. He died for her, so she must exist!
Both Luther and Benedict point to such a church, a church that is focused on what Peter confesses, a church where the Holy Spirit is working, sometimes clearly within the structure of the denominations, but often not. A church some theologians would label the “invisible church”, but because the Holy Spirit is working, it is visible, you know when you are there. A church based primarily on doctrine, not primary on the organization and structure, but gathered by the Holy Spirit. Where the Holy Spirit is using the word, is connecting people to Jesus and then to the Father.
This is what Pope Benedict wrote of, “the Spirit, the grace, on whose action the Church depends for her very existence,” and Luther reveals why, “The Holy Spirit reveals and preaches that Word, and by it he illumines and kindles hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it.
As I see this, it comforts by shattered naivete, you see the church does exist! We see Her as we see the Holy Spirit working; as the Spirit reconciles people to God and each other, as the spirit heals the broken hearted, and sets free the those bound by sin. It also shatters my cynicism, for the miracle of the Holy Spirit at work just denies the idea that there is no church. For what else could explain what happens when Christ crucified is preached. For then, the church is no longer invisible but is becomes an intact mosaic, one that is not bound within the lines drawn by man, but rather drawn together in Christ.
The church, broken, yet healing, is a glorious thing, as this occurs, St Paul described it well. “All of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same glory, coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit, transforms us into his likeness in an ever greater degree of glory.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 (TEV)
May we be patient and determined, as the Holy Spirit works, pointing us to Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. AMEN!
(1) Tappert, T. G. (Ed.). (1959). The Book of Concord the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (p. 416). Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press.
(2) Ratzinger, J. (1992). Co-Workers of the Truth: Meditations for Every Day of the Year. (I. Grassl, Ed., M. F. McCarthy & L. Krauth, Trans.) (p. 29). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
A plea for the end of kind of idolatry – “congregational-ism/denominational-ism/nondenominational-ism”
Devotional thought of the Day:
Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. 4 For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6 and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.. Ephesians 4:3-6 (NLT)
427 What a sorry state someone is in when he has marvellous human virtues but a total lack of supernatural outlook, because he will apply those virtues quite easily to his own selfish ends. Meditate on this.(1)
Yesterday, I found myself wanting to respond to a post of a friend of mine. I actually had already my counter to her point, with a carefully laid out response and reasoning to why she was wrong and I was right. Just before I hit the button, I realized that my post was wrong, not because it countered hers, but that it countered what I well know. She claimed that her church was the best, and I wanted to counter that it was fifth in line, right behind the 4 I’ve pastored.
There is only “one church”. or if you please “One Church”.
It’s the one we confess in the creeds, the one church through which the Holy Spirit calls and gathers people, where the waters of baptism cleanses them from sin, where the Holy Spirit works through word and the sacraments.
One church. Not just Concordia Lutheran, or Shepherd of the Valley, or First Christian, or Saddleback or even the Roman Catholic Church, but one church, Made up of sin-shattered, broken people who find restoration as they are united to Christ. We must recognize the brokennes, we need to talk through the issues, we need to mourn the division. We can’t just hide them, or say to each other, “we just have to agree to disagree” Otherwise the unity isn’t real…
There is still only one church, united in the death of Christ, brought together by the Holy Spirit in peace that only comes from knowing we exist in the presence of God. In the loving presence of God. That is where unity begins, at the cross, in the death of Christ Jesus.
I put the quote from St Josemaria in this post for a reason, the reason that if unity is to occur in the church, it has to be supernatural, it has to be because we trust in Christ to create it, and we realize He has. We just do not see it, perhaps because we focus so much on what divides us, and we get defensive if we think we are going to be proven wrong. Perhaps I should say I get defensive…. or I get offensive when I know I am right – and think that everyone else’s journey must be the same sort of twisted journey that I’ve had. Again the temptation is to make me the norm, (or for you to make you the norm) rather than making it Christ.
You see, when we forget that there is one church, we begin to make idols of our congregations, of our denominations, or even of our “non-denominatiolism”. We can acknowledge our errors, and the struggles, and the division, but we cannot triumph over others, or treat them as if somehow God doesn’t love them as much, or that they are inferior. ( My own denominaiton does this, when they say, “we may not be perfect, but we ar the best thing going” When we do this, we begin to think territorally, we begin to think what is best for our little part of the church, rather than what is best for all the churches around us. We horde talent, rather than seeking where God would use each of us. Let me give and example – Our church has a number of skilled keyboardists, and they all love playing with my music director. We had sent out one of our deacons, who is now a seminary student while serving as a student pastor. He needed a keyboard player… we had several… so it worked out that one of ours helped out. But what if churches with great sunday school staffs, or great youth programs or great senior programs actually invested their people in other churches? What would happen then?
What would happen if we treated the church as a whole, even if just within our own denominations to start? If we shared and worked together, and struggled with those who aren’t like us?
What if we heard Jesus’ prayer that we may be one, even as the Trinity is one? What if we heard Paul’s words to the church in Ephesus, and the church in Rome and the church in Corinth?
Can we stop the idolatry? Can we celebrate together in Christ?
Can we pray and strive together… working through that which divides us, realizing that what unites us is more important?
BTW – for people in my own beloved LCMS – this isn’t something new or odd. read the words below…
Though God desires that all congregations be orthodox, and though all heterodox communions exist only by God’s sufferance and contrary to God’s gracious will, still it is a fact that also in the heterodox communions there are believing children of God. The term “Christians” covers a wider field than the term “orthodox Christians.” Though Christ denies to the Samaritan Church the right of existence as a separate church organization (John 4:22), still He repeatedly acknowledged individual Samaritans as true children of God (Luke 17:16 ff; 10:33). Luther, too, never thought of making the orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church, coextensive with the Una Sancta. Vigorously as he fights against the Papacy and expressly declares it an institution of Satan, he nevertheless does not doubt that God has at all times under the Papacy preserved for Himself a Church, yes, the elite of the Christians.31 Again, earnestly as Luther fights against Carlstadt, Zwingli, and their collaborators for their deviation from God’s Word, he nevertheless grants that there were also true children of God who, ignorant of the evil they were thus supporting, made common cause with these pseudo reformers (St. L. IX:44). Likewise our older Lutheran dogmaticians, “zealots for orthodoxy” though they were, nevertheless decidedly rejected identification of the Una Sancta Ecclesia with the orthodox Lutheran Church.32 The Fathers of the Missouri Synod declare it a calumny when the Lutheran Church is accused of identifying the Church of God with the Lutheran Church.33 They taught: If a person sincerely clings to the cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, if he believes that God is gracious to him because of Christ’s satisfactio vicaria, he is a member of the Christian Church, no matter in which ecclesiastical camp he may be. By denying this truth one would overthrow the cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, the article of justification. Walther: According to Rom. 3:28 and Acts 4:12 “the unconditional and sole requirement for salvation is fellowship with Christ through faith. The maxim, ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation,’ ‘He who has not the Church on earth for his mother has not God in heaven for his Father,’ is true only in this sense, that outside the invisible Church there is no salvation and no state of grace. It has only this meaning that ‘there is no salvation outside Christ’; for whoever is not in inward fellowship with the believers and saints is not in fellowship with Christ either. On the other hand, whoever is in fellowship with Christ is in fellowship also with all those in whom Christ dwells, that is, with the invisible Church. Accordingly, he who restricts salvation to fellowship with any visible Church therewith overthrows the article of the justification of a poor sinner in the sight of God by faith alone in Jesus Christ.” (Walther and the Church, p. 70.) Pieper, F. (1953). Christian Dogmatics (electronic ed., Vol. 3, pp. 423–425). St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.
(1) Escriva,Josemaria (2011-01-31). Furrow (Kindle Locations 1908-1910). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Related articles
- Reformation Day, A Day I Pray Would Become… Obsolete. (justifiedandsinner.com)
- The Holy Spirit gives gifts… but not to individuals… (justifiedandsinner.com)
- The Holy Spirit in the Church (thepassionists.org)
- Can a Christian Leader let his people fail? He must! (justifiedandsinner.com)
- Needing a Sanctuary… because we know He is there… (justifiedandsinner.com)
- To prepare servant leaders… (justifiedandsinner.com)
