It is not unusual to run into people who love Jesus but avoid his church. Many have experienced a bad moment in a church where they felt judged or rejected fifteen to twenty years ago. Others had a friend or family member that was “wronged” by church leadership sometime in the distant pass. Others play the “hypocrites” card and say they have no use for the church because it is full of people who project the image of “Christian” on Sunday but treat other people badly the other six days of the week. Others reject the organized church because it is led by men rather than the Spirit or because it operates like a corporation rather than a family. Others find the organized church to be worldly or materialistic or performance driven and so they reject all organized religion as systemically bankrupt.
In response to those criticisms I would say there is some or much truth in each of them. And yet I believe Jesus calls us to love the church and be involved in the church regardless of her shortcomings. The church is the “bride of Christ” and if you love the groom you will love the bride even if she is awkward, immature, and tells bad jokes. You will not cut yourself off from the bride because to do so distances you from the groom who is often with his bride. If you love the groom and want the best for him, you will not detach yourself from his blundering bride but will determine to help the bride grow and mature for his sake if not for hers.
The church has always been organized and imperfect. It has never been a perfect haven of love, righteousness, or spiritual maturity. Its leaders have never had it all together. The New Testament is full of admonitions for believers to forgive one another as Christ forgave us. That means that someone was being “wronged” by someone else in the church often enough that we were called to forgive, to be patient, to pray for one another, and to leave our gift at the altar until we had reconciled a relationship problem that the Holy Spirit had brought to mind. Some of the greatest leaders in the church, Paul and Barnabas, had disagreements and disputes. The apostle Peter himself had to be called out for discriminating against the Gentiles.
Just about every letter (epistle) in the New Testament was written to churches with big problems and rampant imperfections. Just look at Corinth. These guys were tolerating open sexual sin in their ranks. They were taking one another to court. They were abusing spiritual gifts and abusing the Lord’s Supper and in doing so were abusing one another. They were struggling with pride, arrogance, and selfishness and had twisted off on doctrines about the resurrection. Their worship services were chaotic and Paul began his letter by telling them they were not very spiritual. And yet he addressed them as the church of God in Corinth, God’s holy people, and told them how thankful he was for the grace that had been given to them in Jesus. Then he engaged in helping them grow rather than rejecting them and separating himself from the bride of Christ.
I believe the glory of the church is not found only in our maturity and holiness but even more in the fact that we love one another relentlessly even in the face of our weaknesses and failures. God certainly does that for us and he expects us to do that for his church. In that unity the power of the Spirit is displayed and we experience more of his glory. Church members who bail out on the church because she is not what they expect her to be, abandon her to her weaknesses. It is almost like parents abandoning their children because they are not as obedient and attractive as they had hoped.
I love Philip Yancey’s description of his church and in it I see the true glory of God – love and acceptance for the imperfect. It’s a bit long but worth reading. I hope you find Jesus in it as I do each time I read it.
“A few times at my church I preached the sermon, then assisted in the ceremony of communion…those who desired to partake would come to the front, stand quietly in a semicircle, and wait for us to bring the elements. ‘The body of Christ broken for you,’ I would say as I held out a loaf for bread for the person before me to break off. ‘The blood of Christ shed for you,’ the pastor behind me would say, holding out a common cup…I knew the stories of some of the people standing before me. I knew that Mabel, the woman with strawy hair and bent posture who came to the senior citizen center, had been a prostitute. Fifty years ago she had sold her only child…she knew she would make a terrible mother. She could never forgive herself she said. Now she was standing at the communion rail, spots of rouge like paper discs on her cheeks, her hands outstretched, waiting to receive the gift of grace… ‘The body of Christ broken for you, Mabel.’ Beside Mabel were Gus and Mildred, star players in the only wedding ceremony ever performed among the church’s seniors. They lost $150/month in Social Security benefits by marrying rather than living together, but Gus insisted. He said Mildred was the light of his life and he did not care if he lived in poverty as long as he lived with her at his side. ‘The blood of Christ shed for you, Gus, and you, Mildred.’ Next came Adolphus, an angry young black man whose worst fears about the human race had been confirmed in Vietnam. Adolphus scared people…Then came Sarah, a turban covering her bare head scarred from where doctors had removed a brain tumor. And Michael, who stuttered so badly he would physically cringe whenever anyone addressed him. And Maria, the wild and overweight Italian woman who had just married for the forth time. ‘Thees one will be deeferent I just know.’ What could we offer such people other than grace, on tap?” (What’s So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey, p.277).
Many of us might think these are not the kind of people we would feel good sitting next to in church, but these are the ones Jesus died for and his love for such as these and such as us is his true glory. In the midst of his discussion on the miraculous gifts of the Spirit in I Corinthians, Paul discussed love for an entire chapter. The implication is that the power of the Holy Spirit flows most freely where love abounds. Many of the people I know who left the “organized church” did so because they didn’t see the Holy Spirit moving in their church but they themselves refused to love the imperfect and so left with nothing but criticism for the bride of Christ.
The glory of God is not perfect people but perfect love for imperfect people…even imperfect leaders. Not every congregation fits every person. God places us in different places. But the church in all of her craziness and immaturity is still the bride Jesus died for. Are we to stay crazy and immature? Of course not. But God wants us to love his bride until she is perfected rather than rejecting her because of past transgressions and current pettiness. We honor God by loving his bride. Be blessed today and choose to love the body of Christ because it is in that love that the Holy Spirit operates most willingly. Be blessed.
