BIBLICAL IMAGERY FOR WHAT THE CHURCH SHOULD BE
Iain McKillop
IMAGINE A CHURCH...
My former congregation was challenged to consider through Lent what their ideal church would be. All were given a paper printed with the words “Imagine a Church...” & were asked to think through then write in a phrase what we longed for. Suggestions and responses included:
Imagine a Church where all feel welcome and included, accepted & loved you, where you & all feel at home.
Imagine a Church that values committed relationships and loves understands & values you if you are divorced, single, in a gay relationship, lonely, disabled, a difficult personality or just YOU.
Imagine a Church that shows it values the contribution of older people & integrates children & young people in the congregation.
Imagine a Church where you are recognised as having something valuable to contribute.
Imagine a Church that takes the Bible seriously but not always literally.
Imagine a Church that always stands for the Truth.
Imagine a Church where you meet God in Christ each time you come.
From experience those aren’t always our experience in all churches are they? Acts 4:32f describes the early community of believers as almost communistic, sharing all in common, so none had needs & all contributed. It sounds ideal but doesn’t often work due to human egos or when communities become large. Today’s Church should reflect Christ far more than it does. Church can be over- institutional rather than a supportive family; self-promoting and self-protective. not always inclusive or as honest as it should be about how weakly it obeys Christ’s ways or follows St Paul’s concept of Christ’s Body. Much that we do as an institution hardly relates any longer to Jesus’ message or aims. Would St Paul recognise the diocese as the Church whose principles he founded? Like secular businesses, dioceses seem over-proud of their limited achievements, hierarchical, cover up mistakes, advance bullies & those who promoted themselves, over-emphasise administration, wasted money on vanity projects, neglect pastoral care, support of clergy & practical Christian spiritual education, don’t leave many believers confident enough in their faith to be able to effectively share their beliefs & fail to accept or heal the damage they do to individuals. Above all most churches fail to engage successfully in ‘Mission’ - our main raison-d’ ȇtre. Many would agree that the Church worldwide is not what it should or could be if it kept more closely to the aims of Christ & the principles of its founder Paul. In a world where we can’t trust politicians & other social leaders it is essential that the Church stands for God’s truth. We need to work with the potential we have, not just bewail what we’re not.
In these sessions we will explore some scriptural metaphors for Christ’s Church to consider issues that challenge us & could help us to be more as Christ intends. In interpreting biblical metaphors we must be careful not to be too literal. Like finding messages in Christ’s parables, or considering biblical imagery for God, too-detailed parallels may distort the intention of the metaphor. In the ‘Body of Christ’, we aren’t meant to try to work out who is the navel, the liver or kidneys, who refreshes & who pumps the blood... though we certainly need people who filter out poisons and far more active practical muscles than we use at present!
Christians sometimes sing choruses about loving Jesus & being Christ’s Bride in sentiments close to erotic love, consummated in Pentecostal or emotional ecstasies. That’s not how those metaphors were intended: We need to always consider & interpret according to what biblical metaphors were meant to communicate:
The ‘Body of Christ’ metaphor suggests how we should work together fully, integrated, every part functioning well, serving its purpose, and contributing to the work of other parts. Christ’s ‘Bride’ is about mutual support & love with Christ the bridegroom, togetherness in work, aim, mission and purpose, an adornment to Christ (which the modern Church rarely seems). As a ‘Temple of the Living God’ our Church should be measured by holiness. People who come should be able to meet God, find truth, refuge, to worship & pray ‘in spirit & in truth’. The Church should be a beacon of God’s presence and truth in the world. Our sessions together will consider these further, but we’ve also come for spiritual rest and restoration, nurture by gentle thought, not over-intense study. I hope that considering ideas together might enable us to transform our churches to be closer to Christ’s intention for us, but also refresh & revision us in gentle but challenging ways.
Sometimes congregations don’t recognise their need to transform. Church-members, laity & clergy may be comfortable with what they have in Church life & liturgy or don’t want to face challenges. That’s only OK if we want the Church to decline. In the last 10 years attendance at church services has declined by 26% & continues to decline because we’re not offering society what people recognise they need or want. Christ’s Salvation is relevant to all in the world, but we don’t present it in ways that attract most people to want to be part of our body. We can seem close to the religious complacency of the Scribes, Pharisees & Sadducees, who Jesus criticised and tried to reform. Christ taught more authentic ways of communicating to & relating to God. Last year we celebrated Luther’s inspiration for Reformation. Contemporary churches worldwide badly require regular reformation if we are going to spread Christ’s true Gospel to our needy world, and bring salvation and abundant life to the societies in which we live.
Guildford Diocese adopted the proud slogan: “Transforming Church, Transforming People”. When Bishop Andrew promoted his campaign, I suspect he hoped for most to conform to his Evangelical & organisational ideas. But the motto doesn’t say enough about what we want to transform into. The true Church should aim to transform God’s people into Christ-likeness, relating God and communicating Truth effectively to today. We need to transform into what God intends us to be, not act as a business, a proud hierarchy or a body where everyone thinks in the same way. We are created with variety; all relate to & serve God differently, Christ’s teaching speaks to us in different ways, encouraging varying ways of following him. Lay members of every church, with a diversity of lifestyles, skills, work & interests have opportunities to live out the full variety of what abundant life can be. We’re designed to develop to the full human minds, interests & gifts, using the world’s full resources.
The Church could effectively bring God’s salvation to our world if all of us through our variety witness to various others like us.
Imagine what our Christian lives would be like if we kept to the New Testament precepts for Christ’s Church! We need to be careful not just to follow metaphors that attract us or relate to our culture or emotional needs. Eras of church history have adopted models and metaphors that relate to its aspirations of their time. So, the church has at various periods reflected secular feudal society, militaristic aims for imperial expansion, colonial attitudes to mission, leadership by autocracy or democracy rather than theocracy – seeking God’s way of leading us. The C4th Church increasingly drew its models from the Roman Empire so created hierarchies that reflected the Imperial Court or military ideas of the ‘Church Militant’ that damaged our mission, as did the Crusades or Inquisition & Conquistadors. Today’s Church has a tendency to adopt corporate-business & ‘leadership-style’ models. It seems over-institutional rather than a family or organic body. If we’re regarded as an ‘army’ or ‘economic business out for its own good’ we look too much like the world that no longer cares personally for individuals. If the Church is to recover Christ-like integrity & humanity in our ministry & mission, we need to remain true to more biblical metaphors for the Christian community. Positive images can capture & inspire believers’ imagination: If we emphasise imagery that promotes love, truth & care we are likely to grow by outreaching with care, love and truth, which attract.
One single image of the Church is insufficient to convey Christ and Paul’s intentions for God’s People. Each metaphor can contribute something more to our understanding. We need the full, wide variety of images on your list to experience the wholeness of what the church is meant to be. Most of our metaphors emphasise the variety of relationships that are vital to church health, holiness, growth, our relationship with the Trinity; relationships among fellow believers; the Church's relationship to the world and its correct use of power.
EKKLESIA
Trying to follow Christ may pull us in different directions: the struggle between the desires of the Flesh & the requirements of the Spirit are most obvious. But we’re influenced by individual & group mental, physical & spiritual needs. Ekklesia, the Church was originally a secular term for an assembly or gathering. We use it of the gathered people of God. That is a gathering of a wide variety of people; we are an ‘eclectic’ group, most very different. If the Church tries to make us all the same or similar it contradicts our nature. SO if a church expects everyone to believe in the same way, live similar lifestyles, have one view, it goes against the diversity that God has made in the world. If we’re too similar we won’t as effectively witness to all the diverse people the world in their diverse situations, with whom our own diversity should be able to communicate. We often talk of the Body of Christ as though it needs to be totally unified. “Endeavour to keep the Unity of Christ in the bond of peace.” We are unified under one head, Jesus Christ, with common Christian creedal beliefs. But we are very different people and interpret creeds and discipleship according to our various cultures and characters.
If we are too narrow or legalistic, as the Church has been many times through history, we destroy the freedom that Christ intended for us to flourish & find abundant variety in life. Some nuns, Strict & Particular Brethren, & dour Free Presbyterians restrict their enjoyment of life & their humanity, to try to conform to a narrow ideal of sanctity. That can be boring or unfulfilling if it doesn’t enjoy the full resources God has given us in life. Church councils have attempted unity by keeping to a lowest common denominator of faith or Christian practice. But that can damage those who think differently: the Anglican Communion struggles ineffectively to keep together very different cultures: Liberals, Catholics, Evangelicals, African illiberal attitudes to gender relations & Western extreme liberalism. Unity of spirit is important, recognising that we all follow Christ & need to find how to follow Christ in the ways that are true to our cultures and people. But uniformity doesn’t work. When Church of England Bishops were persuaded to vote as one on the same-sex marriage bill to show unity and not offend African bishops or Evangelicals, they just reinforced the Church’s a name for being out of touch with the wider community, authoritarian and hypocritical.
‘Ekklesia’ means a ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’ of different people, not a homogenous whole. God seems to have made all aspects of Creation intentionally diverse, including us, in order that human beings might discover the breadth of God’s truth and witness to the entire diverse cosmos. The Church needs to accept diversity far more than it does. Our inclusiveness should accept variety, not expect all to conform in belief or activity. That’s why Anglicans don’t have a rigid catechism, unlike the voluminous Roman Catholic Manual of belief. If we were working properly, the Body of Christ should represent the diversity of what Christ can be to all the different peoples in the world. It is heretical to believe or promote that every Christian should be Evangelical, Catholic, have Western standards, or pander to the qualms of those with different standards. The ‘ekklesia’ is meant to be eclectic, a gathered assembly of different people accepting each other as Jesus accepted very different people in his entourage. We’re not meant to water down belief to a bland faith or employ strict practices that don’t resemble Christ’s breadth & freedom. Nor are we meant to practice too openly a freedom that might damage the consciences of others (as in Paul’s suggestion to refrain from food that might offend those with a weaker conscience [1Cor.8:7-13]
Yet allowing freedom & diversity gives the Church even bigger problems than trying to help everyone believe & act similarly. If we are to grow Christ-like we need to nurture various characters, interests, skills, educational abilities and cultures in one Church. We need to be aware of what feeds different spiritualities & recognise & strengthen spiritual gifts of the full diversity of people in our congregations & communities. All dioceses have educational teams & we preach, teach in all churches but we’re not good enough at Christian Education. Resources available in Christian shops are often dire. It’s hard to find challenging, inclusive Discipleship or Bible-Study material; even harder to find good resources to train young people at each stage through their spiritual growth. Many books are produced that are not relevant; much Christian publishing is ‘vanity publishing’. It takes time & thought to adapt most study courses to our individual Church situations. Supporting the educational leaders and teams in our churches is SO important; they are the ones who are needed to nurture diversity and help individuals at each stage of growth find how their faith applies to their lives.
As an eclectic assembly, trying to grow as individual Christians, spiritual growth happens together as we support & encourage one another. Paul told leaders & the Church to stir up each other’s spiritual gifts; Jesus sent his disciples in pairs not individually. A sad tendency in current teaching of spirituality is a growth of individualism: ‘I’ want a spiritual experience, ‘I’ want impressive spiritual gifts. Some of this developed in the charismatic movement, with some desiring ‘higher’ gifts than others to feel superior. “I speak in tongues, you don’t!”... “I have the gift of healing”. But self-centredness isn’t the intention of spiritual gifts. Several people I know who speak in tongues talk of having the gift for personal edification, sensing that they are given by God to encourage & raise their personal prayer & worship. I don’t personally have that gift; I recognise that I have other parallel gifts; (like a facility with thoughts & words, painting & poetry which have a few similarities to tongues.) Paul said that all gifts are not for all; God gives as needed. Though all spiritual gifts edify & nurture the individual who God blesses with them, that is not why Paul teaches that God gives gifts through his Spirit. They are given primarily for up-building others, corporate growth of the church as a body & to enable us to witness to expand God’s Kingdom. Spiritual gifts are not for individual glorification (as Simon the magician in Acts found in trying to buy them [Acts 8:19]).
Selfishness and self-centredness has infiltrated several areas of ‘spirituality’. Some go on spiritual retreats or learn methods of contemplative prayer for personal spiritual up-building . But we will weaken the Church if we become too insular or introspective. Individual spiritual growth is meant to refresh & strengthen us so that we can help others learn to pray more sincerely & all have more authentic individual AND corporate relationships with God. I’ve led several retreats where (despite my encouragement to return & share with others what they have learned, I’ve felt that some retreatants just want to advance their own relationship with God. If what we learn on this retreat doesn’t feed back into the growth of our Church it hasn’t succeeded. We are individual members of Christ’s Body but we feed & strengthen ourselves to strengthen the Body. Our work as members of the Body is to support other members in their growth & work. The air, blood or nourishment of the Spirit should be pumped through us to others. The cells we develop to resist disease & sin should be transmitted from us to others, so they too are resistant to destructive powers. The nutrition we have received to help us do our work should be transfused to others to strengthen them for their work too. The life we have should encourage others to come alive. That’s how the Body of Christ should be working.
WHAT IS THE CHURCH FOR?
We shouldn’t just picture the ideal Church; to transform into that ideal we need to prioritise what the Church is for:
These need to be followed as priorities by the whole Church. (They expand the Church’s ‘Five Marks of Mission’:
These are not the prerogative of Evangelical, Catholic, Traditional, Liberal, Pentecostal, Free or Fresh Expressions churches; but the true priorities of Christ’s Church of any complexion,. All other aspects of what we do as Church come after these: upkeep of the fabric of our buildings, administration, planning liturgy and rotas, management issues, finances, fundraising, paying the Diocesan quota, social & cultural events, committees, Church hierarchies, supporting diocesan or ecumenical events & initiatives, training in safeguarding, beautifying our music and church environment - ALL may be important but should be regarded as secondary for none should deflect us form the primary aims.
THE BODY OF CHRIST
Perhaps we would be more like Christ’s Body if in study courses & Church teaching we helped believers to find & be who they are in Christ as much as teaching people what Christians believe. Discipleship isn’t about God forcing us to do certain things: - Worship, prayer, study, mission - or believe in certain ways. Being Christ’s ‘Disciple’ is ontological (about who we are): I am Christ’s, I need to be his example & his image in the world, so I act & live in certain ways. The Body of Christ metaphor encourages us to use our gifts for building up others & witnessing by living like Christ before the world. But our discipleship & example witnesses far more than any persuasive words or evangelising actions. Hypocrisy in the Church’s words & actions turns many away from belief. If they saw us openly living out true faith they’re more likely to follow us & believe.
Secondary requirements in churches can take so much time & energy that we often haven’t time to focus on main aims- the work that matters most, why we’re here & what God wants us to engage in. When the whole Church body works properly we have time to do all that we should. But Church work is usually done by a few; many just attend for their spiritual fix on Sunday. This isn’t always their fault. Modern life makes 24/7 demands on workers’ & some with roles in the church aren’t good at delegating, relinquishing or sharing responsibilities. Management in dioceses may also damage: The institution can be authoritarian or expect churches to prioritise diocesan requirements for financing new projects over individual church’s needs. Christ’s expectations of you are more important than the diocese, your mission priorities come first: You’re the ones doing the work, though we also have strong responsibilities to support others.
TRADITIONAL STRUCTURE & HIERARCHY OF CHURCH
Pope / Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishops
Bishops / Deans
Archdeacons
Synods
Diocesan Managers and Advisors
Rural / Area Deans
Vicars / Rectors
Churchwardens,
Assistants in Ministry & Deacons
Pastoral Workers
PCC members
Leaders of Groups
Church Members.
Church Attenders who aren’t yet committed to the body
The above is a completely wrong order of priorities and hierarchy. The most important people in the Church should be those outside. The leaders of the Church should be its servants. Our true hierarchy of priorities should be turned upside-down:
TRUE HIERARCHY OF PRIORITIES IN THE CHURCH:
Those outside the Church who don’t yet follow God
Church Attenders who aren’t yet committed to the body
Church Members.
Leaders of Groups
PCC members
Deacons & Assistants in Ministry
Churchwardens,
Vicars / Rectors
Rural Deans / Area Deans
Synods
Diocesan Managers and Advisors
Archdeacons
Bishops / Deans
Archbishops
Pope / Archbishop of Canterbury
We’ve got our priorities of power & structure badly wrong. Jesus chose 12 ordinary people as disciples to show that leader-ship in the Kingdom is about humility & service not position and power. Christ exemplified it himself. We tend to think of the Church as a pyramid of importance, with the Pope or Archbishops & Bishops at the top, Archdeacons & synods next, ministers & churchwardens, then PCCs & church members. In fact all are equal, but one would never recognise that from the way some behave either in their insistence on status and authority, or in their deference to that status. {For my conclusions on 'Authority' see my study on the Theology of Authoroty also on this website.)
That hierarchy reverses our true priority: leaders & diocesan departments are meant to help churches in their mission in the world, not for the parishes to revere & finance a hierarchy. The Parish & individual Christians witnessing to their neighbour are where the coal-face of mission takes place. The parish is where Christian education, nurture & pastoral support are best focused & where worship in spirit & in truth needs to develop. The most important person in the church isn’t the Pope, archbishop bishop, vicar or rector, or even the church members; it’s the visitor or the person outside who doesn’t yet know Christ, to whom we should be demonstrating & explaining what Salvation & abundant life in Christ are truly about. The person of next importance in Church is the individual Christian, as each of us needs training to be a faithful follower, to know our faith, to be able to witness, pray, worship, develop our relationship with God & find our gifts to contribute to the Body of Christ. Dioceses employ advisors in mission & ministries, but these don’t lead mission or ministry. The coalface of Christian work is done by the congregation, who can best communicate faith to neighbours by example & word. What individual Christians & the Church body do with their neighbours to fulfil the Christ’s aims is the most important work of the Church. Diocesan bishops, archdeacons, managers & administrators should be there to inspire & help facilitate this; they’re examples, overseers, guiders, facilitators, not the most important figures in a Church hierarchical structure. That hierarchical mistake goes against Jesus’ teaching about “the greatest needs to be the servant of all... I have come not to be served but to serve.” [eg.Lk.9:48]. ‘Authority’ & ‘Servant-hood’ in Christ’s body should be very different from the ways ‘position’ & ‘power’ are perceived & used in the world: ‘Deacons’ in ancient households were low servants, not positions of authority; the deacon was the servant who emptied slop buckets from latrines: There’s plenty of metaphorical ‘slops & excrement’ to remove from the Church, including wrongful use of power. ‘Archbishops’ or ‘Archdeacons’ are not the ‘highest’ or ‘ruling’ bishops or deacons. ‘Archē’ in Greek, a root for archangels, archbishops & archdeacons is not about power, it means a ‘ruling principle’ a ‘source’. They should be those who set the example of true pastoral care & servant-hood to all the other pastors & servants of God. All ‘bishops’ should set examples of true pastoral leadership, knowing their flock & being known by them, not be set up as a distant modern ‘manager’. ‘Authority’ in Church is about being responsible, not having power. Those with ‘headship’ are entrusted by God to use the gifts & position they are given to serve responsibly, not in authoritarian ways. ‘Servants’ are trusted ‘stewards’: like the parable of the unforgiving steward, none must let power go to their head, or use it falsely as some leaders do.
All priests from Popes & Archbishops down remain ‘deacons’ to remind us that we should be servants of all. Unfortunately not all leaders act that way. Whatever role we are entrusted to in church, We represent Christ as servant - a high calling of importance and value, not a low position of ‘abject servitude’.
In fact, if we are truly to represent the priorities in the body of Christ as Jesus represented them, under Christ:
ALL are equal in God’s love,
ALL are equally responsible for one another and for mission, ALL are responsible to use & strengthen the gifts & accept their responsibilities.
ALL should regard others as better & more important than them-selves, to support and nurture. (It would be a miracle if we could get human beings, including Church leaders to be so humble.)
One of the hardest things to do as a Church is to interpret & communicate Christ’s true teaching in ways that are relevant to contemporary society and modern ways of thinking. Church legal-speak is notoriously ponderous; some decisions by Church House, the Lambeth Conference or Synods & those who consider themselves the ‘great & good’ in the Church, seem out of touch with the feelings and beliefs of parishioners and certainly the way the modern world thinks. The Established Church often seems closer to the legalism of the Pharisees than the ‘freedom, love and abundant life’ that Jesus established & the freedom form the Law that Paul stressed. To serve & represent Christ authentically in the world we need to be seen, as he was, to be on people’s side; interested in where people are & offering them something that they want & recognise will bring them alive. Jesus offered living water to the Samarian woman at the well and to her community who found Christ through her witness. He didn’t condemn her unconventional lifestyle, he brought her spiritual fulfilment. We need to offer such fulfilment & life to our parishes.
The body metaphor in Col.2:19 and the vine metaphor shows that we find life only through our relationship with "the head" or ‘root’ Christ. 1Cor.12 imagines the Church supporting each other as body parts, but we can only live and work effectively though being made alive by Christ’s Spirit, who gives the necessary gifts to share & thrive vvs.4-1I.
The idea of the Body of Christ is vitally important for our mission and ministry. Teresa of Avila wrote meaningfully: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands or feet but yours...” I love her sentiment & the responsibility she set us to continue Christ’s work, but it is not completely sound as Teresa expressed it. God is able to work independently on earth by his Spirit. Christians believe that God can influence events, people & issues, independent of us. That’s why we pray. If he cannot, there’s not much hope for areas that Christians cannot infiltrate. We believe that God is able to do more than we ask or think. It is reassuring that he is able to work in the world apart from us, especially if we, like the Church are not doing our job of witness or support effectively or are failing in our Christian duties. But most usually God wants us to act for him together as his practical body supporting the world.
The idea of our value to God being equal is very important for working together as Christ’s body. We shouldn’t tolerate leaders or those with specific gifts swanning around self-importantly. When Paul talks of the eye saying to the hand “I have no need of you” and “treating the smallest parts with the greatest modesty” he was using important imagery for human society. We are designed to live corporately: Separately very few human beings survive; we grow stronger & work more effectively & economically together. As Genesis 2:18 says: ‘It is not good for a human to be alone.” Yet hierarchies can undermine community: There’s an Aesop’s fable about the Belly & Feet arguing over their relative importance. We see it in every church: some feeling self-important, others feeling neglected or overlooked. PCC members, Patrons or Ministers getting too big for their boots; some bully, some feel lack of appreciation for the gifts they use, while those regarded as having more important gifts are lauded. Inequality & jealousy can be insidious & break our sense of unity in Christ. The image of the body in 1Corinthians of all members doing their part is not just an ideal; we need to work towards all functioning effectively & being appreciated. Too many ministers & church members get exhausted because the rest of the body aren’t doing their work & let a few do all the jobs. If businesses were as dysfunctional as most churches, with so few doing all the work and so many just turning up once a week, not sufficiently engaging or contributing, then going home unaffected until they arrive a week later, they would go out of business. Which of course the church is doing!:
Church attendance in the C. of E. has declined in real terms by 14% In the last 10 years and continues to decline. It’s not just due to cultural change; the Church is not witnessing to the world as it should. It is not seen as having anything relevant to give, which of course is not true: Christ has the answers to most of the world’s needs if we follow him authentically. In some places the Church is complacent; in many places it just expects people to come but offers nothing worthwhile. I think for example of a moribund church in Suffolk where we go on holiday: services & sermons are boring, singing is dire, the congregation even churchwardens aren’t welcoming, One nearly retired minister and one non-stipendiary have 13 parishes to look after. Many new homes have been built in the village & parishioners complain that no newcomers have ever come to church. I asked a churchwarden: “have you taken invitations when newcomers move in; have you welcomed them into the village and shown them what the church has to offer them?” The answer was “no” they just expect people to come. The church’s main attraction is a rare mediaeval painting that draws many visitors weekly from all over the world. But the congregation don’t even exploit that. That church will close in a few years; it deserves to close now for not working as Christ’s body in its community; it just serves the few who go, not even nourishing & training them for growth. It isn’t challenging placid members, just being comfortably familiar, not nurturing active faith, witnessing to or enlivening the community by the spirit & truth of its worship, ministry or mission. That’s not primarily the minister’s fault: he’s over-worked with too many parishes. The individual members’ are at fault, not working to represent Christ effectively in the community.
Communicating Christ’s message effectively is challenging, not easy. Are we training our church-members sufficiently to make sure that every member finds & uses their gifts, and is confident enough in their faith to share. Do we review gifts regularly & give enough nourishment & variety to prevent people getting exhausted by their roles. Ministers get sabbaticals every few years. Do we give our long-standing treasurer or parish secretary, Sunday School leaders, lay workers or retired ministers similar refreshing sabbaticals so they don’t feel their role a burden & have time to stand back, draw close to Christ, rest, rejuvenate, develop other personal gifts or reassess their ministry & role?
How good are you at training people to find &d assess their gifts & their role in the body? It’s not just something for the minister to do. Spiritual discernment can be the role of the whole body. Do we train our church community to discern gifts, encourage one another, deepen their understanding of Truth to enhance the growth & nourishment of the body. All Christians need to develop confidence in their beliefs that makes them confident to share and minister effectively. God expects us to be a training church, as Christ trained and gave spiritual confidence to his disciples. They, like our congregations were ordinary people, more unlearned & unskilled than most in the modern Church, yet they changed the world. Using all people doesn’t just mean getting more on the coffee or church-cleaning rota, it means all taking pastoral responsibility for one another, all ministering & engaging in mission in various ways, taking practical pressures off ministers so they can concentrate on using their gifts, calling & discernment in ministry. In a fully functioning body ALL help to nurture & encourage one another in faith & spiritual growth, ALL when they see something needs doing do something about it, rather than moaning to churchwardens or vicar that it hasn’t been done; ALL are willing to volunteer or act when needs arises.
Modern life creates difficulties for this: Many live over-busy lives. Some work-places demand 24hour commitment; we have responsibilities to our families & partners. (Christian families, especially ministers’ families, often feel neglected. That itself can be a bad witness both to the family members and the world looking on.) Many in today’s society work 24/7 to make ends meet & pay rent or mortgage. So we need to be flexible, not over-demanding, expecting too much. We’re to give people ‘abundant’ spiritual life & freedom, not make them stressed or guilty by extra church-commitments. But it is also important that all who are called together work together.
The Church cannot function as it should if a few members aren’t doing their work; if it over-strains or over-loads some. Do some in your church feel that their potential is not recognised or is underestimated? Do we accept, encourage or build up the gifts of all? We claim we’re ‘inclusive’: everyone in our church has something to offer; the Holy Spirit gifts all. To feel part of us we need to enhance their ability to offer what they have & are.
TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD
We’re often at pains to emphasise that Church is not a building, it’s the people, even though the ‘People of God’ are not always what they should be. Yet many who are not committed to faith see a church building in the community & recognise it as a place to go when they need rest or peace. A Christian church should be able to be recognised as a place where the whole community feel they can come. Especially as the Church of England parish is entrusted with responsibility for the whole parish community, Christian & non-Christian, we need to try to help people feel a sense that your church belongs to them, that they are welcome any time & none will treat them as outsiders. Christ is for everyone; can we make our church a place where people sense they can find refuge, peace, love, care, joy, forgiveness, Truth? Above all we want people to feel confident that they will find God there.
In practice some feel closer to God in an empty church building & sitting praying in the quiet there, than sitting in the midst of a congregation or a service. That’s unfortunate, but understandable and is a reason why it’s good if churches can be left open, or provide at least one chapel that is open all day. Often we can be closer to God on our own than with others. But it’s also important that people feel confident that they can come to us if it would be useful to talk. Unfortunately, the ‘gathered people of God’ are not always welcoming, friendly, peace-making, loving and faith-and-prayer-inducing. Many of our historical churches are places where prayer, worship & needs have been expressed sincerely before God for years, perhaps centuries. Anglo-Catholics & Celtic Christianity talk of sacred spaces as “places where the veil between earth & heaven feels thin.” I’m not sure that’s true; for me it’s more that the atmosphere of a place witnesses to an authenticity that faith has been present there. T.S. Eliot wrote of a church community: “you have come to a place where prayer has been valid.” I feel that profoundly in the Church of the Resurrection at Mirfield or Saint Matthias Kirche, Trier; sadly I don’t personally feel it in Guildford Cathedral. If we are to attract people to faith, the building is less important than what we encourage within it, but it IS important to try to create an atmosphere and ethos that is conducive to true faith – a place where people feel that they are worshiping ‘in spirit and in truth’.
That is what the Tabernacle in the Desert and the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem were intended to evoke. People were meant to took to the tented enclosure at the centre of the camp or the building at the centre of nation’s capital & recognise that God is there, living at the centre of his people. They worshipped a God who cannot be seen & is omnipresent, but they knew that beyond all the layers of tenting or walls and beyond the veil to the tabernacle, God’s invisible presence was enthroned above the mercy-seat, the throne-box of two sculpted winged Cherubim. The Temple was an expression of the true GOD being real and living so close to us at the heart of the community that his power can be called upon at any time. How can we help others recognise that in our church - that God can be found in and with us?
The tent of the Tabernacle was covered with layers of blankets & skins, each layer was known to represent one of the twelve tribes. So the whole community felt intimate connection with it: it was theirs. The idea of buying a brick for Guildford Cathedral had a similar intention. I see that they’ve started calling it ‘the People’s Cathedral’, but the community don’t feel that it represents them as sincerely as the Jerusalem Temple did. The Temple was surrounded by the Court of the Israelites and the Court of the Gentiles, so they too knew they were personally, intimately represented in God’s presence. Our parish Churches should feel the same. The whole of our parish should feel that THIS is their place, they belong to it and it belongs to them. Unfortunately this often only comes to the fore when we want to make changes or re-order and locals who may not have set foot in the building for decades rise up in opposition : The church is first the property of God, not the Lord of the Manor, the populus, the regular or irregular churchgoers OR non-Church-goers. We belong to all; all are welcome any time, and all can come to God here any time. We can of course meet God ANYWHERE, and the Church building is not as sacred and sacrosanct as some maintain: it is a building not a person! But you might like to consider ‘how can we make our church feel instinctively to the visitor that it is for them, they are welcome and they will meet God here?’
The jewels in the High Priest’s breastplate also represented each of the 12 tribes of Israel. When he went in before God all the people knew that he represented them. DO your parish know that you are representing them before God whenever you are in church worshipping? That’s not just the role of the High Priest. The Church believes in the ‘priesthood of all believers’. We’re not great at acknowledging that all members’ ministries are as important as those of the priest, but it is in our beliefs. That means that all members are responsible for representing the rest of their community before God. We do that not just by evangelising our neighbours, but praying for them, taking them with us in our hearts & intercession as we come to worship. Do our congregations consider & believe that when they are worshipping they aren’t just doing it for their personal spirituality, but are corporately carrying their whole community’s needs before God? It could be a way of making our parishioners more sensitive to their role and responsibilities towards those among whom we live. Our worship, like that in the Jerusalem Temple is for the whole community and nation and God’s people throughout the world; part of the community of saints alive & dead, the Church Triumphant & Church Militant. If our communities felt that we were praying on behalf of the whole world I wonder if they might recognise that what we are doing is more relevant or even join us? They might not think we are just credulous people indulging our own wishful-thinking, coming for a spiritual top-up.
The heart of the Temple was the Sanctuary & its activity. Is our church holy, kept sanctified to God? Paul wrote of keeping our bodies holy as temples of the living God. Corporately our church should be too. That’s not primarily about having Laudian altar-rails to keep dogs out of the sanctuary or making the area beyond the choir seem so holy that people can’t walk there. People’s hearts and souls should be able to reach out towards God, present in the whole church. As well as making our churches welcoming we also want to keep the sense of holiness - that here is somewhere where we can find God & where we’re open to God communicating with us and calling us to work at personal holiness. It’s a fine distinction between making a church feel welcoming to all and to helping all feel that God challenges them to develop in holiness. God calls all to him without distinction; we are all sinners yet all welcome, all called to find grace, forgiveness and love through Christ. People shouldn’t feel that their sin separates them from coming to God for forgiveness, or that we would be condemnatory.
Is it possible to make our church feel winsome & encourage personal holiness? Partly, it depends on how we represent holiness. Holiness should not be off-putting. The two holiest men I’ve ever known were also the most loving, caring of friends to people. You didn’t think ‘they’re too good, they’d never want to be my friend.’ They were out-reaching in ways that made you want to befriend them. (One was an elderly, wise archdeacon, one a football-playing parishioner.) The Church, like Christ, should be like them. Holiness means more being ‘set apart for God’s use’ and ‘specially dedicated’ - not just ‘clean’ and certainly not ‘unapproachable’. God’s holiness is pure, but definitely not as unapproachable as the Jerusalem Temple hierarchy made him, or represented him in the Pentateuch. Jesus embraced the leper, the adulteress, the collector tainted by taxes and fraud, the beggar in stinking rags, the dying and the needy. The only people who he seems to have turned away from as unclean were the religious hypocrites. Do we give the same impression? Jesus told the sinner ‘go & sin no more’ & ‘be perfect a your heavenly Father is perfect’ but he attracted & didn’t reject the imperfect. Some churches feel the opposite; just welcome those in society who are comfortable, or socially acceptable. Jesus’ calls us to take the Gospel to the unclean, who most need Christ’s forgiving grace & redemption. Big sins are as bad as minor sin. Paul reminds us that gossip (common in most churches) is as much a sin as sexual immorality. Each sin equally separates us from God, yet each is forgivable & all who come for forgiveness are accepted by Christ.
One way to help all feel welcome & accepted may come by helping congregations radiate the forgiving & holy side of God to the visitor more authentically. Visitors need to recognise that we don’t regard ourselves as too holy for them, that we are real people with failings, who are been transformed by Christ & that seeking to be sanctified is part of being Christian. If people regard priests or church members as hypocrites they are unlikely to come, or feel that Christianity has anything for them. One sad thing I discovered in training for the ministry was that inside the workings of the diocese I recognised duplicity right at the top of the Church hierarchy. Church-Leaders can tend to respond like politicians before they act like Christ.
I’ve seen bishops lie & cover up duplicity & bullying by their managers, a vindictive director of ‘ministry, discipleship & training’, wanting and relishing power & control over others, looking for weakness to use against those she doesn’t like, lying to cover up her bullying, not valuing or affirming others’ gifts. Self-importance in any church member or in church committees doesn’t represent Christ. It’s not holy, truthful & a bad example of the Church to the world. You and I are meant to be examples of Christ to all in the world around. God’s Covenant with the Jews intended that they should be examples to the world of what God is like, in order to bring blessing and knowledge of God to the nations around. In the same way the Church is meant to truthfully represent what God is like. To use another metaphor, we are ‘ambassadors’ and ‘stewards’ for Christ. Paul says “We are not our own; we were bought at a price... we are not representing ourselves”. The Church as the Temple of the living God is meant to be a beacon representing the loving, holy God recognised at the centre of the community, a place of truth. The Cathedral & Diocesan House should be that par excellence – an image of God’s leadership of the Kingdom. The parish church is meant to be a beacon in an even more visible, local way, & individual Christians in their home are meant to be even more approachable, and tangible, representing true spirituality to our neighbours. How can we help each member of our congregation feel that responsibility to be a beacon for God’s welcoming & loving holiness in their neighbourhood?
One of the most special aspects of the liturgy is that it should connect us to authentic worship traditions, patterns & phrases that have been used for centuries, reminding us that we are part of the Church Triumphant – the continuum of believers throughout faith history with whom we join in Spirit in worship.
New Testament authors used temple imagery in relation to the Christian community to link the Church to the rich tradition and history of the tabernacle & the Temples in Jerusalem & Shiloh. For Jews the Temple was exclusive; it helped them recognise the presence of God at the heart of his people & nation. Hebrew scripture never explicitly called God’s People’ ‘the Temple of God’ though God their Creator was frequently portrayed as their builder: [Job 26:l0; 38:4-7; Ps.102:25; 104:3; Prov.8:27-31; Isa.40:l2; 48:13; Jer.31:27; Amos 9:6]. He is also described as the builder of Jerusalem, city of God’s Peace [Ps.147:2]. God as the perfect designer & builder gave detailed instructions for constructing both the tabernacle &temple. Psalm 139 talks of us being formed in the womb for God’s glory; St Paul writes of us being Temples indwelt by God’s Spirit, needing to remain holy for his glory.
What goes on in the Temple is important to God as it represents him before the world: The prophets frequently condemned false spirituality: Social justice and humility in worship were preferred to the panoply of cultic festivals and sacrifice [Ps.40:6-8; Isa.1:l0-20; 66:2b-4; Jer.6:20; Hos. 6:6; Amos 5:21-27; Mic.6:6-8.] The Temple was meant to be the place of true worship. The Jerusalem Temple, up to its destruction in 70CE was an essential part of the daily or seasonal life of believers as were temples in most ancient cultures. Jews & many Gentiles being addressed by Jesus or the writers of the Gospels & Epistles would have been familiar with the Temple & its functions, so using it as a metaphor for their Christian life would have seen its relevance immediately.
4 New Testament passages develop the imagery of the Church as Temple: 1Cor.3:9b-17; 2Cor.6:14-7:1; Eph.2:19-22; 1Pet.2:4-8. When Jesus said to Peter “On this rock I will build my church"' Matt.16:18, he implied that the church as a metaphorical building had to have solid foundations to grow strong. Roman Catholics interpret this as implying that Peter as a leader is going to start strong leadership that will be handed down through successive Popes. Protestants tend to interpret the ‘rock’ on which Christ will build his Church as Faith, the confession that Jesus is God’s Son & Messiah. Either way leaders & congregations have to have strong foundations, integrity, trust & faith & remain holy, reliant on God, not independent of God as some Church leaders today feel.
1Cor.3:9b-17 speaks of "jealousy & quarrelling" among Christian congregations in Corinth. Some felt superior because of those through whom they had come to faith: Apollos & Paul (e.g. ‘I was converted under Billy Graham!’ ‘I’m baptised a Catholic;’ ‘I’m Protestant’). Evangelists, Paul reminds them are ‘only servants’ [v.5-9a]. God has planted the field & raised the building [v.9b].
Paul also suggests that those of us who are leaders, teachers and evangelists need continual training to develop expertise. Paul aimed to be an ‘expert’/‘skilled’ builder. If the builder's work survives the fiery, eschatological test, he will be rewarded; if not, he expects to suffer. Paul spoke of us needing strong ‘foundations’ in Christ and to build with fine, selected materials. He reminded Timothy that building requires careful supervision; contractors are rewarded for success and fined for poor craftsmanship. The Temple, like the Kingdom of God, is not yet complete. We are important to its construction. We need to do our work to build the true Church and extend its ministry to the world.
We are "a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit". [1 Pet.2:4 -8] This is more a ‘spiritual house’ than a temple. You and I as believers are "living stones", built upon "the living Stone," Jesus, who is the "chosen and precious cornerstone" / a foundation stone. Believers are a "spiritual house. ‘spiritual sacrifices" and ‘priests making spiritual sacrifices in God’s temple v. 5.
1Cor.6:19 applies ‘Temple’ to believers who used cultic prostitutes & sullied their responsibility to be holy: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" Christians, as God's Temple, should allow God’s Spirit, living in them to clean their lives: “If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred & you are that temple." 2Cor.6:14-17 continues this imagery: Damage to a temple sullied the deity. God is eternally present in the Temple, so it must remain holy; idolatry or uncleanliness should be removed: “What agreement is there between the temple of God & idols?' Paul’s words are strong: As we are the temple of the God, Christians should be distinctive by our sanctity. The temple image stresses the need for believers to be distinct from unbelievers. As well as having God present in us, we represent God to the world. 2 Cor.6:14-7 shows how the Jews guarded the exclusivity of their Temple & we should similarly protect ourselves by separation from uncleanliness.
In parallel Eph.2:19-22 is inclusive, showing that Gentiles are full partners in Christianity, not unclean. Eph.2:11-22 celebrates Christ on the Cross uniting Jews & Gentiles who are ‘no longer foreigners & aliens’ but ‘fellow citizens’, ‘members of God's household.’ Jews & Gentiles needed to be united in the church. For us that might mean uniting, more than we do, believers of different cultures & types, or ways of expressing & understanding faith. God’s people the persecuted church were ‘aliens’, ‘exiles’, ‘homeless’. Now they all have a home in the true Jerusalem, Christ. We need to build true, united worship & bring varieties of spirituality together in our churches & in the temple of our lives.
So the temple metaphor emphasises:
The metaphor of the church as a building suggests our stability & durability & the way our church is meant to grow & organize its development. In Eph. 2:21’s description of the church as a building/ temple that is ‘growing’ the word for ‘growth’ was more often used of natural growth, like a vine. We are natural, organic & living, not a rigid institution as todays Church too often seems.
Christ is our ‘master-builder’; Paul called himself a ‘builder’; we speak of the church having ‘one Foundation’ Jesus Christ. The church uses several architectural metaphors like ‘pillars of faith’, ‘foundations of belief’, but our organization & ‘structure’ need to be personal, more like a family than an edifice.
Much of our faith is based in mystery & awe at truths beyond our comprehension, not proven facts. SO those who insist on specific details of doctrine or legalistic demands of what Christians should be doing seem like the Pharisees and Sadducees who pronounced on details of faith & sound & unsound doctrine to the exclusion of mystery, tentative aspects of belief & a life of freedom. Jesus didn’t make everything clear. We are closer to him when we hold & act on faith trustingly & help people struggling to understand. Doctrine is mean to help people approach trust in mysteries; it is not meant, as Calvinism became, to be an edifice that people had to struggle through to be assured of a relationship with God.
The Church is not meant to be static or off-putting, we intend to be welcoming, dynamic in the way the Spirit brings us alive, growing through love & nourishment, not like institutional structures in a high-rise city. The Temple often stressed people’s alienation from God; the Church is meant to welcome, include then & give life. That’s why body, bride & family images are important to remind us that our ministry & mission are to real human lives.
PILLAR, SENTINEL AND LAMPSTAND
A key aim of St Paul was to strengthen faith and understanding in believers:
So how can I or any of us be a ‘Pillar and Buttress of the Truth’ [Col.1:23; 1Tim.3:5; Rev.3:`12], a ‘Lampstand’ to shine Christ’s truth to the world [Matt.5:15; Mk.4:21; Ex.24:2-4; 2Ki.7:49; 1Chron.28:15; 2Chron.4:20; Zech.4:2], a ‘Building founded on Rock’ that cannot be shaken [Matt.16:18-19], or an effective ‘Witness’ to God in the world [Jn.15:26-27; 1 Jn.1:1-4; 4:11-18; 5:19; Rev. 6:9-11; 12:11, 17; 19:10]? All my experience of faith has just built tentative understanding, beliefs that seem to work, & a relationship with God that feels as though it must be real & true.
Many of our key beliefs are in mysteries beyond anyone’s full comprehension. But we aim to build in ourselves & in our church-members enough ‘working-understanding’ to be strong to live a practical Christian life in the world. We need confidence & trust to believe & confidence to witness. The more we find that following Christ works, the more our understanding is strengthened.
One problem for Church growth is that strengthening themselves in faith is not a priority for many Christians today. Many are content to go along to church once a week, get a top-up of Christianity & an experience of worship and spirituality. Many have no desire to try to fathom mysteries, share or encourage faith in others. We bewail the ‘unchristian’ behaviour & injustice in the world, but few Christians actually stand out & challenge it. Christ’s Great commission at the end of Matthew [28:18-20] to go and make disciples to the end of the world, is just words to many; they don’t get involved in it even with neighbours they know. We challenge people at baptism to go out in the world as a ‘light for Christ’ [Matt.5:14; Lk.16:8; Jn. 8:12; Acts 13:47; Eph. 5:8; Phil.2:15; 1 Thess.5:5; 1 Pet.2:9; Rev.1:20; 2:1,5]. How many do we strengthen enough to do so?
It’s not always their fault. The Church needs to be more committed to train people more in practical faith, apologetics and effective evangelism. After 2000 years’ practice we should be expert at being able to give reasons for our faith, training believers to comprehend key Christian beliefs with a working knowledge, and helping people to apply Christianity to questions and issues that arise in every generation. The Church has been lazy, which is why it is in decline worldwide. People no longer think that we have much that is relevant to their lives, whereas we know that Christ is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ who could transform the lives of many. He the answers to many of the world’s problems, if we could only teach people to apply his teaching & power effectively & truthfully.
There are several metaphors for the difference the Church should make in the world:
‘The New Creation’ 2Cor.5:17; Gal. 6:15-16; Jas. 1:18
‘Fruit’ / ‘First Fruits’ Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor.16:15; Jas. 1:18; cf. Rom. 8:23; 11:16; 1 Cor.15:20-23.
‘The New Humanity’ Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:22, 24
‘Edification’ 1 Cor.8:1; Eph.2:21;4:7-12,16; 1Pet.2:5
These present us as people who stand out as having a difference. The Church often tries to show that we are the same as anyone else. Yes, we are ‘sinners’ the same as everybody else but ‘saved by grace’. We have the same temptations, lead similar lives. But the metaphors for the church imply that we should so relish our redeemed nature that people recognise our difference & want what we have got. That’s how I became a Christian at university. I saw a group of winsome, active Christians around me and realised they had something that was badly missing in my life. That’s the difference that the Jews were intended to represent in the world too. A passage in Zechariah speaks of people from many nations taking Jews by the garment hem & saying: “You have what we want; let us go with you, we can see that God is with you!” [Zech.8:23]. The covenant with Abraham intended all the nations of the world to find blessing & understanding of God through the Jews’ relationship with God [Gen.12:3]. God’s covenant blessing was meant to extend beyond the Jewish family and bring others to God. Neither Jews or Christians were ever meant to isolate themselves. That covenant command is restated several times [Gen.18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 27:29b; Num.24:9] and was reiterated by later prophets [Isa.60:3, 14; 66:23; Micah 4:12, particularly Zech.8:20-23]. Instead they regarded themselves as exclusive and often didn’t include others in the covenant. So modern Israel’s politics has become a warning to the world of what selfishness, duplicitous, vengeance & exclusivism can do to a people, not a worldwide blessing & example of holiness.
The Institutional Church needs to be careful not to become the same. Catholic &Anglican hierarchies have developed a bad name for covering up misdeeds. When Archbishop Justin commended his Church for how it deals with abuse, he was rightly scorned in the press because he apparently disregarded so many situations where it wasn’t true; he’s since had to publicly apologise. If he’d been honest from the start about institutional failings over time, it would have demonstrated Christian integrity better: We are NOT the ‘light to enlighten the world’ that we should be. But we need to become so. 1 Peter 2:9 calls us to holiness: “You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of God who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” This uses phrases that were originally intended to apply to the Jews, based on Ex.5:10; Deut.7:6 and Isa 43:20-21. Redeemed people are meant to be holy in worship and politics, showing that we belong to God not to ourselves. That’s not just for our own edification and spiritual growth; the epistle emphasises that this is “in order that we might proclaim the mighty acts of God” and ‘shine our light’ to show others that there is a way out of darkness of many human situations.” Rev.1:5 & 5:10 again emphasise this by reference to our priestly role. We are meant to be priests for our world, lifting up holy hands, interceding on behalf of the world and spreading the truth. The metaphors of Pillar and Buttress also suggest this nature of our calling to uphold the world and stand for truth.
Too often the Church is regarded as killjoy, proclaiming ‘thou shalt not’ more than celebrating the abundant life that Christ intends for us. Christ intended us to be free, not stuck in legalism. The Epistle to the Romans celebrates our freedom from the Law, though Church synods & the lawyers & managers in Church House relish rules. Of course, all communities need certain rules to protect them and help their growth, as with the Sermon on the Mount & Biblical commandments. But some bad managers love to assert their control by creating new, less relevant rules. NO wonder society sees Churches as out of touch in practice or hypocritical on issues of morality. Christ’s love is inclusive & reached out to sinners. We say that we are inclusive & some churches try to be, but many think of the church as not for them. Christ should be a refuge for all, so we need to build an image of being a refuge & strength for any, a body where all can come for wholeness & forgiveness, & make sure that in practice, we show humility & respect for all.
Being a Pillar, Buttress, Lampstand, Light & Witness also expects us to stand out against wrong. Much of the Prophets’ teaching & the image of the Church in Revelation is about Christians as a catalyst for Christ to restore righteousness to earth. We don’t sufficiently combat evil influences & powers in the world or the Church, appropriately standing for truth, acting as Sentinels, Guardians & wise, caring Stewards of creation. Leadership and witness require engagement with the world, while maintaining an appropriate distinctiveness from the way the world does things. We need to make sure that we think with what Paul calls ‘the mind of Christ’ or Spirit- inspired intuition.
The things we stand out for and against should be what Christ stands for & against. Too often we just adopt popular cultural attitudes, conservative, liberal or radical, depending on the subject or our particular political or doctrinal bias. We have to change as culture changes, or we aren’t applying faith to today’s world. So most churches have changed their attitudes to women in leadership, sexuality, gender stereotypes, etc.
It takes a long time for churches to change, partly because so many of us think in different ways and have varying experiences. Some of course are just hard-minded, but where sincere Christians delay change it’s mostly when we are uncertain whether scripture prohibitions are specific to ancient time & culture or are universal prohibitions. Women having roles of leadership in church & committed homosexual relationships were once considered universal prohibitions (but so were injunction to stone a woman if she didn’t cover her head in worship or to put someone to death or exclude them from society for eating the wrong things or wearing mixed fabrics.) Now most in the western Church regard many prohibitions as the bias of the culture & time in which they were written. We are still called to be Pillars & Buttresses of the truth to protect human society & the Christian community from abuses and corruption and to lead people to a state that reflects God’s Kingdom. We need to be spiritually discerning & open to change the world by Christ-like love & action. But we shouldn’t give in to blackmail from Christian lobby-groups, Evangelical or Conservative. Some African church leaders who influence synod decisions in the Anglican communion still support the death-penalty for homosexuality, maintained in several countries.
It’s not enough just to protect the status quo or be ‘politically correct’, we need to be as radical as Christ & true to him, if we are to help build his Kingdom. The Church needs to be cleansed of hypocrisy & think & act like Christ. We are meant to be Christ’s example to the world. I reported to three bishops the bullying & duplicity of the female senior member of their bishop’s staff who caused my heart-attack. The response of two was to ignore my letters. The third, who proudly promotes the ‘safeguarding’ qualities of his diocese, inquired no further & continued to support the bully rather than challenging her behaviour, which to my knowledge, and was general knowledge in the diocese, has damaged the ministries of at least 16 others. To him I was unimportant, a dispensable non-stipendiary minister. It would be uncomfortable and perhaps expensive to discipline the bully, still on her high salary in a prominent diocesan position. (Thankfully, 4 years later, her retirement came and was great relief to many!) I was warned that if I took the complaint further it would end my ministry & the bully would not be affected. That is similar to the ways that complaints about child abuse were dealt with by churches and gagging orders put upon complainants. When, in response, I resigned from the diocese I wrote to the two current bishops explaining that I was doing so not for health reasons but because the manager’s bullying still caused me trauma, the bully’s lies and duplicity hadn’t been dealt with, and the Church had offered no support to me as a volunteer when I became ill. The suffragan bishop who was most directly responsible for me and who I had thought a friend, didn’t even respond to my resignation letter, the Evangelical diocesan bishop in a very short note, expressed sadness that I was ‘resigning on health grounds’. That’s how the Church too often buttresses itself to protect itself & maintain a status quo rather than standing for Christ’s truth and dealing with problems.
Soon after ordination I was warned by my experienced training incumbent: “In difficult situations never trust your bishop, he will always act first as a politician, to protect himself & the institution rather than prioritising thinking and acting as Christ.” I was surprised and didn’t really believe him, though I had witnessed similar false leaders when I was a member of the free church. His advice proved to be true. All churches must put following Christ and living by truth first. If the Church isn’t seen as standing for what is true before God it deserves to decline. Only Christ’s truth can build a true Church, grow into a godly Kingdom and sustain the world. A Church with a false image is easily seen-through by the public. A Church trying to build by duplicity or by aping secular business-practices doesn’t represent Christ; it’s not a ‘Christian’ church. If priests don’t have total Christ-like integrity they aren’t ‘priests’, because they do not represent God.
We know we all fail, sin & are pulled by different loyalties. It is not always easy to know what is right. We need the gift of spiritually discernment. As Christ showed in his freedom from the letter of the law, we need to know scripture holistically, to discern what aspects of it apply to varying situations. Christians who insist on interpreting and applying Church rules or Biblical laws literally and according to the letter have damaged the Church’s reputation in public eyes for centuries. They don’t represent Christ’s understanding of scripture & the way he applied it – seriously, wisely, gently, always thinking of people’s good & God’s holiness, because he loves us and came to free us. In acting as a pillar and guardian of the world, the Church has not always loved people first or brought people Christ’s freedom.
That’s where the image of the Lampstand is so important. We are meant to constantly shine as Christ’s light out to the world, being beacons offering freedom, refuge, truth, healing & an enlightened path to wholeness. The Temple precincts had two enormous lamp-stands, always kept filled with oil, as we should be with God’s Spirit. They shone over the Jerusalem’s walls, guiding travellers like beacons and as signs that God’s truth was shining in the Temple & overseeing his People, present at all times to be called on & trusted.
Our Church is meant to have a similar function: We’re meant to be evidence to the world that God is real, here to be found and shared in our community, a light to lighten both believers and those who find belief hard. Perhaps we could even convince unbelievers. Remember Simeon’s words in Luke that Jesus is: “a Light to lighten the Gentiles and glory to his people Israel” [Lk.3:32] or the prophetic announcement of Zechariah that John the Baptist, like us was to: “to give light to those who sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace” [Lk.1:79]. We now in representing Christ are meant to be bringers and shiners of Christ’s light, guiding others to find truth in God. Are we or the Church true to our baptismal promises to shine as lights for Christ in the world?
How do we help our congregations do that? Mostly by emulating it ourselves! We encourage people most to do things not by telling them what to do, but by setting an example and showing that it is possible for them. You don’t have to know all about your faith before you evangelise, you have to be a real person in as real relationship with God as you can and let that relationship outwork too others. But saying ‘my Christian life is my witness’ can be a cop-out; we still have to evangelise. To witness winsomely in ways that attract we must not distract by any hypocrisy, uncommunicative liturgy or panoply. It’s easy for many things we do as a church to distract from our central aim: Christ’s Church is always meant to be in mission, a beacon shining God’s light into a world that desperately needs his salvation & abundant life.
THE CHURCH AS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST AND FAMILY
I’ve never been particularly attracted by the image of the Church as the Bride of Christ. It has often been interpreted over-romantically, particularly in mediaeval and Counter- Reformation times, when the Song of Songs was interpreted as representing the love between Christ and the Church. Most theologians today believe it celebrates erotic love & was included in the canon by priestly compilers of scripture due to its legendary association with Solomon, founder of the Temple. The book shows sexuality as important for the wholeness of human nature, nothing to be ashamed of; there’s no mention of God in it. Mediaeval Christians like Bernard of Clairvaux and his successors in commentating on the Song took the Bride metaphor to rich extremes. As a celibate he was at pains to play down the erotic elements and interpret a chaste relationship between Christ and the Church.
In interpreting biblical metaphors, we must be careful not to stretch them too far. The biblical imagery of the church as a bride adorned for her husband suggested in paintings like St. Catherine’s Mystic Marriage to Christ, and the wedding ring worn by nuns, can seem over-sentimental. Do you often feel in worship like a bride decked with flowers, lace and embroidered silks? The reality of a community of believers engaged in mission, promoting the teachings & way-of-life of Christ & dealing with truth and justice in the world is far from sentimental. Yet the excitement & specialness of the bridal adornment, the wedding feast & vitality of a wedding celebration should be present in our Eucharistic celebration, our liturgy & our dynamic relationship with God..
If we aren’t totally successful at unity or being a body & a family, we’re even less successful at being Christ’s ‘Bride’. If our church is the Bride of Christ, is your relationship with God exciting; is it still giving consummate pleasure to both parties; are we fruitful? Are you & I & our churches, as well as the Church worldwide a true complement to Christ our bridegroom. And as family of the Bridegroom and Bride, is the Church properly nurturing, training and teaching all and bringing all members to Christian maturity? Remember Christ’s challenge in the Book of Revelation to the Church of Ephesus “you have lost your first love”. He found unpalatable and lukewarm his relationship with the Church of Laodicea, where he uses the topical metaphor of the area’s tepid, sulphurous springs to claim he would spit them out of his mouth. The Church at Sardis had a name for being alive, but the marriage & the faith relationship with God was dead. St. Paul challenged the Church to present all mature in faith. We are responsible for keeping our love for God alive, growing and nourishing others in their relationships with God.
A huge challenge for churches is to keep Christian life with God vital, satisfying and nurturing. I remember my enthusiasm, when I first committed myself as a Christian. I did a lot of naïve, stupid things in my enthusiasm to evangelise because I didn’t understand faith & theology as I do now but I was far more open to talk to anyone about faith vigorous & enthusiastic as a young Christian.
I realised that God loved me; I was amazed that I was forgiven, despite being me; God loved the people around me & I longed to bring them into the sort of relationship with God, forgiveness & freedom that I had found. I was probably as obnoxious as young lovers who moon over each other & can’t stop talking about the person with whom they’re in love. But I was enthusiastic. I was similar as a new curate & was surprised that church-leaders seemed so jaded and cynical! St Paul was even more enthusiastic but he was mature in the faith he was promoting: he realised that Jesus Christ fulfilled & developed all that he had longed for in his Jewish faith. That motivated him to give his life to mission.
Jesus told the Samaritan Woman at the Well [Jn.4:23] that our worship and our life with God needs to be in Spirit and in Truth. That is enough of a challenge, especially as we in the Church of England use repeated liturgies, which can be spoken by rote, without considering of the depth of meaning within the words. Concentration is necessary, to make sure that we are truly worshipping. But it is an even bigger challenge to ask: ‘Is our worship and relationship with God truly giving pleasure to both parties?’ Malachi like several later prophets criticised ritual Temple worship without meaning: Their sacrifices, he said, gave God no pleasure, he found unmeant sacrifice & incense noxious & unacceptable, their liturgies & music “wearied the Lord with words” [Mal.2:17]; in their worship and tithes they were “ robbing God” [Mal.3:9]. There’s nothing wrong in liturgical worship, sacrifice, incense, music, tithes, they just need to come from a true heart. Our Eucharist describes itself as “a sacrifice of praise” but often it isn’t particularly sacrificial: How much are we giving up for God? How often does our worship truly declare God’s ‘worth’ as it should? Our challenge is to regain that mutual love, spiritual unity & consummation that faith & our life in the Spirit are meant to stir. If we achieve that, we need to keep it alive & life-giving. Paul exhorted Timothy as a church leader to instruct his congregation towards “love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience & sincere faith” [1Tim.1:5], to give supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings for everyone... lifting holy hands [2:1, 8]; to be good servants and ministers of Jesus Christ in love, faith and purity [4:6; 12], pursuing righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness [6:11], enjoying what Christ called “full abundant life.”
If faith doesn’t seem pleasurable& life-giving, and if our liturgies seem monotonous, boring or meaningless in their ritualism, no wonder people aren’t drawn into the church or stay when they do attend. If we haven’t the enthusiastic love or confidence in our faith that wants to evangelise & share with others what we have found in God, why would others want it? I sat in a small village service on holiday a few weeks ago that was really boring. I looked around the congregation & wondered what they were getting from this. Were we just here to keep the church going, for companionship to prop each other up & stop them being lonely, or were they really getting something spiritually, physically and mentally stimulating from faith.
(I certainly wasn’t receiving anything from the sermon, the liturgy or the dire music!) The service felt like a dead marriage to God continued for appearances rather than stimulating anything vital.
Our covenant with God is like a marriage-relationship. Hebrew Scriptures often used the metaphor of God’s People as “the Wife/ Bride of YHWH" in the context of their apostasy, describing it as adultery. Hosea used his relationship with his unfaithful wife Gomer as a metaphor for the way Israel’s falseness to God. We & God belong together; both need to keep true to our marriage contract. Our relationship with God is not just about staying together or remaining faithful; we need to keep love and activity together alive. We are also partners in nurturing the world & helping others as well as ourselves towards abundant life.
The abundant life of Christians should feel like a fulfilled marriage relationship at the height of its fulfilment. People often think Paul & the Church as obsessed over sex, but actually when Paul mentions the subject his teaching was usually in response to questions by those who had written to him concerning the matter. Paul emphasised that to keep relationships true & active marriage should be regularly consummated, (except occasionally with the agreement of both parties.) It is puritanical saints, martyrs, religious orders, reformers or those who feel guilt who promoted guilt over sexuality; the Bible celebrates it. The metaphor of the Church as Bride isn’t intended to be a primarily sexual one, but it reminds us that we need to keep active to keep our relationship with God alive. Active Christianity includes sharing our faith enthusiastically, loving, teaching & caring for people, praying, worshipping, & studying faith enthusiastically, having intimate time with God & Christians we love. I’ve never thought before of engaging in mission as parallel to sexual fulfilment; for most Christians it is a turn-off, but it is a way that we nurture our faith relationship & make the church fruitful.
Wedding planners are important in Jewish culture. In 2Cor.11:1-4, Paul describes himself & evangelists, as the marriage agent, friend, or best man of Christ the bridegroom. He describes the Corinthian congregations as Christ’s betrothed bride. Paul has drawn them to faith & arranged the betrothal. He looks toward both their Christians maturity & judgement as times when he will have the privilege of presenting the believers to Christ as his bride: "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him" [v.2]. Have you ever thought of yourself as evangelists who enthusiastically encourage a wedding? It is a loving metaphor, vibrant with enthusiasm at our responsible position: In 2Cor.11, during the time between the betrothal & the marriage-presentation, Paul worried that the Church may be tempted by other suitors, "led astray from your sincere & pure devotion to Christ" [v.3]. The temptations to stray are more than to other desires or priorities. I think of several ministers, still in churches & lay believers who have been led away from their love of God by a thirst for intellectualism, power or position, laziness, over-familiarity with the faith.
The writer of Ephesians in 5.21-33 emphasised that "a betrothed bride should be faithful to her husband." The evangelist describes himself as “jealous” as the ‘bridegroom's agent’ for what he is presenting to Christ the Bridegroom. As people involved in ministry within the Church, are we as zealous to keep our congregation faithful and attractive to God? Are we Christ’s enthusiastic ‘wedding planners’?
Partners in relationships today are often self-centred to get all they can out of the relationship for themselves. I think of several friends & 2 couples I married and prepared for marriage, where the wife’s self-centredness has drained her partner & exhausted the relationship. Marriage in the context of biblical times had a modest expectations for the bride. Marriage, like the covenant between humans & God, was not, as it is meant to be today, a relationship of equal partners, giving & receiving equally. The wife of a Jewish bridegroom was intended to be industrious but obedient, compliant to her husband’s will, fruitful, a good steward of household resources. The expectations of the good wife in the Proverbs 31 were required of the Church. We find some of these rather funny or quaint today: “A good wife sells her girdles to merchants” always cracked me up as a youngster; some make us cringe in the light of modern liberation, but when written they were regarded as biblical wisdom to be followed. Our ideas of marriage today where the relationship is of equal partners, is even more relevant, because it gives us a sense of greater self-value & responsibility in the relationship and in spreading faith.
Too much emphasis on our relationship with Christ or God as a marriage can be uncomfortable if it is over-sentimentalised. But it is important: It stresses that we are intimately related to God, not just servants, automatons, slaves, but lovers who are cared for intimately, cherished, valued & entrusted with huge responsibilities. We are intended to nurture the world in partnership with God & build God’s family. In Corinthians Paul stressed the seriousness & permanency of our relationship. Ezek. 16:3b-14 sees the husband’s responsibility as rescuing, cleansing, and endowing the bride, family & community: We are God’s way of blessing the world.
Eph. 5:21-33, calls Christians to be like husbands & take responsibility for both the bride and the household, as Christ gave us both the responsibility & example. Christ paid the bride-price for us: he "gave himself up for her". He also prepared the bride with a bridal cleansing, a ritual bathing with sacred fragrances "to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word," v. 26. Christ presents the bride to himself v. 27, (a contravention of wedding practice where the family or wedding-planner presented the bride), but the image stressing our supreme reliance on Christ and the importance with which he regards the bride. Part of the bridegroom's glory is shown in the splendour of the bride. The relationship is one of covenant-loyalty & marital fidelity, expected of both Christian husbands wives. Our human relationships can give glory to God and act as a witness to our faith, as can the relationship between the church and its Lord.
The Book of Revelation uses the image of Christ as a bridegroom in a different sense, returning to claim his bride and bring her to himself in the presence of God.
FAMILY
The metaphor of God’s People being a family came earlier that the image of them as his bride but the two belong together. The Family of God image develops through the Bible. It was in the Pentateuch: Genesis traces the development of a family & wider clan from the descendants of Adam & Eve through Abraham, Jacob & Joseph’s families. They develop a family relationship with God & group responsibilities to him. [Ex.34:11-16; Lev.17:7; 20:4-6; Num.15:38-40; Deut.31:16]. This emphasis is strong in the prophets [Hosea; Isa.1:21; 50:l; 54:4-6; 57:3; 62:5; Mic.l:7; Jer.2-3; 13:20-27; Ezek.16]. Hebrew society was patriarchal, with emphasis on a strong father or male head of household or tribe & ancestral responsibilities to forefathers. Elders and distinguished men were called "father" as an honour: [Judg.17:10; 1Sam.24:12; 2Kgs.2:12] and leading women like Deborah were called "mothers in Israel" [Judg.5:7]. The family image in the Hebrew Scriptures doesn’t just describe immediate family: in government, society & religion people were called father, brother, ‘the national family.’
The Church adapted these: The Gospels advanced the idea of our responsibility to others in the intimate relationship of Jesus with the disciples & his teaching on Kingdom principles [Matt.9:14-15, Mk. 2:18-20], and it is strong in 1 Thessalonians where the church is spoken of as "God's New Family” [1:4; 2:14; 3:7; 4:10.] Lucian, an early critic of Christianity scoffed that “their [i.e. Christians’] first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another'' [Peregr. 13]. But there is also an uncomfortable aspect to the family image. Jesus talked of his followers as ‘his parents & brothers’ in the context of showing that those who followed him were closer than his human family [Mk.3:31-34], further, to follow sincerely one should ‘hate their father and mother’ [Lk.14:26]; i.e. set their priority on following Jesus’ ways & building the Kingdom. Sadly many ministers’ and church-members’ families have suffered through feeling this sort of neglect. I don’t think that is what Jesus meant: he intended us all to be inclusive; universal brotherhood & sisterhood should include the family, the widow and orphan, the stranger or alien, the refugee. In today’s rather fractured world with communities that rarely support each other this family aspect of the Church is one of our most attractive features.
Christ related to God as “Father” using the personal term “Abba”/‘Daddy’ but in the Hebrew scriptures God is emphatically different from a ‘biological’ father [Hos.11:9: “I am God, and not man”.] God, in the role of Creator, is thought of as the ‘Father’ Israel [Deut.32:6]. Fatherhood here suggests that he is there origin or source; they have responsibility to him as to a forefather. He loves [Jer.31:l-21], protects [Ps.89:23-26] & disciplines [2Sam.7:14] the nation & adopts them as his own [Ex.4:23; 6:6-8; Lev.26:12; Deut.32:l0; Jer.3:19; Hos.11:l].
The People of Israel are regularly described as ‘children’, ‘daughters’ & ‘sons’ of God. God is also occasionally described as a ‘mother’, giving birth to Israel [Deut.32:18; Isa.42:14, 66:5-13; Num.11:l0-15] nurturing & comforting her child [Isa.66:13.1]. In the New Testament God is more frequently described as ‘Father’ [Matt.23:9; Mk.14:36; Rom.8:15; Gal.4:6], Jesus is sometimes ‘Brother’ [Rom. 8:29; Heb.2:11-12], and believers are described as related to each other as ‘brothers and sisters’/siblings. Early Christian congregations met in homes, as an extended household, so ‘family’ & ‘kinship’ metaphors were appropriate.
Jesus and Paul both used the family image for the community of believers. Christ said of his followers: “Here are my mother and my brothers” [Matt.12:49; Mk.3:34; Lk.8:21]. Believers identified as the ‘household of faith” [Eph.5:21- 6:9; Col.3:18-4:l; 1Pet.2:18-3:7; Titus 2:2-10; 1Tim 2:9-15; 6:l-2]. The Church family felt and claimed family responsibility for each other as God’s family on earth [Eph.3:14-15; Acts17:24-29]. This extended to those who had died & were with Christ as our family in heaven, hence the development of Christians feeling linked to the Saints. Christ’s atoning work unites & cements us together as God’s family. Once alienated from God & living separate lives we are intended to be one for mutual up-building [Eph.2:19; Gal.6:l0;1Tim.3:15; 1Pet.4:l7]. Colossians emphasises that even racial aliens or enemies can find unity, as Christ has united us as a family in him. The Agape or Lord’s Table was where the family most intimately came together to meet Christ & express unity [1Cor.10:l6-17].
A family cares for one another, understands & meets physical & spiritual needs, has mutual respect & responsibility for each other, nourishes, helps all grow to maturity & enables all to find their role & contribute in the family. In poor, persecuted situations the Early Church family gave each other that sense of 'belonging', unity & support that Christ’s prayed for his followers in Jn.17. Our unity is with each other & the Trinity & we have a family responsibility in mission to reunite the world with its Source. The Church today is meant to fulfil this & extend Christ’s family through its mission and ministry.
The best families are not insular but out-reaching. I remember as a child, feeling fairly unhappy at home, but a large family who lived a few doors away often welcomed me as part of their extended family. I played there, was invited to join their meals or to watch television; they shared their toys. They were for several years my second and warmest home. Only later did I realise that they were committed Christians; they didn’t force their beliefs down my throat, just loved and demonstrated care for me (and no doubt prayed for me without repeatedly telling me). The Church works well when it works similarly, as a wide extended family, welcoming people, making them comfortably at home, representing Christ to them truthfully, loving people, whatever their needs or failings, letting Christ’s truth and love reach into lives and transform them in his time. We present the truth, perhaps more by the way we live as a family and in our attitude of love to others than in how we teach faith. Of course both need to go together; we need to teach faith. But some churches too often preach faith much more than living it out. Are you a family that loves outsiders? Does your relationship with Christ embrace and nurture others, bringing them in to share, grow and flourish in that relationship?
AGRICULTURAL METAPHORS: The Church as Plant/Field/Vineyard/Vine/ The Planting of the Lord.
Hebrew imagery used many agricultural metaphors, as one might expect from a largely agrarian society. Israel was likened in the scriptures to several plants: an oak tree [Isa.61:3], palm [Ps.92:12] or cedar {Hos.14:8]are all signs of resilience & permanence & strong growth into old age if supported & nurtured by God. These are positive images, like the olive tree, a sign of our fruitfulness through God [Jer.11:16-17; Zech.4:3]]. The OT also used agricultural metaphors to warn of judgment for those who misuse exalted privileges given by God. With God we find nourishment & growth; rejecting, neglecting or cutting ourselves away from him deprives us of necessities for growth & nutriment.. New Testament images often suggest believers’ privileged connection of to Christ, the resources available through him & our attendant responsibility to keep linked to him & to offer a ‘harvest of righteousness and peace’ [Heb.12:11].
VINE
Israel was imagined as a grape-vine & vineyard. Remember that Joshua and the spies in returning from Canaan eulogised over the fruitfulness of the land [Num.13:27]. Artists traditionally represented them as carrying a huge bunch of grapes. In the Promised Land the people were meant to similarly flourish if they remained true to the Covenant. But they often failed and lost their fruitfulness. A Psalmist described God’s People as ‘a vine from Egypt’ transplanted then nurtured by God in the Promised Land [Ps.80]. In Isa.5:1-7 Israel is ‘the vineyard of the LORD Almighty’. Judah is ‘the garden of his delight’. God cared for them & judged when they failed, either by damaging the harvest or breaking down the vineyard walls. Ezekiel uses vines as a metaphor for judgment on Jerusalem [Ezek.15:1-8 & ch.17] & on Israel’s leaders [19:l0-14. 39]. 17:l-24 describes the Exile in an allegorical story of shoots transplanted in Babylon, a remnant of which God will replant Israel, where ‘it will produce branches and bear fruit’ [Jer.6:9; 11:16-17; Hos.10:1-2, 13].
In the Gospels: the Parable of the Wicked Tenants [Matt.21:33- 46; Mk. 12: 1-1 2; Lk.20:9-19] & Jesus' discussion of the vine & its branches [Jn.15:1-8] salvation-history is imagined through the metaphor of planting, nurture & growth. God’s People are his vineyard. The Jewish leaders who Jesus criticised in the parable [Mk.11:27; 12:1,12] had failed repeatedly to give the agreed portion of the harvest to the owner. They even rejected & killed the owner's son [Mk.12:7-8] & stood under judgment [Mk.12:9]. In other parables they are described as bad stewards of the ministries & resources entrusted to the. Is our Church stewardship any more worthy?
Jesus described himself as ‘the true vine’ [Jn.15:l-8]. His disciples were branches who promised to bear much fruit if faithful and fruitful. Yet unfruitful branches were threatened with being ‘thrown away’ & ‘'burned’ [v.6]. To bear fruit & flourish branches must ‘remain in the vine’ [v.4], staying connected to Christ who provides nourishment & nutrients [v.5-6,8]. Fertility comes through being in him, praying in his name, obeying his ways [v. l0]. In remaining in unity with him and faithfully following him they can experience and share in his joy and blessings [v.1].
FIG TREE
Fig trees were a feature of many gardens; they were a symbol of God’s provision ‘everyone should be able to sit under his vine or fig-tree’. A barren fig tree was a sign of God being distant [Hab.3:17]. The Fig Tree [Lk.13:6-9] is about our need to remain fruitful. As with the vine we need to receive nutrients from God & are called to bring forth fruit faithfully. In criticising the clerics of his day Jesus also warned that there are good & bad trees, wolves in sheep’s clothing {Matt.7:15-20; 12:13].
OLIVE TREE GRAFTING
Paul used the olive tree image of God’s people [Rom.11] to describe the Church’s continuity in building on Old Testament promises. He also addressed the in-grafted Gentiles, reminding them that they were privileged to share nourishing sap from the olive root [v.17]. They are as much under threat of failure & judgment, as all are if we separate ourselves from the root [Jer.11:16-17]. As wild olive shoots grafted into the tree, none should be arrogant toward Jews who have been cut off, but be afraid. ‘For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either’ [v.21].
FIELD
In 1 Cor.3:6-9 Paul used the agricultural metaphor of believers as ‘God's Field’. The focus there is on Paul & Apollos as workers, rather than the field. There are equally necessary but different roles in the Church. We are responsible & may be judged for faithfulness to our calling. Matthew’s agricultural parables use the field as a symbol of the fruitfulness that can come if the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and those who receive the truth are nurtured. The Parable of the Sower shows that the seed of Christ’s teaching is good, but growth encounters many hazards [Matt.13]
The parables of the Labourers in the Vineyard [Matt.20:l-16] & the Two Sons [Matt.21:28-32] describe our physical and spiritual work in the world. We are called to be wise stewards, righteously and actively working to advance the Kingdom.
The agricultural metaphors in scripture are organic ways of representing our relationship with God, the benefits and fruitfulness of remaining linked with him and the inevitable withering that comes when we are out of union. This is as true of the Church as of individual Christians. We often interpret fruitfulness and union as personal, because the Protestant Church so frequently emphasises personal salvation and our personal responsibility. But in context the agricultural images often refer to the nation or a group of believers. This reminds us of the need of the whole ‘ekklesia’ to keep linked to its life-giving, nutrient-bearing root in Christ. We have seen that the institution of the Church often acts too independently. Sometimes I feel that the Church would keep going and acting the same if God’s Spirit withdrew, or we became separated from the root, because we are so entrenched in our ways and practices. But of course we wouldn’t be spiritually fruitful because the source of our nourishment, inspiration and vitality isn’t present. That may actually be true of some churches, Christian institutions or organisations, and individuals’ lives today. We cannot of course know what is happening under the surface of people’s faith. Yet sometimes there is little apparent fruitfulness, growth or energy in some Christian lives and groups. You sometimes wonder from where they are deriving sustenance. The only true growth comes when our spiritual nurturing is fed from the main source of abundant life - our relationship with the life-giving God through Christ. Our role as a teaching, training, encouraging and worshipping Church is to strengthen people’s links to God so that their growth to maturity can be true, strong, fruitful and life-giving.
THE CHURCH AS AN ARMY OF SOLDIERS IN BATTLE
A strong Christian metaphor describes believers as combatants in a regular battle between good & evil / flesh & Spirit / angels & demons [Rev.12:7ff]. It encourages us to be strong and active, but has also led the Church for centuries into mistaken ideas of its role and has created dangers for many Christians who have entered battle. The image has roots in Hebrew scriptures such as Isa. 59, where God was described as the divine warrior combatting his foes. If people imagine the world or the cosmos as a balance between equally opposed spiritual powers of good and evil they are theologically mistaken. Several religions for millennia have interpreted good and evil in this dualistic way. But the Christian understanding of God is that he is the strongest power in the cosmos. Nothing in the Christian scriptures imagines God as anything other than the ultimate victor in any struggle against wrong.
Rev.19:7 describes Jesus in military terms as a warrior on a white horse & sees Christ’s followers as combatants in the cosmic war against evil and satanic opposition [Rev.2:10]. Christ makes promises to those who endure and conquer [Rev.2:7,11]. But we are not the ones who conquer: we engage in a struggle for right, and against sin, but ultimately it will always be Christ or God’s Spirit who creates the victory. There was an Evangelical/Pentecostal trend in the 1970s/80s for churches to march around areas ‘claiming them for the Lord’. This militarist triumphalism sometimes implied that if we had enough faith we could twist God’s arm to create revival through the Church. That derives partly from Old Testament thinking that we can persuade God to do what WE want and that God’s mind and actions can be changed or determined by his followers. But our mission is not that simple. We are to work with God, rather than him working for us. We have responsibility to explain and communicate faith in effective ways. Triumphalism may seem attractive to believers but it rarely attracts thinking seekers to come to God and find a satisfying faith. Christ never displayed triumphalism; even in his Entry into Jerusalem, he arrived humbly.
Paul encouraged believers to put on divine-gifted armour & join Christ in the spiritual & ethical battle to form God’s Kingdom [Rom.13:12]. Ephesians 6:11 continues the metaphor. But we need to regard Christ as loving all, a universal peacemaker through teaching, & reconciliation, not a wielder of arms or in any way arrogant.
Our own armour is spiritual and metaphorical; it should not be militaristic. Romans 13:12 tells us to ‘put on the armour of light’ and ‘put aside the deeds of darkness’ (exemplified by debauchery, licentiousness, quarrelling & jealousy). The light he talks of is to ‘put on Christ’ by following his example and metaphorically allow him to clothe us with his life and righteousness. This implies that we win the battle through living like Christ & being true examples of him to the world rather than ‘fighting’ or ‘contending’ for him. The metaphor of soldiers is about our working together as an effective and active group to help Christ in the winning of the Kingdom. It has nothing to do with aggression or violence. Nor do we win or witness faithfully by triumphalism.
The description of a wrestler/boxer pummelling his body and making it ready and strong for a fight again implies that our mission requires energy, readiness to withstand blows, and physical, spiritual and mental determination. But these are mental and spiritual preparations not necessarily physical qualities. Our armour, muscle-building and subjugation are more in terms of preparing our abilities and minds, strengthening our apologetics & our abilities to communicate God’s truth and Christ’s Gospel effectively. The physical nature of our preparations might include looking after our bodies, self-discipline, keeping ourselves holy and worthy of God to use, not neglecting or abusing our physical selves as some Christians have done in the past; (or as some do today through over-work, lack of restful refreshment and exhaustion in ministry). We cannot minister or exemplify Christ effectively if we physically, mentally or spiritually neglect our well-being. Who will we attract to Christ if they imagine that faith creates miserable, exhausted specimens!?
Eph.6:11-20 defines our armour more fully. The writer encourages us to prepare ourselves & assume the whole armour of God. One piece of the armour alone is not enough; we need to have thorough protection and the tools with which to spread the gospel:
When Eph.6:10-11 invites believers to ‘clothe themselves with the armour of Christ’, the writer is not telling us to rely on our own strength or even the above armoury. Christ is the divine warrior; we should clothe ourselves by his example, allow ourselves to be protected by him and trust in his protection and strengthening. The passage assures us that only his way will ensure victory against the cosmic powers [6:12]. (Cosmic here include ‘everything in all creation’ - on earth and in the spiritual dimension’. But it does not imply that everything in creation is against us; it recognises that life, mission and ministry face difficulties and some are way beyond our understanding.) The armour we require for such a struggle includes prayer, bold proclamation of "the mystery of the gospel", [6:18-20] and prayer-support for "all the saints". The writer recognises that he needs such prayerful support himself for the ministry in which he is engaged.
The image of the Church as Christ’s fighting army should not be interpreted too literarily: Crusades, ‘killing or damaging in love’, tyrannical religious leadership, insensitive proclamation of limited truths, insensitive teaching and pastoring have all resulted from over-literal reading of militaristic language in scripture. Popes at one time led physical armies into war for papal lands. This is SO far from Jesus’ example of peaceful yet challenging leadership. He may be described as a soldier in Revelation [19:11-16] and told his disciples that the time would come when they would need swords [Matt.10:24], but he is more likely to have been meaning spiritual rather than physical arms and conflict. Believers may be active, passive or metaphorical combatants in God’s battle against wrong, but before all else we are required to be authentically Christ-like and his Gospel is meant to bring peace and reconciliation, not discord, disharmony or death. Christ’s is the one who wins any cosmic battle in which we are engaged with him, and he will be victorious righteously. We should not over-emphasise our role as his aids or to be over proud when we fight or struggle on his behalf.
In the Lord's Prayer [Matt.6:9-13] we ask God ‘to protect us from evil’ or hardships and to spare us the ‘time of trial’. But Christ told his followers to expect hardships to come. We, like them, may be as ill-treated as he was. In John 17 Christ prayed that we would not be taken out of the world but protected within it. He prophesied that his followers would suffer, yet had reassured them that ‘the gates of hades’ will not overcome God’s truth or the Church [Matt.16:18-19]. In the Book of Revelation, the struggle is described as intense: the Church is imagined as a woman facing a dragon's wrath. The foe ‘makes war’ not just on Christ but on "the rest of her offspring" who ‘obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus’ [Rev.12:17]. Casualties are to be expected [6:9-11; 14:13] but this suffering is regarded as temporary, since victory is assured [12:11]. Ultimately (continuing the imperial army imagery) there will be a triumphal celebration before the throne of God for all who have come out of "the great ordeal" [Rev.7:9-17; 14:l-5]. These ‘conflict metaphors’ describe a struggle to build God’s Kingdom in many aspects of human life as in the cosmos. We are encouraged to endure in faith and trust [13:10; 14:12] and to feel secure that Christ’s will ultimately be the victory.
We should not take all the military image in the Apocalypse over-literally, as some militaristic Christianity has done for centuries. Believers as combatants are exhorted to strengthen themselves by exercise & scriptural understanding, to put on spiritual armour and develop necessary gifts, to stay awake and clothed 16:15, awaiting the conquering Lamb [17:14] and the victory of the rider on the white horse, who will lead ‘the armies of heaven’ [19:11-16].
Military symbolism would be understood citizens of the Roman Empire, to whom the writer was communicating. Many would have seen soldiers most days. They might have been resented in occupied countries, like Palestine, for their violence and insensitivity. (We have to be careful not to be resented for insensitivity in our communities.) But the soldier was known for his rigorous adherence to orders and to rule, as we should be admired for our adherence to God’s ways. He was well-drilled and kept to military discipline. He was strong and equipped for the struggle in which he was engaged. He was also strong because he worked together as a team with other soldiers. A soldier is only as strong as the team in which he works and their unity of purpose and action. The Christian can only be effective in witness and in combatting the wrong in the world if we are working together as Christ’s body, campaigning and witnessing to present a unified, truthful message to a confused world where corruption often seems stronger than truth. (The way that the Evangelical wing of the Church in America supports President Trump’s untruthful behaviour, the gun lobby and unthinkingly supports the politically corrupt activities of Israel against Palestinians, even seeking to rebuild Jerusalem’s Temple is a disgrace that witnesses badly against Christ and all Jesus stood for. He emphasised truth and justice, peace and reconciliation. Love and redemption of one’s neighbour or enemy was Jesus’ message, not vindictiveness or materialism.)
Paul saw the story of salvation as conflict where good should always seek to combat evil. He gives confidence to the Church by reassuring them that the battle will culminate in Christ and his Church being vindicated and exalted. He appealed to Christians in every generation & place to engage in this conflict as a matter of urgency, as he believed that Christ would soon return. The Church worldwide has largely lost this sense of urgency today and often seeks comfort rather than activity. Christ has taken 2,000 years and still not returned, but we should be always prepared to be active, like the bridesmaids, ready and waiting for the bridegroom. We serve him, while he is absent. We no longer know for sure what Christ’s teaching about his return means. It may mean that we are simply meant to be representing Christ actively and truthfully in the world for all the time we live on earth, as fellow-builders of God’s Kingdom.
Rom.13:11-14 used words similar to an exhortation to soldiers at dawn on the day before battle to call for the ‘ekklesia militans’/‘the Church Militant’ to prepare. Whether Christ’s return is imminent or distant, like the wise bridesmaids, we should always be prepared & vigilant: “Do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ & do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” 1Thess.5:6-8 gives a similar exhortation: "Do not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake & be sober... But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, & the hope of salvation as a helmet."
The command to "put on the armour of light" reminds us that our struggle must be righteous and righteously engaged. God’s Kingdom cannot be won by duplicity, false tricks, a false message or false faith. This is a spiritual battle for truth. Paul parallels this with the exhortation to "clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ". He reminds us that all our actions in the struggle must emulate and be guided and inspired by Christ. Only his righteous-ness and his integrity can build the true Kingdom. False ministry may build numbers but a Church built by false power or false proclamation is not Christ’s Church.
After defending his ministry and that of his co-workers, Paul encouraged believers in 2 Cor.10:3 -6 to join them by becoming well-disciplined troops, armouring and strengthening themselves for a struggle in the full light of Christ’s day. They are not to use false arguments or worldly methods; only spiritual strength and God’s truth can bring victory. This has much to say to our contemporary world and leadership styles that disregard truth or proclaim ‘alternative truths’: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.” Paul says we are to use ‘weapons of righteousness’ 2Cor.6:7 ‘in the right hand and the left’. That is: we are to be fully armed in preparation, ready for defending faith & truth (left hand) and being more proactive in ‘attack’ through our mission (right hand).
1Cor.16:13; Phil.1:27-30; Col.1:11 all call for us to ‘be strong' or ‘stand’ in ways that resemble military commands & rallying calls. 1 Pet. 5:7-10 calls us to rely on Christ & discipline ourselves against spiritual attack. Timothy was exhorted to faithful ministry in military language: "Fight the good fight," [1Tim.6:12]; "Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus." [2Tim.2:1-4]. These calls for confidence & strengthen recall mobilisation for war in Deut.20:l-9: "Finally be strong in the Lord & in his mighty power."
The spiritual struggle is not a battle where losing is an option if
we remain faithful. Christ's past victory through the Cross & Resurrection assures future victory & vindication; this encourages us to persevere: "Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” [Col.2:151]. 1Cor.15:24-28 is confident in the future victory of Christ when "he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power". Having achieved victory he will hand over the redeemed and cleansed kingdom to God.
Eph.6:14-17 reassures Christians that they are protected by weapons of "truth," "righteousness," "faith," "salvation," "Spirit," "the word of God". They are fit their "feet with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace". The writer seems to be assuring us that the quality of God’s armour is trustworthy and effective.
The fruit of the Spirit is part of our armoury as well as our strengthening: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’: These all combine to make us stable and able to live and witness effectively to others. Joy gives us energy and enthusiasm, love protects us from being insensitive; peace prevents us from damaging and brings reconciliation; impatient or unself-controlled tactics rarely lead to victory; faithfulness helps us trust God, gives us confidence & gratitude; gentleness helps us consider how to communicate sensitively and effectively.
The writer of Ephesians recognised that there are risks in mission. Like Christ and other persecuted Christians he describes himself as "an ambassador in chains" [Eph.6:20]. The church should ‘wage peace’, fully committed to the struggle to represent Christ authentically, alert, reliant on God’s protection, looking to God to provide, guide and aid. The Christian community is also intended to corporately support and encourage each other in the struggle for truth and the building of God’s Kingdom.
Believers are not merely meant to be sentinels or to acquiesce. We are to be active, engaging with commitment to a spiritual struggle for truth and growth, courageous and hold on to good ground. Paul also imagines the church's battle against foes as ‘wrestling’ and disarming those who are hostile to the truth. This isn’t necessarily referring to the sport of wrestling. Most Jews and many Gentile Christians would have been offended by Roman, pagan games and not attended. ‘Wrestlers’ was also a term used of the troops who fought to disarm opponents when soldiers encountered each other in the hand-to-hand combat, following an attack. We are meant to ‘wrestle’ in a similar way, to disarm what is wrong in the world and in the church. But such combat is not easy, nor did Christ or Paul imagine it to be. As well as knowing that we or others may be damaged in the fight for right, part of our spiritual insight & sensitivity needs to judge how to best influence others. Too many Christians, even leaders, put their foot in it and damage the Church’s witness by their misguided activity, rather than being winsome examples of Christ.
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Iain McKillop
IMAGINE A CHURCH...
My former congregation was challenged to consider through Lent what their ideal church would be. All were given a paper printed with the words “Imagine a Church...” & were asked to think through then write in a phrase what we longed for. Suggestions and responses included:
Imagine a Church where all feel welcome and included, accepted & loved you, where you & all feel at home.
Imagine a Church that values committed relationships and loves understands & values you if you are divorced, single, in a gay relationship, lonely, disabled, a difficult personality or just YOU.
Imagine a Church that shows it values the contribution of older people & integrates children & young people in the congregation.
Imagine a Church where you are recognised as having something valuable to contribute.
Imagine a Church that takes the Bible seriously but not always literally.
Imagine a Church that always stands for the Truth.
Imagine a Church where you meet God in Christ each time you come.
From experience those aren’t always our experience in all churches are they? Acts 4:32f describes the early community of believers as almost communistic, sharing all in common, so none had needs & all contributed. It sounds ideal but doesn’t often work due to human egos or when communities become large. Today’s Church should reflect Christ far more than it does. Church can be over- institutional rather than a supportive family; self-promoting and self-protective. not always inclusive or as honest as it should be about how weakly it obeys Christ’s ways or follows St Paul’s concept of Christ’s Body. Much that we do as an institution hardly relates any longer to Jesus’ message or aims. Would St Paul recognise the diocese as the Church whose principles he founded? Like secular businesses, dioceses seem over-proud of their limited achievements, hierarchical, cover up mistakes, advance bullies & those who promoted themselves, over-emphasise administration, wasted money on vanity projects, neglect pastoral care, support of clergy & practical Christian spiritual education, don’t leave many believers confident enough in their faith to be able to effectively share their beliefs & fail to accept or heal the damage they do to individuals. Above all most churches fail to engage successfully in ‘Mission’ - our main raison-d’ ȇtre. Many would agree that the Church worldwide is not what it should or could be if it kept more closely to the aims of Christ & the principles of its founder Paul. In a world where we can’t trust politicians & other social leaders it is essential that the Church stands for God’s truth. We need to work with the potential we have, not just bewail what we’re not.
In these sessions we will explore some scriptural metaphors for Christ’s Church to consider issues that challenge us & could help us to be more as Christ intends. In interpreting biblical metaphors we must be careful not to be too literal. Like finding messages in Christ’s parables, or considering biblical imagery for God, too-detailed parallels may distort the intention of the metaphor. In the ‘Body of Christ’, we aren’t meant to try to work out who is the navel, the liver or kidneys, who refreshes & who pumps the blood... though we certainly need people who filter out poisons and far more active practical muscles than we use at present!
Christians sometimes sing choruses about loving Jesus & being Christ’s Bride in sentiments close to erotic love, consummated in Pentecostal or emotional ecstasies. That’s not how those metaphors were intended: We need to always consider & interpret according to what biblical metaphors were meant to communicate:
The ‘Body of Christ’ metaphor suggests how we should work together fully, integrated, every part functioning well, serving its purpose, and contributing to the work of other parts. Christ’s ‘Bride’ is about mutual support & love with Christ the bridegroom, togetherness in work, aim, mission and purpose, an adornment to Christ (which the modern Church rarely seems). As a ‘Temple of the Living God’ our Church should be measured by holiness. People who come should be able to meet God, find truth, refuge, to worship & pray ‘in spirit & in truth’. The Church should be a beacon of God’s presence and truth in the world. Our sessions together will consider these further, but we’ve also come for spiritual rest and restoration, nurture by gentle thought, not over-intense study. I hope that considering ideas together might enable us to transform our churches to be closer to Christ’s intention for us, but also refresh & revision us in gentle but challenging ways.
Sometimes congregations don’t recognise their need to transform. Church-members, laity & clergy may be comfortable with what they have in Church life & liturgy or don’t want to face challenges. That’s only OK if we want the Church to decline. In the last 10 years attendance at church services has declined by 26% & continues to decline because we’re not offering society what people recognise they need or want. Christ’s Salvation is relevant to all in the world, but we don’t present it in ways that attract most people to want to be part of our body. We can seem close to the religious complacency of the Scribes, Pharisees & Sadducees, who Jesus criticised and tried to reform. Christ taught more authentic ways of communicating to & relating to God. Last year we celebrated Luther’s inspiration for Reformation. Contemporary churches worldwide badly require regular reformation if we are going to spread Christ’s true Gospel to our needy world, and bring salvation and abundant life to the societies in which we live.
Guildford Diocese adopted the proud slogan: “Transforming Church, Transforming People”. When Bishop Andrew promoted his campaign, I suspect he hoped for most to conform to his Evangelical & organisational ideas. But the motto doesn’t say enough about what we want to transform into. The true Church should aim to transform God’s people into Christ-likeness, relating God and communicating Truth effectively to today. We need to transform into what God intends us to be, not act as a business, a proud hierarchy or a body where everyone thinks in the same way. We are created with variety; all relate to & serve God differently, Christ’s teaching speaks to us in different ways, encouraging varying ways of following him. Lay members of every church, with a diversity of lifestyles, skills, work & interests have opportunities to live out the full variety of what abundant life can be. We’re designed to develop to the full human minds, interests & gifts, using the world’s full resources.
The Church could effectively bring God’s salvation to our world if all of us through our variety witness to various others like us.
Imagine what our Christian lives would be like if we kept to the New Testament precepts for Christ’s Church! We need to be careful not just to follow metaphors that attract us or relate to our culture or emotional needs. Eras of church history have adopted models and metaphors that relate to its aspirations of their time. So, the church has at various periods reflected secular feudal society, militaristic aims for imperial expansion, colonial attitudes to mission, leadership by autocracy or democracy rather than theocracy – seeking God’s way of leading us. The C4th Church increasingly drew its models from the Roman Empire so created hierarchies that reflected the Imperial Court or military ideas of the ‘Church Militant’ that damaged our mission, as did the Crusades or Inquisition & Conquistadors. Today’s Church has a tendency to adopt corporate-business & ‘leadership-style’ models. It seems over-institutional rather than a family or organic body. If we’re regarded as an ‘army’ or ‘economic business out for its own good’ we look too much like the world that no longer cares personally for individuals. If the Church is to recover Christ-like integrity & humanity in our ministry & mission, we need to remain true to more biblical metaphors for the Christian community. Positive images can capture & inspire believers’ imagination: If we emphasise imagery that promotes love, truth & care we are likely to grow by outreaching with care, love and truth, which attract.
One single image of the Church is insufficient to convey Christ and Paul’s intentions for God’s People. Each metaphor can contribute something more to our understanding. We need the full, wide variety of images on your list to experience the wholeness of what the church is meant to be. Most of our metaphors emphasise the variety of relationships that are vital to church health, holiness, growth, our relationship with the Trinity; relationships among fellow believers; the Church's relationship to the world and its correct use of power.
EKKLESIA
Trying to follow Christ may pull us in different directions: the struggle between the desires of the Flesh & the requirements of the Spirit are most obvious. But we’re influenced by individual & group mental, physical & spiritual needs. Ekklesia, the Church was originally a secular term for an assembly or gathering. We use it of the gathered people of God. That is a gathering of a wide variety of people; we are an ‘eclectic’ group, most very different. If the Church tries to make us all the same or similar it contradicts our nature. SO if a church expects everyone to believe in the same way, live similar lifestyles, have one view, it goes against the diversity that God has made in the world. If we’re too similar we won’t as effectively witness to all the diverse people the world in their diverse situations, with whom our own diversity should be able to communicate. We often talk of the Body of Christ as though it needs to be totally unified. “Endeavour to keep the Unity of Christ in the bond of peace.” We are unified under one head, Jesus Christ, with common Christian creedal beliefs. But we are very different people and interpret creeds and discipleship according to our various cultures and characters.
If we are too narrow or legalistic, as the Church has been many times through history, we destroy the freedom that Christ intended for us to flourish & find abundant variety in life. Some nuns, Strict & Particular Brethren, & dour Free Presbyterians restrict their enjoyment of life & their humanity, to try to conform to a narrow ideal of sanctity. That can be boring or unfulfilling if it doesn’t enjoy the full resources God has given us in life. Church councils have attempted unity by keeping to a lowest common denominator of faith or Christian practice. But that can damage those who think differently: the Anglican Communion struggles ineffectively to keep together very different cultures: Liberals, Catholics, Evangelicals, African illiberal attitudes to gender relations & Western extreme liberalism. Unity of spirit is important, recognising that we all follow Christ & need to find how to follow Christ in the ways that are true to our cultures and people. But uniformity doesn’t work. When Church of England Bishops were persuaded to vote as one on the same-sex marriage bill to show unity and not offend African bishops or Evangelicals, they just reinforced the Church’s a name for being out of touch with the wider community, authoritarian and hypocritical.
‘Ekklesia’ means a ‘gathering’ or ‘assembly’ of different people, not a homogenous whole. God seems to have made all aspects of Creation intentionally diverse, including us, in order that human beings might discover the breadth of God’s truth and witness to the entire diverse cosmos. The Church needs to accept diversity far more than it does. Our inclusiveness should accept variety, not expect all to conform in belief or activity. That’s why Anglicans don’t have a rigid catechism, unlike the voluminous Roman Catholic Manual of belief. If we were working properly, the Body of Christ should represent the diversity of what Christ can be to all the different peoples in the world. It is heretical to believe or promote that every Christian should be Evangelical, Catholic, have Western standards, or pander to the qualms of those with different standards. The ‘ekklesia’ is meant to be eclectic, a gathered assembly of different people accepting each other as Jesus accepted very different people in his entourage. We’re not meant to water down belief to a bland faith or employ strict practices that don’t resemble Christ’s breadth & freedom. Nor are we meant to practice too openly a freedom that might damage the consciences of others (as in Paul’s suggestion to refrain from food that might offend those with a weaker conscience [1Cor.8:7-13]
Yet allowing freedom & diversity gives the Church even bigger problems than trying to help everyone believe & act similarly. If we are to grow Christ-like we need to nurture various characters, interests, skills, educational abilities and cultures in one Church. We need to be aware of what feeds different spiritualities & recognise & strengthen spiritual gifts of the full diversity of people in our congregations & communities. All dioceses have educational teams & we preach, teach in all churches but we’re not good enough at Christian Education. Resources available in Christian shops are often dire. It’s hard to find challenging, inclusive Discipleship or Bible-Study material; even harder to find good resources to train young people at each stage through their spiritual growth. Many books are produced that are not relevant; much Christian publishing is ‘vanity publishing’. It takes time & thought to adapt most study courses to our individual Church situations. Supporting the educational leaders and teams in our churches is SO important; they are the ones who are needed to nurture diversity and help individuals at each stage of growth find how their faith applies to their lives.
As an eclectic assembly, trying to grow as individual Christians, spiritual growth happens together as we support & encourage one another. Paul told leaders & the Church to stir up each other’s spiritual gifts; Jesus sent his disciples in pairs not individually. A sad tendency in current teaching of spirituality is a growth of individualism: ‘I’ want a spiritual experience, ‘I’ want impressive spiritual gifts. Some of this developed in the charismatic movement, with some desiring ‘higher’ gifts than others to feel superior. “I speak in tongues, you don’t!”... “I have the gift of healing”. But self-centredness isn’t the intention of spiritual gifts. Several people I know who speak in tongues talk of having the gift for personal edification, sensing that they are given by God to encourage & raise their personal prayer & worship. I don’t personally have that gift; I recognise that I have other parallel gifts; (like a facility with thoughts & words, painting & poetry which have a few similarities to tongues.) Paul said that all gifts are not for all; God gives as needed. Though all spiritual gifts edify & nurture the individual who God blesses with them, that is not why Paul teaches that God gives gifts through his Spirit. They are given primarily for up-building others, corporate growth of the church as a body & to enable us to witness to expand God’s Kingdom. Spiritual gifts are not for individual glorification (as Simon the magician in Acts found in trying to buy them [Acts 8:19]).
Selfishness and self-centredness has infiltrated several areas of ‘spirituality’. Some go on spiritual retreats or learn methods of contemplative prayer for personal spiritual up-building . But we will weaken the Church if we become too insular or introspective. Individual spiritual growth is meant to refresh & strengthen us so that we can help others learn to pray more sincerely & all have more authentic individual AND corporate relationships with God. I’ve led several retreats where (despite my encouragement to return & share with others what they have learned, I’ve felt that some retreatants just want to advance their own relationship with God. If what we learn on this retreat doesn’t feed back into the growth of our Church it hasn’t succeeded. We are individual members of Christ’s Body but we feed & strengthen ourselves to strengthen the Body. Our work as members of the Body is to support other members in their growth & work. The air, blood or nourishment of the Spirit should be pumped through us to others. The cells we develop to resist disease & sin should be transmitted from us to others, so they too are resistant to destructive powers. The nutrition we have received to help us do our work should be transfused to others to strengthen them for their work too. The life we have should encourage others to come alive. That’s how the Body of Christ should be working.
WHAT IS THE CHURCH FOR?
We shouldn’t just picture the ideal Church; to transform into that ideal we need to prioritise what the Church is for:
- To find God together and strengthen one another in true faith.
- To serve God by living in the most fulfilling ways we can.
- To bring together Christ’s followers as one holy group for growth in Christ-likeness.
- To discover truths about God & Spiritual Life through learning & working together, teaching, training, encouraging.
- To encourage each other to become confident enough in belief to witness to the wider world & to be able to share effectively.
- To practice living with love, integrity, justice and care in response to Christ’s teaching, finding ways of following the truth that apply to our particular situation, culture & abilities.
- To be Christ-like in the contemporary world, representing him truthfully & by his example extending his Kingdom to others.
- To witness, communicate & spread Christ’s message to our world & neighbours in effective ways that encourage them to believe, find salvation & follow Christ sincerely.
- To support the development and growth of true faith and godly living in worldwide mission.
- To develop corporate and individual spiritual life, prayer and worship that are ‘in Spirit and in truth’ [Jn.4:23].
- To pastorally care for the needs of the congregations and community for which we are responsible.
- To be faithful stewards of the all the resources cosmos, wisely developing our gifts and nurturing others, enabling all to have the abundant life for which God created us.
These need to be followed as priorities by the whole Church. (They expand the Church’s ‘Five Marks of Mission’:
- To proclaim the good news of the Kingdom
- To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
- To respond to human need by loving service
- To seek to transform unjust structures of society
- To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain the life of the earth.)
These are not the prerogative of Evangelical, Catholic, Traditional, Liberal, Pentecostal, Free or Fresh Expressions churches; but the true priorities of Christ’s Church of any complexion,. All other aspects of what we do as Church come after these: upkeep of the fabric of our buildings, administration, planning liturgy and rotas, management issues, finances, fundraising, paying the Diocesan quota, social & cultural events, committees, Church hierarchies, supporting diocesan or ecumenical events & initiatives, training in safeguarding, beautifying our music and church environment - ALL may be important but should be regarded as secondary for none should deflect us form the primary aims.
THE BODY OF CHRIST
Perhaps we would be more like Christ’s Body if in study courses & Church teaching we helped believers to find & be who they are in Christ as much as teaching people what Christians believe. Discipleship isn’t about God forcing us to do certain things: - Worship, prayer, study, mission - or believe in certain ways. Being Christ’s ‘Disciple’ is ontological (about who we are): I am Christ’s, I need to be his example & his image in the world, so I act & live in certain ways. The Body of Christ metaphor encourages us to use our gifts for building up others & witnessing by living like Christ before the world. But our discipleship & example witnesses far more than any persuasive words or evangelising actions. Hypocrisy in the Church’s words & actions turns many away from belief. If they saw us openly living out true faith they’re more likely to follow us & believe.
Secondary requirements in churches can take so much time & energy that we often haven’t time to focus on main aims- the work that matters most, why we’re here & what God wants us to engage in. When the whole Church body works properly we have time to do all that we should. But Church work is usually done by a few; many just attend for their spiritual fix on Sunday. This isn’t always their fault. Modern life makes 24/7 demands on workers’ & some with roles in the church aren’t good at delegating, relinquishing or sharing responsibilities. Management in dioceses may also damage: The institution can be authoritarian or expect churches to prioritise diocesan requirements for financing new projects over individual church’s needs. Christ’s expectations of you are more important than the diocese, your mission priorities come first: You’re the ones doing the work, though we also have strong responsibilities to support others.
TRADITIONAL STRUCTURE & HIERARCHY OF CHURCH
Pope / Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishops
Bishops / Deans
Archdeacons
Synods
Diocesan Managers and Advisors
Rural / Area Deans
Vicars / Rectors
Churchwardens,
Assistants in Ministry & Deacons
Pastoral Workers
PCC members
Leaders of Groups
Church Members.
Church Attenders who aren’t yet committed to the body
The above is a completely wrong order of priorities and hierarchy. The most important people in the Church should be those outside. The leaders of the Church should be its servants. Our true hierarchy of priorities should be turned upside-down:
TRUE HIERARCHY OF PRIORITIES IN THE CHURCH:
Those outside the Church who don’t yet follow God
Church Attenders who aren’t yet committed to the body
Church Members.
Leaders of Groups
PCC members
Deacons & Assistants in Ministry
Churchwardens,
Vicars / Rectors
Rural Deans / Area Deans
Synods
Diocesan Managers and Advisors
Archdeacons
Bishops / Deans
Archbishops
Pope / Archbishop of Canterbury
We’ve got our priorities of power & structure badly wrong. Jesus chose 12 ordinary people as disciples to show that leader-ship in the Kingdom is about humility & service not position and power. Christ exemplified it himself. We tend to think of the Church as a pyramid of importance, with the Pope or Archbishops & Bishops at the top, Archdeacons & synods next, ministers & churchwardens, then PCCs & church members. In fact all are equal, but one would never recognise that from the way some behave either in their insistence on status and authority, or in their deference to that status. {For my conclusions on 'Authority' see my study on the Theology of Authoroty also on this website.)
That hierarchy reverses our true priority: leaders & diocesan departments are meant to help churches in their mission in the world, not for the parishes to revere & finance a hierarchy. The Parish & individual Christians witnessing to their neighbour are where the coal-face of mission takes place. The parish is where Christian education, nurture & pastoral support are best focused & where worship in spirit & in truth needs to develop. The most important person in the church isn’t the Pope, archbishop bishop, vicar or rector, or even the church members; it’s the visitor or the person outside who doesn’t yet know Christ, to whom we should be demonstrating & explaining what Salvation & abundant life in Christ are truly about. The person of next importance in Church is the individual Christian, as each of us needs training to be a faithful follower, to know our faith, to be able to witness, pray, worship, develop our relationship with God & find our gifts to contribute to the Body of Christ. Dioceses employ advisors in mission & ministries, but these don’t lead mission or ministry. The coalface of Christian work is done by the congregation, who can best communicate faith to neighbours by example & word. What individual Christians & the Church body do with their neighbours to fulfil the Christ’s aims is the most important work of the Church. Diocesan bishops, archdeacons, managers & administrators should be there to inspire & help facilitate this; they’re examples, overseers, guiders, facilitators, not the most important figures in a Church hierarchical structure. That hierarchical mistake goes against Jesus’ teaching about “the greatest needs to be the servant of all... I have come not to be served but to serve.” [eg.Lk.9:48]. ‘Authority’ & ‘Servant-hood’ in Christ’s body should be very different from the ways ‘position’ & ‘power’ are perceived & used in the world: ‘Deacons’ in ancient households were low servants, not positions of authority; the deacon was the servant who emptied slop buckets from latrines: There’s plenty of metaphorical ‘slops & excrement’ to remove from the Church, including wrongful use of power. ‘Archbishops’ or ‘Archdeacons’ are not the ‘highest’ or ‘ruling’ bishops or deacons. ‘Archē’ in Greek, a root for archangels, archbishops & archdeacons is not about power, it means a ‘ruling principle’ a ‘source’. They should be those who set the example of true pastoral care & servant-hood to all the other pastors & servants of God. All ‘bishops’ should set examples of true pastoral leadership, knowing their flock & being known by them, not be set up as a distant modern ‘manager’. ‘Authority’ in Church is about being responsible, not having power. Those with ‘headship’ are entrusted by God to use the gifts & position they are given to serve responsibly, not in authoritarian ways. ‘Servants’ are trusted ‘stewards’: like the parable of the unforgiving steward, none must let power go to their head, or use it falsely as some leaders do.
All priests from Popes & Archbishops down remain ‘deacons’ to remind us that we should be servants of all. Unfortunately not all leaders act that way. Whatever role we are entrusted to in church, We represent Christ as servant - a high calling of importance and value, not a low position of ‘abject servitude’.
In fact, if we are truly to represent the priorities in the body of Christ as Jesus represented them, under Christ:
ALL are equal in God’s love,
ALL are equally responsible for one another and for mission, ALL are responsible to use & strengthen the gifts & accept their responsibilities.
ALL should regard others as better & more important than them-selves, to support and nurture. (It would be a miracle if we could get human beings, including Church leaders to be so humble.)
One of the hardest things to do as a Church is to interpret & communicate Christ’s true teaching in ways that are relevant to contemporary society and modern ways of thinking. Church legal-speak is notoriously ponderous; some decisions by Church House, the Lambeth Conference or Synods & those who consider themselves the ‘great & good’ in the Church, seem out of touch with the feelings and beliefs of parishioners and certainly the way the modern world thinks. The Established Church often seems closer to the legalism of the Pharisees than the ‘freedom, love and abundant life’ that Jesus established & the freedom form the Law that Paul stressed. To serve & represent Christ authentically in the world we need to be seen, as he was, to be on people’s side; interested in where people are & offering them something that they want & recognise will bring them alive. Jesus offered living water to the Samarian woman at the well and to her community who found Christ through her witness. He didn’t condemn her unconventional lifestyle, he brought her spiritual fulfilment. We need to offer such fulfilment & life to our parishes.
The body metaphor in Col.2:19 and the vine metaphor shows that we find life only through our relationship with "the head" or ‘root’ Christ. 1Cor.12 imagines the Church supporting each other as body parts, but we can only live and work effectively though being made alive by Christ’s Spirit, who gives the necessary gifts to share & thrive vvs.4-1I.
The idea of the Body of Christ is vitally important for our mission and ministry. Teresa of Avila wrote meaningfully: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands or feet but yours...” I love her sentiment & the responsibility she set us to continue Christ’s work, but it is not completely sound as Teresa expressed it. God is able to work independently on earth by his Spirit. Christians believe that God can influence events, people & issues, independent of us. That’s why we pray. If he cannot, there’s not much hope for areas that Christians cannot infiltrate. We believe that God is able to do more than we ask or think. It is reassuring that he is able to work in the world apart from us, especially if we, like the Church are not doing our job of witness or support effectively or are failing in our Christian duties. But most usually God wants us to act for him together as his practical body supporting the world.
The idea of our value to God being equal is very important for working together as Christ’s body. We shouldn’t tolerate leaders or those with specific gifts swanning around self-importantly. When Paul talks of the eye saying to the hand “I have no need of you” and “treating the smallest parts with the greatest modesty” he was using important imagery for human society. We are designed to live corporately: Separately very few human beings survive; we grow stronger & work more effectively & economically together. As Genesis 2:18 says: ‘It is not good for a human to be alone.” Yet hierarchies can undermine community: There’s an Aesop’s fable about the Belly & Feet arguing over their relative importance. We see it in every church: some feeling self-important, others feeling neglected or overlooked. PCC members, Patrons or Ministers getting too big for their boots; some bully, some feel lack of appreciation for the gifts they use, while those regarded as having more important gifts are lauded. Inequality & jealousy can be insidious & break our sense of unity in Christ. The image of the body in 1Corinthians of all members doing their part is not just an ideal; we need to work towards all functioning effectively & being appreciated. Too many ministers & church members get exhausted because the rest of the body aren’t doing their work & let a few do all the jobs. If businesses were as dysfunctional as most churches, with so few doing all the work and so many just turning up once a week, not sufficiently engaging or contributing, then going home unaffected until they arrive a week later, they would go out of business. Which of course the church is doing!:
Church attendance in the C. of E. has declined in real terms by 14% In the last 10 years and continues to decline. It’s not just due to cultural change; the Church is not witnessing to the world as it should. It is not seen as having anything relevant to give, which of course is not true: Christ has the answers to most of the world’s needs if we follow him authentically. In some places the Church is complacent; in many places it just expects people to come but offers nothing worthwhile. I think for example of a moribund church in Suffolk where we go on holiday: services & sermons are boring, singing is dire, the congregation even churchwardens aren’t welcoming, One nearly retired minister and one non-stipendiary have 13 parishes to look after. Many new homes have been built in the village & parishioners complain that no newcomers have ever come to church. I asked a churchwarden: “have you taken invitations when newcomers move in; have you welcomed them into the village and shown them what the church has to offer them?” The answer was “no” they just expect people to come. The church’s main attraction is a rare mediaeval painting that draws many visitors weekly from all over the world. But the congregation don’t even exploit that. That church will close in a few years; it deserves to close now for not working as Christ’s body in its community; it just serves the few who go, not even nourishing & training them for growth. It isn’t challenging placid members, just being comfortably familiar, not nurturing active faith, witnessing to or enlivening the community by the spirit & truth of its worship, ministry or mission. That’s not primarily the minister’s fault: he’s over-worked with too many parishes. The individual members’ are at fault, not working to represent Christ effectively in the community.
Communicating Christ’s message effectively is challenging, not easy. Are we training our church-members sufficiently to make sure that every member finds & uses their gifts, and is confident enough in their faith to share. Do we review gifts regularly & give enough nourishment & variety to prevent people getting exhausted by their roles. Ministers get sabbaticals every few years. Do we give our long-standing treasurer or parish secretary, Sunday School leaders, lay workers or retired ministers similar refreshing sabbaticals so they don’t feel their role a burden & have time to stand back, draw close to Christ, rest, rejuvenate, develop other personal gifts or reassess their ministry & role?
How good are you at training people to find &d assess their gifts & their role in the body? It’s not just something for the minister to do. Spiritual discernment can be the role of the whole body. Do we train our church community to discern gifts, encourage one another, deepen their understanding of Truth to enhance the growth & nourishment of the body. All Christians need to develop confidence in their beliefs that makes them confident to share and minister effectively. God expects us to be a training church, as Christ trained and gave spiritual confidence to his disciples. They, like our congregations were ordinary people, more unlearned & unskilled than most in the modern Church, yet they changed the world. Using all people doesn’t just mean getting more on the coffee or church-cleaning rota, it means all taking pastoral responsibility for one another, all ministering & engaging in mission in various ways, taking practical pressures off ministers so they can concentrate on using their gifts, calling & discernment in ministry. In a fully functioning body ALL help to nurture & encourage one another in faith & spiritual growth, ALL when they see something needs doing do something about it, rather than moaning to churchwardens or vicar that it hasn’t been done; ALL are willing to volunteer or act when needs arises.
Modern life creates difficulties for this: Many live over-busy lives. Some work-places demand 24hour commitment; we have responsibilities to our families & partners. (Christian families, especially ministers’ families, often feel neglected. That itself can be a bad witness both to the family members and the world looking on.) Many in today’s society work 24/7 to make ends meet & pay rent or mortgage. So we need to be flexible, not over-demanding, expecting too much. We’re to give people ‘abundant’ spiritual life & freedom, not make them stressed or guilty by extra church-commitments. But it is also important that all who are called together work together.
The Church cannot function as it should if a few members aren’t doing their work; if it over-strains or over-loads some. Do some in your church feel that their potential is not recognised or is underestimated? Do we accept, encourage or build up the gifts of all? We claim we’re ‘inclusive’: everyone in our church has something to offer; the Holy Spirit gifts all. To feel part of us we need to enhance their ability to offer what they have & are.
TEMPLE OF THE LIVING GOD
We’re often at pains to emphasise that Church is not a building, it’s the people, even though the ‘People of God’ are not always what they should be. Yet many who are not committed to faith see a church building in the community & recognise it as a place to go when they need rest or peace. A Christian church should be able to be recognised as a place where the whole community feel they can come. Especially as the Church of England parish is entrusted with responsibility for the whole parish community, Christian & non-Christian, we need to try to help people feel a sense that your church belongs to them, that they are welcome any time & none will treat them as outsiders. Christ is for everyone; can we make our church a place where people sense they can find refuge, peace, love, care, joy, forgiveness, Truth? Above all we want people to feel confident that they will find God there.
In practice some feel closer to God in an empty church building & sitting praying in the quiet there, than sitting in the midst of a congregation or a service. That’s unfortunate, but understandable and is a reason why it’s good if churches can be left open, or provide at least one chapel that is open all day. Often we can be closer to God on our own than with others. But it’s also important that people feel confident that they can come to us if it would be useful to talk. Unfortunately, the ‘gathered people of God’ are not always welcoming, friendly, peace-making, loving and faith-and-prayer-inducing. Many of our historical churches are places where prayer, worship & needs have been expressed sincerely before God for years, perhaps centuries. Anglo-Catholics & Celtic Christianity talk of sacred spaces as “places where the veil between earth & heaven feels thin.” I’m not sure that’s true; for me it’s more that the atmosphere of a place witnesses to an authenticity that faith has been present there. T.S. Eliot wrote of a church community: “you have come to a place where prayer has been valid.” I feel that profoundly in the Church of the Resurrection at Mirfield or Saint Matthias Kirche, Trier; sadly I don’t personally feel it in Guildford Cathedral. If we are to attract people to faith, the building is less important than what we encourage within it, but it IS important to try to create an atmosphere and ethos that is conducive to true faith – a place where people feel that they are worshiping ‘in spirit and in truth’.
That is what the Tabernacle in the Desert and the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem were intended to evoke. People were meant to took to the tented enclosure at the centre of the camp or the building at the centre of nation’s capital & recognise that God is there, living at the centre of his people. They worshipped a God who cannot be seen & is omnipresent, but they knew that beyond all the layers of tenting or walls and beyond the veil to the tabernacle, God’s invisible presence was enthroned above the mercy-seat, the throne-box of two sculpted winged Cherubim. The Temple was an expression of the true GOD being real and living so close to us at the heart of the community that his power can be called upon at any time. How can we help others recognise that in our church - that God can be found in and with us?
The tent of the Tabernacle was covered with layers of blankets & skins, each layer was known to represent one of the twelve tribes. So the whole community felt intimate connection with it: it was theirs. The idea of buying a brick for Guildford Cathedral had a similar intention. I see that they’ve started calling it ‘the People’s Cathedral’, but the community don’t feel that it represents them as sincerely as the Jerusalem Temple did. The Temple was surrounded by the Court of the Israelites and the Court of the Gentiles, so they too knew they were personally, intimately represented in God’s presence. Our parish Churches should feel the same. The whole of our parish should feel that THIS is their place, they belong to it and it belongs to them. Unfortunately this often only comes to the fore when we want to make changes or re-order and locals who may not have set foot in the building for decades rise up in opposition : The church is first the property of God, not the Lord of the Manor, the populus, the regular or irregular churchgoers OR non-Church-goers. We belong to all; all are welcome any time, and all can come to God here any time. We can of course meet God ANYWHERE, and the Church building is not as sacred and sacrosanct as some maintain: it is a building not a person! But you might like to consider ‘how can we make our church feel instinctively to the visitor that it is for them, they are welcome and they will meet God here?’
The jewels in the High Priest’s breastplate also represented each of the 12 tribes of Israel. When he went in before God all the people knew that he represented them. DO your parish know that you are representing them before God whenever you are in church worshipping? That’s not just the role of the High Priest. The Church believes in the ‘priesthood of all believers’. We’re not great at acknowledging that all members’ ministries are as important as those of the priest, but it is in our beliefs. That means that all members are responsible for representing the rest of their community before God. We do that not just by evangelising our neighbours, but praying for them, taking them with us in our hearts & intercession as we come to worship. Do our congregations consider & believe that when they are worshipping they aren’t just doing it for their personal spirituality, but are corporately carrying their whole community’s needs before God? It could be a way of making our parishioners more sensitive to their role and responsibilities towards those among whom we live. Our worship, like that in the Jerusalem Temple is for the whole community and nation and God’s people throughout the world; part of the community of saints alive & dead, the Church Triumphant & Church Militant. If our communities felt that we were praying on behalf of the whole world I wonder if they might recognise that what we are doing is more relevant or even join us? They might not think we are just credulous people indulging our own wishful-thinking, coming for a spiritual top-up.
The heart of the Temple was the Sanctuary & its activity. Is our church holy, kept sanctified to God? Paul wrote of keeping our bodies holy as temples of the living God. Corporately our church should be too. That’s not primarily about having Laudian altar-rails to keep dogs out of the sanctuary or making the area beyond the choir seem so holy that people can’t walk there. People’s hearts and souls should be able to reach out towards God, present in the whole church. As well as making our churches welcoming we also want to keep the sense of holiness - that here is somewhere where we can find God & where we’re open to God communicating with us and calling us to work at personal holiness. It’s a fine distinction between making a church feel welcoming to all and to helping all feel that God challenges them to develop in holiness. God calls all to him without distinction; we are all sinners yet all welcome, all called to find grace, forgiveness and love through Christ. People shouldn’t feel that their sin separates them from coming to God for forgiveness, or that we would be condemnatory.
Is it possible to make our church feel winsome & encourage personal holiness? Partly, it depends on how we represent holiness. Holiness should not be off-putting. The two holiest men I’ve ever known were also the most loving, caring of friends to people. You didn’t think ‘they’re too good, they’d never want to be my friend.’ They were out-reaching in ways that made you want to befriend them. (One was an elderly, wise archdeacon, one a football-playing parishioner.) The Church, like Christ, should be like them. Holiness means more being ‘set apart for God’s use’ and ‘specially dedicated’ - not just ‘clean’ and certainly not ‘unapproachable’. God’s holiness is pure, but definitely not as unapproachable as the Jerusalem Temple hierarchy made him, or represented him in the Pentateuch. Jesus embraced the leper, the adulteress, the collector tainted by taxes and fraud, the beggar in stinking rags, the dying and the needy. The only people who he seems to have turned away from as unclean were the religious hypocrites. Do we give the same impression? Jesus told the sinner ‘go & sin no more’ & ‘be perfect a your heavenly Father is perfect’ but he attracted & didn’t reject the imperfect. Some churches feel the opposite; just welcome those in society who are comfortable, or socially acceptable. Jesus’ calls us to take the Gospel to the unclean, who most need Christ’s forgiving grace & redemption. Big sins are as bad as minor sin. Paul reminds us that gossip (common in most churches) is as much a sin as sexual immorality. Each sin equally separates us from God, yet each is forgivable & all who come for forgiveness are accepted by Christ.
One way to help all feel welcome & accepted may come by helping congregations radiate the forgiving & holy side of God to the visitor more authentically. Visitors need to recognise that we don’t regard ourselves as too holy for them, that we are real people with failings, who are been transformed by Christ & that seeking to be sanctified is part of being Christian. If people regard priests or church members as hypocrites they are unlikely to come, or feel that Christianity has anything for them. One sad thing I discovered in training for the ministry was that inside the workings of the diocese I recognised duplicity right at the top of the Church hierarchy. Church-Leaders can tend to respond like politicians before they act like Christ.
I’ve seen bishops lie & cover up duplicity & bullying by their managers, a vindictive director of ‘ministry, discipleship & training’, wanting and relishing power & control over others, looking for weakness to use against those she doesn’t like, lying to cover up her bullying, not valuing or affirming others’ gifts. Self-importance in any church member or in church committees doesn’t represent Christ. It’s not holy, truthful & a bad example of the Church to the world. You and I are meant to be examples of Christ to all in the world around. God’s Covenant with the Jews intended that they should be examples to the world of what God is like, in order to bring blessing and knowledge of God to the nations around. In the same way the Church is meant to truthfully represent what God is like. To use another metaphor, we are ‘ambassadors’ and ‘stewards’ for Christ. Paul says “We are not our own; we were bought at a price... we are not representing ourselves”. The Church as the Temple of the living God is meant to be a beacon representing the loving, holy God recognised at the centre of the community, a place of truth. The Cathedral & Diocesan House should be that par excellence – an image of God’s leadership of the Kingdom. The parish church is meant to be a beacon in an even more visible, local way, & individual Christians in their home are meant to be even more approachable, and tangible, representing true spirituality to our neighbours. How can we help each member of our congregation feel that responsibility to be a beacon for God’s welcoming & loving holiness in their neighbourhood?
One of the most special aspects of the liturgy is that it should connect us to authentic worship traditions, patterns & phrases that have been used for centuries, reminding us that we are part of the Church Triumphant – the continuum of believers throughout faith history with whom we join in Spirit in worship.
New Testament authors used temple imagery in relation to the Christian community to link the Church to the rich tradition and history of the tabernacle & the Temples in Jerusalem & Shiloh. For Jews the Temple was exclusive; it helped them recognise the presence of God at the heart of his people & nation. Hebrew scripture never explicitly called God’s People’ ‘the Temple of God’ though God their Creator was frequently portrayed as their builder: [Job 26:l0; 38:4-7; Ps.102:25; 104:3; Prov.8:27-31; Isa.40:l2; 48:13; Jer.31:27; Amos 9:6]. He is also described as the builder of Jerusalem, city of God’s Peace [Ps.147:2]. God as the perfect designer & builder gave detailed instructions for constructing both the tabernacle &temple. Psalm 139 talks of us being formed in the womb for God’s glory; St Paul writes of us being Temples indwelt by God’s Spirit, needing to remain holy for his glory.
What goes on in the Temple is important to God as it represents him before the world: The prophets frequently condemned false spirituality: Social justice and humility in worship were preferred to the panoply of cultic festivals and sacrifice [Ps.40:6-8; Isa.1:l0-20; 66:2b-4; Jer.6:20; Hos. 6:6; Amos 5:21-27; Mic.6:6-8.] The Temple was meant to be the place of true worship. The Jerusalem Temple, up to its destruction in 70CE was an essential part of the daily or seasonal life of believers as were temples in most ancient cultures. Jews & many Gentiles being addressed by Jesus or the writers of the Gospels & Epistles would have been familiar with the Temple & its functions, so using it as a metaphor for their Christian life would have seen its relevance immediately.
4 New Testament passages develop the imagery of the Church as Temple: 1Cor.3:9b-17; 2Cor.6:14-7:1; Eph.2:19-22; 1Pet.2:4-8. When Jesus said to Peter “On this rock I will build my church"' Matt.16:18, he implied that the church as a metaphorical building had to have solid foundations to grow strong. Roman Catholics interpret this as implying that Peter as a leader is going to start strong leadership that will be handed down through successive Popes. Protestants tend to interpret the ‘rock’ on which Christ will build his Church as Faith, the confession that Jesus is God’s Son & Messiah. Either way leaders & congregations have to have strong foundations, integrity, trust & faith & remain holy, reliant on God, not independent of God as some Church leaders today feel.
1Cor.3:9b-17 speaks of "jealousy & quarrelling" among Christian congregations in Corinth. Some felt superior because of those through whom they had come to faith: Apollos & Paul (e.g. ‘I was converted under Billy Graham!’ ‘I’m baptised a Catholic;’ ‘I’m Protestant’). Evangelists, Paul reminds them are ‘only servants’ [v.5-9a]. God has planted the field & raised the building [v.9b].
Paul also suggests that those of us who are leaders, teachers and evangelists need continual training to develop expertise. Paul aimed to be an ‘expert’/‘skilled’ builder. If the builder's work survives the fiery, eschatological test, he will be rewarded; if not, he expects to suffer. Paul spoke of us needing strong ‘foundations’ in Christ and to build with fine, selected materials. He reminded Timothy that building requires careful supervision; contractors are rewarded for success and fined for poor craftsmanship. The Temple, like the Kingdom of God, is not yet complete. We are important to its construction. We need to do our work to build the true Church and extend its ministry to the world.
We are "a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit". [1 Pet.2:4 -8] This is more a ‘spiritual house’ than a temple. You and I as believers are "living stones", built upon "the living Stone," Jesus, who is the "chosen and precious cornerstone" / a foundation stone. Believers are a "spiritual house. ‘spiritual sacrifices" and ‘priests making spiritual sacrifices in God’s temple v. 5.
1Cor.6:19 applies ‘Temple’ to believers who used cultic prostitutes & sullied their responsibility to be holy: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" Christians, as God's Temple, should allow God’s Spirit, living in them to clean their lives: “If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred & you are that temple." 2Cor.6:14-17 continues this imagery: Damage to a temple sullied the deity. God is eternally present in the Temple, so it must remain holy; idolatry or uncleanliness should be removed: “What agreement is there between the temple of God & idols?' Paul’s words are strong: As we are the temple of the God, Christians should be distinctive by our sanctity. The temple image stresses the need for believers to be distinct from unbelievers. As well as having God present in us, we represent God to the world. 2 Cor.6:14-7 shows how the Jews guarded the exclusivity of their Temple & we should similarly protect ourselves by separation from uncleanliness.
In parallel Eph.2:19-22 is inclusive, showing that Gentiles are full partners in Christianity, not unclean. Eph.2:11-22 celebrates Christ on the Cross uniting Jews & Gentiles who are ‘no longer foreigners & aliens’ but ‘fellow citizens’, ‘members of God's household.’ Jews & Gentiles needed to be united in the church. For us that might mean uniting, more than we do, believers of different cultures & types, or ways of expressing & understanding faith. God’s people the persecuted church were ‘aliens’, ‘exiles’, ‘homeless’. Now they all have a home in the true Jerusalem, Christ. We need to build true, united worship & bring varieties of spirituality together in our churches & in the temple of our lives.
So the temple metaphor emphasises:
- that the Church needs to be kept sanctified.
- that God founded & builds the growth of the church, not us.
- that Christ & his Spirit need to direct & guide the Church,
- that believers are varied but need to live in unity & solidarity.
- that the Church’s integrity should represent God in the world.
The metaphor of the church as a building suggests our stability & durability & the way our church is meant to grow & organize its development. In Eph. 2:21’s description of the church as a building/ temple that is ‘growing’ the word for ‘growth’ was more often used of natural growth, like a vine. We are natural, organic & living, not a rigid institution as todays Church too often seems.
Christ is our ‘master-builder’; Paul called himself a ‘builder’; we speak of the church having ‘one Foundation’ Jesus Christ. The church uses several architectural metaphors like ‘pillars of faith’, ‘foundations of belief’, but our organization & ‘structure’ need to be personal, more like a family than an edifice.
Much of our faith is based in mystery & awe at truths beyond our comprehension, not proven facts. SO those who insist on specific details of doctrine or legalistic demands of what Christians should be doing seem like the Pharisees and Sadducees who pronounced on details of faith & sound & unsound doctrine to the exclusion of mystery, tentative aspects of belief & a life of freedom. Jesus didn’t make everything clear. We are closer to him when we hold & act on faith trustingly & help people struggling to understand. Doctrine is mean to help people approach trust in mysteries; it is not meant, as Calvinism became, to be an edifice that people had to struggle through to be assured of a relationship with God.
The Church is not meant to be static or off-putting, we intend to be welcoming, dynamic in the way the Spirit brings us alive, growing through love & nourishment, not like institutional structures in a high-rise city. The Temple often stressed people’s alienation from God; the Church is meant to welcome, include then & give life. That’s why body, bride & family images are important to remind us that our ministry & mission are to real human lives.
PILLAR, SENTINEL AND LAMPSTAND
A key aim of St Paul was to strengthen faith and understanding in believers:
- To help them be confident that what they believe in is truth.
- To strengthen them to resist temptation and live righteous lives.
- To strengthen their relationship with the true, living God.
- To be confident in sharing their faith with others, spreading the Gospel and building the Church.
- To help them withstand doubts and questions of faith.
- To help the knowledge of the true God to grow worldwide.
- I don’t know how to reconcile that Jesus can be fully divine and fully human and how the Incarnation worked.
- We don’t understand who God is, still occasionally question his existence. We can’t comprehend the Trinity.
- We don’t understand how Christ’s death on a Cross and Resurrection work to being us salvation.
- We don’t understand how Jesus could die then rise, what happened at the Ascension or how Jesus lives in heaven for us now.
- I’m not led enough by God’s Spirit or resist personal sin enough.
- I try but I don’t have sufficient arguments to convince thinking non-believers of the reliability of what I sincerely believe is true and that Christianity is reliable & worthy of following.
So how can I or any of us be a ‘Pillar and Buttress of the Truth’ [Col.1:23; 1Tim.3:5; Rev.3:`12], a ‘Lampstand’ to shine Christ’s truth to the world [Matt.5:15; Mk.4:21; Ex.24:2-4; 2Ki.7:49; 1Chron.28:15; 2Chron.4:20; Zech.4:2], a ‘Building founded on Rock’ that cannot be shaken [Matt.16:18-19], or an effective ‘Witness’ to God in the world [Jn.15:26-27; 1 Jn.1:1-4; 4:11-18; 5:19; Rev. 6:9-11; 12:11, 17; 19:10]? All my experience of faith has just built tentative understanding, beliefs that seem to work, & a relationship with God that feels as though it must be real & true.
Many of our key beliefs are in mysteries beyond anyone’s full comprehension. But we aim to build in ourselves & in our church-members enough ‘working-understanding’ to be strong to live a practical Christian life in the world. We need confidence & trust to believe & confidence to witness. The more we find that following Christ works, the more our understanding is strengthened.
One problem for Church growth is that strengthening themselves in faith is not a priority for many Christians today. Many are content to go along to church once a week, get a top-up of Christianity & an experience of worship and spirituality. Many have no desire to try to fathom mysteries, share or encourage faith in others. We bewail the ‘unchristian’ behaviour & injustice in the world, but few Christians actually stand out & challenge it. Christ’s Great commission at the end of Matthew [28:18-20] to go and make disciples to the end of the world, is just words to many; they don’t get involved in it even with neighbours they know. We challenge people at baptism to go out in the world as a ‘light for Christ’ [Matt.5:14; Lk.16:8; Jn. 8:12; Acts 13:47; Eph. 5:8; Phil.2:15; 1 Thess.5:5; 1 Pet.2:9; Rev.1:20; 2:1,5]. How many do we strengthen enough to do so?
It’s not always their fault. The Church needs to be more committed to train people more in practical faith, apologetics and effective evangelism. After 2000 years’ practice we should be expert at being able to give reasons for our faith, training believers to comprehend key Christian beliefs with a working knowledge, and helping people to apply Christianity to questions and issues that arise in every generation. The Church has been lazy, which is why it is in decline worldwide. People no longer think that we have much that is relevant to their lives, whereas we know that Christ is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ who could transform the lives of many. He the answers to many of the world’s problems, if we could only teach people to apply his teaching & power effectively & truthfully.
There are several metaphors for the difference the Church should make in the world:
‘The New Creation’ 2Cor.5:17; Gal. 6:15-16; Jas. 1:18
‘Fruit’ / ‘First Fruits’ Rom. 16:5; 1 Cor.16:15; Jas. 1:18; cf. Rom. 8:23; 11:16; 1 Cor.15:20-23.
‘The New Humanity’ Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:22, 24
‘Edification’ 1 Cor.8:1; Eph.2:21;4:7-12,16; 1Pet.2:5
These present us as people who stand out as having a difference. The Church often tries to show that we are the same as anyone else. Yes, we are ‘sinners’ the same as everybody else but ‘saved by grace’. We have the same temptations, lead similar lives. But the metaphors for the church imply that we should so relish our redeemed nature that people recognise our difference & want what we have got. That’s how I became a Christian at university. I saw a group of winsome, active Christians around me and realised they had something that was badly missing in my life. That’s the difference that the Jews were intended to represent in the world too. A passage in Zechariah speaks of people from many nations taking Jews by the garment hem & saying: “You have what we want; let us go with you, we can see that God is with you!” [Zech.8:23]. The covenant with Abraham intended all the nations of the world to find blessing & understanding of God through the Jews’ relationship with God [Gen.12:3]. God’s covenant blessing was meant to extend beyond the Jewish family and bring others to God. Neither Jews or Christians were ever meant to isolate themselves. That covenant command is restated several times [Gen.18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 27:29b; Num.24:9] and was reiterated by later prophets [Isa.60:3, 14; 66:23; Micah 4:12, particularly Zech.8:20-23]. Instead they regarded themselves as exclusive and often didn’t include others in the covenant. So modern Israel’s politics has become a warning to the world of what selfishness, duplicitous, vengeance & exclusivism can do to a people, not a worldwide blessing & example of holiness.
The Institutional Church needs to be careful not to become the same. Catholic &Anglican hierarchies have developed a bad name for covering up misdeeds. When Archbishop Justin commended his Church for how it deals with abuse, he was rightly scorned in the press because he apparently disregarded so many situations where it wasn’t true; he’s since had to publicly apologise. If he’d been honest from the start about institutional failings over time, it would have demonstrated Christian integrity better: We are NOT the ‘light to enlighten the world’ that we should be. But we need to become so. 1 Peter 2:9 calls us to holiness: “You are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of God who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” This uses phrases that were originally intended to apply to the Jews, based on Ex.5:10; Deut.7:6 and Isa 43:20-21. Redeemed people are meant to be holy in worship and politics, showing that we belong to God not to ourselves. That’s not just for our own edification and spiritual growth; the epistle emphasises that this is “in order that we might proclaim the mighty acts of God” and ‘shine our light’ to show others that there is a way out of darkness of many human situations.” Rev.1:5 & 5:10 again emphasise this by reference to our priestly role. We are meant to be priests for our world, lifting up holy hands, interceding on behalf of the world and spreading the truth. The metaphors of Pillar and Buttress also suggest this nature of our calling to uphold the world and stand for truth.
Too often the Church is regarded as killjoy, proclaiming ‘thou shalt not’ more than celebrating the abundant life that Christ intends for us. Christ intended us to be free, not stuck in legalism. The Epistle to the Romans celebrates our freedom from the Law, though Church synods & the lawyers & managers in Church House relish rules. Of course, all communities need certain rules to protect them and help their growth, as with the Sermon on the Mount & Biblical commandments. But some bad managers love to assert their control by creating new, less relevant rules. NO wonder society sees Churches as out of touch in practice or hypocritical on issues of morality. Christ’s love is inclusive & reached out to sinners. We say that we are inclusive & some churches try to be, but many think of the church as not for them. Christ should be a refuge for all, so we need to build an image of being a refuge & strength for any, a body where all can come for wholeness & forgiveness, & make sure that in practice, we show humility & respect for all.
Being a Pillar, Buttress, Lampstand, Light & Witness also expects us to stand out against wrong. Much of the Prophets’ teaching & the image of the Church in Revelation is about Christians as a catalyst for Christ to restore righteousness to earth. We don’t sufficiently combat evil influences & powers in the world or the Church, appropriately standing for truth, acting as Sentinels, Guardians & wise, caring Stewards of creation. Leadership and witness require engagement with the world, while maintaining an appropriate distinctiveness from the way the world does things. We need to make sure that we think with what Paul calls ‘the mind of Christ’ or Spirit- inspired intuition.
The things we stand out for and against should be what Christ stands for & against. Too often we just adopt popular cultural attitudes, conservative, liberal or radical, depending on the subject or our particular political or doctrinal bias. We have to change as culture changes, or we aren’t applying faith to today’s world. So most churches have changed their attitudes to women in leadership, sexuality, gender stereotypes, etc.
It takes a long time for churches to change, partly because so many of us think in different ways and have varying experiences. Some of course are just hard-minded, but where sincere Christians delay change it’s mostly when we are uncertain whether scripture prohibitions are specific to ancient time & culture or are universal prohibitions. Women having roles of leadership in church & committed homosexual relationships were once considered universal prohibitions (but so were injunction to stone a woman if she didn’t cover her head in worship or to put someone to death or exclude them from society for eating the wrong things or wearing mixed fabrics.) Now most in the western Church regard many prohibitions as the bias of the culture & time in which they were written. We are still called to be Pillars & Buttresses of the truth to protect human society & the Christian community from abuses and corruption and to lead people to a state that reflects God’s Kingdom. We need to be spiritually discerning & open to change the world by Christ-like love & action. But we shouldn’t give in to blackmail from Christian lobby-groups, Evangelical or Conservative. Some African church leaders who influence synod decisions in the Anglican communion still support the death-penalty for homosexuality, maintained in several countries.
It’s not enough just to protect the status quo or be ‘politically correct’, we need to be as radical as Christ & true to him, if we are to help build his Kingdom. The Church needs to be cleansed of hypocrisy & think & act like Christ. We are meant to be Christ’s example to the world. I reported to three bishops the bullying & duplicity of the female senior member of their bishop’s staff who caused my heart-attack. The response of two was to ignore my letters. The third, who proudly promotes the ‘safeguarding’ qualities of his diocese, inquired no further & continued to support the bully rather than challenging her behaviour, which to my knowledge, and was general knowledge in the diocese, has damaged the ministries of at least 16 others. To him I was unimportant, a dispensable non-stipendiary minister. It would be uncomfortable and perhaps expensive to discipline the bully, still on her high salary in a prominent diocesan position. (Thankfully, 4 years later, her retirement came and was great relief to many!) I was warned that if I took the complaint further it would end my ministry & the bully would not be affected. That is similar to the ways that complaints about child abuse were dealt with by churches and gagging orders put upon complainants. When, in response, I resigned from the diocese I wrote to the two current bishops explaining that I was doing so not for health reasons but because the manager’s bullying still caused me trauma, the bully’s lies and duplicity hadn’t been dealt with, and the Church had offered no support to me as a volunteer when I became ill. The suffragan bishop who was most directly responsible for me and who I had thought a friend, didn’t even respond to my resignation letter, the Evangelical diocesan bishop in a very short note, expressed sadness that I was ‘resigning on health grounds’. That’s how the Church too often buttresses itself to protect itself & maintain a status quo rather than standing for Christ’s truth and dealing with problems.
Soon after ordination I was warned by my experienced training incumbent: “In difficult situations never trust your bishop, he will always act first as a politician, to protect himself & the institution rather than prioritising thinking and acting as Christ.” I was surprised and didn’t really believe him, though I had witnessed similar false leaders when I was a member of the free church. His advice proved to be true. All churches must put following Christ and living by truth first. If the Church isn’t seen as standing for what is true before God it deserves to decline. Only Christ’s truth can build a true Church, grow into a godly Kingdom and sustain the world. A Church with a false image is easily seen-through by the public. A Church trying to build by duplicity or by aping secular business-practices doesn’t represent Christ; it’s not a ‘Christian’ church. If priests don’t have total Christ-like integrity they aren’t ‘priests’, because they do not represent God.
We know we all fail, sin & are pulled by different loyalties. It is not always easy to know what is right. We need the gift of spiritually discernment. As Christ showed in his freedom from the letter of the law, we need to know scripture holistically, to discern what aspects of it apply to varying situations. Christians who insist on interpreting and applying Church rules or Biblical laws literally and according to the letter have damaged the Church’s reputation in public eyes for centuries. They don’t represent Christ’s understanding of scripture & the way he applied it – seriously, wisely, gently, always thinking of people’s good & God’s holiness, because he loves us and came to free us. In acting as a pillar and guardian of the world, the Church has not always loved people first or brought people Christ’s freedom.
That’s where the image of the Lampstand is so important. We are meant to constantly shine as Christ’s light out to the world, being beacons offering freedom, refuge, truth, healing & an enlightened path to wholeness. The Temple precincts had two enormous lamp-stands, always kept filled with oil, as we should be with God’s Spirit. They shone over the Jerusalem’s walls, guiding travellers like beacons and as signs that God’s truth was shining in the Temple & overseeing his People, present at all times to be called on & trusted.
Our Church is meant to have a similar function: We’re meant to be evidence to the world that God is real, here to be found and shared in our community, a light to lighten both believers and those who find belief hard. Perhaps we could even convince unbelievers. Remember Simeon’s words in Luke that Jesus is: “a Light to lighten the Gentiles and glory to his people Israel” [Lk.3:32] or the prophetic announcement of Zechariah that John the Baptist, like us was to: “to give light to those who sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace” [Lk.1:79]. We now in representing Christ are meant to be bringers and shiners of Christ’s light, guiding others to find truth in God. Are we or the Church true to our baptismal promises to shine as lights for Christ in the world?
How do we help our congregations do that? Mostly by emulating it ourselves! We encourage people most to do things not by telling them what to do, but by setting an example and showing that it is possible for them. You don’t have to know all about your faith before you evangelise, you have to be a real person in as real relationship with God as you can and let that relationship outwork too others. But saying ‘my Christian life is my witness’ can be a cop-out; we still have to evangelise. To witness winsomely in ways that attract we must not distract by any hypocrisy, uncommunicative liturgy or panoply. It’s easy for many things we do as a church to distract from our central aim: Christ’s Church is always meant to be in mission, a beacon shining God’s light into a world that desperately needs his salvation & abundant life.
THE CHURCH AS THE BRIDE OF CHRIST AND FAMILY
I’ve never been particularly attracted by the image of the Church as the Bride of Christ. It has often been interpreted over-romantically, particularly in mediaeval and Counter- Reformation times, when the Song of Songs was interpreted as representing the love between Christ and the Church. Most theologians today believe it celebrates erotic love & was included in the canon by priestly compilers of scripture due to its legendary association with Solomon, founder of the Temple. The book shows sexuality as important for the wholeness of human nature, nothing to be ashamed of; there’s no mention of God in it. Mediaeval Christians like Bernard of Clairvaux and his successors in commentating on the Song took the Bride metaphor to rich extremes. As a celibate he was at pains to play down the erotic elements and interpret a chaste relationship between Christ and the Church.
In interpreting biblical metaphors, we must be careful not to stretch them too far. The biblical imagery of the church as a bride adorned for her husband suggested in paintings like St. Catherine’s Mystic Marriage to Christ, and the wedding ring worn by nuns, can seem over-sentimental. Do you often feel in worship like a bride decked with flowers, lace and embroidered silks? The reality of a community of believers engaged in mission, promoting the teachings & way-of-life of Christ & dealing with truth and justice in the world is far from sentimental. Yet the excitement & specialness of the bridal adornment, the wedding feast & vitality of a wedding celebration should be present in our Eucharistic celebration, our liturgy & our dynamic relationship with God..
If we aren’t totally successful at unity or being a body & a family, we’re even less successful at being Christ’s ‘Bride’. If our church is the Bride of Christ, is your relationship with God exciting; is it still giving consummate pleasure to both parties; are we fruitful? Are you & I & our churches, as well as the Church worldwide a true complement to Christ our bridegroom. And as family of the Bridegroom and Bride, is the Church properly nurturing, training and teaching all and bringing all members to Christian maturity? Remember Christ’s challenge in the Book of Revelation to the Church of Ephesus “you have lost your first love”. He found unpalatable and lukewarm his relationship with the Church of Laodicea, where he uses the topical metaphor of the area’s tepid, sulphurous springs to claim he would spit them out of his mouth. The Church at Sardis had a name for being alive, but the marriage & the faith relationship with God was dead. St. Paul challenged the Church to present all mature in faith. We are responsible for keeping our love for God alive, growing and nourishing others in their relationships with God.
A huge challenge for churches is to keep Christian life with God vital, satisfying and nurturing. I remember my enthusiasm, when I first committed myself as a Christian. I did a lot of naïve, stupid things in my enthusiasm to evangelise because I didn’t understand faith & theology as I do now but I was far more open to talk to anyone about faith vigorous & enthusiastic as a young Christian.
I realised that God loved me; I was amazed that I was forgiven, despite being me; God loved the people around me & I longed to bring them into the sort of relationship with God, forgiveness & freedom that I had found. I was probably as obnoxious as young lovers who moon over each other & can’t stop talking about the person with whom they’re in love. But I was enthusiastic. I was similar as a new curate & was surprised that church-leaders seemed so jaded and cynical! St Paul was even more enthusiastic but he was mature in the faith he was promoting: he realised that Jesus Christ fulfilled & developed all that he had longed for in his Jewish faith. That motivated him to give his life to mission.
Jesus told the Samaritan Woman at the Well [Jn.4:23] that our worship and our life with God needs to be in Spirit and in Truth. That is enough of a challenge, especially as we in the Church of England use repeated liturgies, which can be spoken by rote, without considering of the depth of meaning within the words. Concentration is necessary, to make sure that we are truly worshipping. But it is an even bigger challenge to ask: ‘Is our worship and relationship with God truly giving pleasure to both parties?’ Malachi like several later prophets criticised ritual Temple worship without meaning: Their sacrifices, he said, gave God no pleasure, he found unmeant sacrifice & incense noxious & unacceptable, their liturgies & music “wearied the Lord with words” [Mal.2:17]; in their worship and tithes they were “ robbing God” [Mal.3:9]. There’s nothing wrong in liturgical worship, sacrifice, incense, music, tithes, they just need to come from a true heart. Our Eucharist describes itself as “a sacrifice of praise” but often it isn’t particularly sacrificial: How much are we giving up for God? How often does our worship truly declare God’s ‘worth’ as it should? Our challenge is to regain that mutual love, spiritual unity & consummation that faith & our life in the Spirit are meant to stir. If we achieve that, we need to keep it alive & life-giving. Paul exhorted Timothy as a church leader to instruct his congregation towards “love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience & sincere faith” [1Tim.1:5], to give supplications, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings for everyone... lifting holy hands [2:1, 8]; to be good servants and ministers of Jesus Christ in love, faith and purity [4:6; 12], pursuing righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness [6:11], enjoying what Christ called “full abundant life.”
If faith doesn’t seem pleasurable& life-giving, and if our liturgies seem monotonous, boring or meaningless in their ritualism, no wonder people aren’t drawn into the church or stay when they do attend. If we haven’t the enthusiastic love or confidence in our faith that wants to evangelise & share with others what we have found in God, why would others want it? I sat in a small village service on holiday a few weeks ago that was really boring. I looked around the congregation & wondered what they were getting from this. Were we just here to keep the church going, for companionship to prop each other up & stop them being lonely, or were they really getting something spiritually, physically and mentally stimulating from faith.
(I certainly wasn’t receiving anything from the sermon, the liturgy or the dire music!) The service felt like a dead marriage to God continued for appearances rather than stimulating anything vital.
Our covenant with God is like a marriage-relationship. Hebrew Scriptures often used the metaphor of God’s People as “the Wife/ Bride of YHWH" in the context of their apostasy, describing it as adultery. Hosea used his relationship with his unfaithful wife Gomer as a metaphor for the way Israel’s falseness to God. We & God belong together; both need to keep true to our marriage contract. Our relationship with God is not just about staying together or remaining faithful; we need to keep love and activity together alive. We are also partners in nurturing the world & helping others as well as ourselves towards abundant life.
The abundant life of Christians should feel like a fulfilled marriage relationship at the height of its fulfilment. People often think Paul & the Church as obsessed over sex, but actually when Paul mentions the subject his teaching was usually in response to questions by those who had written to him concerning the matter. Paul emphasised that to keep relationships true & active marriage should be regularly consummated, (except occasionally with the agreement of both parties.) It is puritanical saints, martyrs, religious orders, reformers or those who feel guilt who promoted guilt over sexuality; the Bible celebrates it. The metaphor of the Church as Bride isn’t intended to be a primarily sexual one, but it reminds us that we need to keep active to keep our relationship with God alive. Active Christianity includes sharing our faith enthusiastically, loving, teaching & caring for people, praying, worshipping, & studying faith enthusiastically, having intimate time with God & Christians we love. I’ve never thought before of engaging in mission as parallel to sexual fulfilment; for most Christians it is a turn-off, but it is a way that we nurture our faith relationship & make the church fruitful.
Wedding planners are important in Jewish culture. In 2Cor.11:1-4, Paul describes himself & evangelists, as the marriage agent, friend, or best man of Christ the bridegroom. He describes the Corinthian congregations as Christ’s betrothed bride. Paul has drawn them to faith & arranged the betrothal. He looks toward both their Christians maturity & judgement as times when he will have the privilege of presenting the believers to Christ as his bride: "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him" [v.2]. Have you ever thought of yourself as evangelists who enthusiastically encourage a wedding? It is a loving metaphor, vibrant with enthusiasm at our responsible position: In 2Cor.11, during the time between the betrothal & the marriage-presentation, Paul worried that the Church may be tempted by other suitors, "led astray from your sincere & pure devotion to Christ" [v.3]. The temptations to stray are more than to other desires or priorities. I think of several ministers, still in churches & lay believers who have been led away from their love of God by a thirst for intellectualism, power or position, laziness, over-familiarity with the faith.
The writer of Ephesians in 5.21-33 emphasised that "a betrothed bride should be faithful to her husband." The evangelist describes himself as “jealous” as the ‘bridegroom's agent’ for what he is presenting to Christ the Bridegroom. As people involved in ministry within the Church, are we as zealous to keep our congregation faithful and attractive to God? Are we Christ’s enthusiastic ‘wedding planners’?
Partners in relationships today are often self-centred to get all they can out of the relationship for themselves. I think of several friends & 2 couples I married and prepared for marriage, where the wife’s self-centredness has drained her partner & exhausted the relationship. Marriage in the context of biblical times had a modest expectations for the bride. Marriage, like the covenant between humans & God, was not, as it is meant to be today, a relationship of equal partners, giving & receiving equally. The wife of a Jewish bridegroom was intended to be industrious but obedient, compliant to her husband’s will, fruitful, a good steward of household resources. The expectations of the good wife in the Proverbs 31 were required of the Church. We find some of these rather funny or quaint today: “A good wife sells her girdles to merchants” always cracked me up as a youngster; some make us cringe in the light of modern liberation, but when written they were regarded as biblical wisdom to be followed. Our ideas of marriage today where the relationship is of equal partners, is even more relevant, because it gives us a sense of greater self-value & responsibility in the relationship and in spreading faith.
Too much emphasis on our relationship with Christ or God as a marriage can be uncomfortable if it is over-sentimentalised. But it is important: It stresses that we are intimately related to God, not just servants, automatons, slaves, but lovers who are cared for intimately, cherished, valued & entrusted with huge responsibilities. We are intended to nurture the world in partnership with God & build God’s family. In Corinthians Paul stressed the seriousness & permanency of our relationship. Ezek. 16:3b-14 sees the husband’s responsibility as rescuing, cleansing, and endowing the bride, family & community: We are God’s way of blessing the world.
Eph. 5:21-33, calls Christians to be like husbands & take responsibility for both the bride and the household, as Christ gave us both the responsibility & example. Christ paid the bride-price for us: he "gave himself up for her". He also prepared the bride with a bridal cleansing, a ritual bathing with sacred fragrances "to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word," v. 26. Christ presents the bride to himself v. 27, (a contravention of wedding practice where the family or wedding-planner presented the bride), but the image stressing our supreme reliance on Christ and the importance with which he regards the bride. Part of the bridegroom's glory is shown in the splendour of the bride. The relationship is one of covenant-loyalty & marital fidelity, expected of both Christian husbands wives. Our human relationships can give glory to God and act as a witness to our faith, as can the relationship between the church and its Lord.
The Book of Revelation uses the image of Christ as a bridegroom in a different sense, returning to claim his bride and bring her to himself in the presence of God.
FAMILY
The metaphor of God’s People being a family came earlier that the image of them as his bride but the two belong together. The Family of God image develops through the Bible. It was in the Pentateuch: Genesis traces the development of a family & wider clan from the descendants of Adam & Eve through Abraham, Jacob & Joseph’s families. They develop a family relationship with God & group responsibilities to him. [Ex.34:11-16; Lev.17:7; 20:4-6; Num.15:38-40; Deut.31:16]. This emphasis is strong in the prophets [Hosea; Isa.1:21; 50:l; 54:4-6; 57:3; 62:5; Mic.l:7; Jer.2-3; 13:20-27; Ezek.16]. Hebrew society was patriarchal, with emphasis on a strong father or male head of household or tribe & ancestral responsibilities to forefathers. Elders and distinguished men were called "father" as an honour: [Judg.17:10; 1Sam.24:12; 2Kgs.2:12] and leading women like Deborah were called "mothers in Israel" [Judg.5:7]. The family image in the Hebrew Scriptures doesn’t just describe immediate family: in government, society & religion people were called father, brother, ‘the national family.’
The Church adapted these: The Gospels advanced the idea of our responsibility to others in the intimate relationship of Jesus with the disciples & his teaching on Kingdom principles [Matt.9:14-15, Mk. 2:18-20], and it is strong in 1 Thessalonians where the church is spoken of as "God's New Family” [1:4; 2:14; 3:7; 4:10.] Lucian, an early critic of Christianity scoffed that “their [i.e. Christians’] first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another'' [Peregr. 13]. But there is also an uncomfortable aspect to the family image. Jesus talked of his followers as ‘his parents & brothers’ in the context of showing that those who followed him were closer than his human family [Mk.3:31-34], further, to follow sincerely one should ‘hate their father and mother’ [Lk.14:26]; i.e. set their priority on following Jesus’ ways & building the Kingdom. Sadly many ministers’ and church-members’ families have suffered through feeling this sort of neglect. I don’t think that is what Jesus meant: he intended us all to be inclusive; universal brotherhood & sisterhood should include the family, the widow and orphan, the stranger or alien, the refugee. In today’s rather fractured world with communities that rarely support each other this family aspect of the Church is one of our most attractive features.
Christ related to God as “Father” using the personal term “Abba”/‘Daddy’ but in the Hebrew scriptures God is emphatically different from a ‘biological’ father [Hos.11:9: “I am God, and not man”.] God, in the role of Creator, is thought of as the ‘Father’ Israel [Deut.32:6]. Fatherhood here suggests that he is there origin or source; they have responsibility to him as to a forefather. He loves [Jer.31:l-21], protects [Ps.89:23-26] & disciplines [2Sam.7:14] the nation & adopts them as his own [Ex.4:23; 6:6-8; Lev.26:12; Deut.32:l0; Jer.3:19; Hos.11:l].
The People of Israel are regularly described as ‘children’, ‘daughters’ & ‘sons’ of God. God is also occasionally described as a ‘mother’, giving birth to Israel [Deut.32:18; Isa.42:14, 66:5-13; Num.11:l0-15] nurturing & comforting her child [Isa.66:13.1]. In the New Testament God is more frequently described as ‘Father’ [Matt.23:9; Mk.14:36; Rom.8:15; Gal.4:6], Jesus is sometimes ‘Brother’ [Rom. 8:29; Heb.2:11-12], and believers are described as related to each other as ‘brothers and sisters’/siblings. Early Christian congregations met in homes, as an extended household, so ‘family’ & ‘kinship’ metaphors were appropriate.
Jesus and Paul both used the family image for the community of believers. Christ said of his followers: “Here are my mother and my brothers” [Matt.12:49; Mk.3:34; Lk.8:21]. Believers identified as the ‘household of faith” [Eph.5:21- 6:9; Col.3:18-4:l; 1Pet.2:18-3:7; Titus 2:2-10; 1Tim 2:9-15; 6:l-2]. The Church family felt and claimed family responsibility for each other as God’s family on earth [Eph.3:14-15; Acts17:24-29]. This extended to those who had died & were with Christ as our family in heaven, hence the development of Christians feeling linked to the Saints. Christ’s atoning work unites & cements us together as God’s family. Once alienated from God & living separate lives we are intended to be one for mutual up-building [Eph.2:19; Gal.6:l0;1Tim.3:15; 1Pet.4:l7]. Colossians emphasises that even racial aliens or enemies can find unity, as Christ has united us as a family in him. The Agape or Lord’s Table was where the family most intimately came together to meet Christ & express unity [1Cor.10:l6-17].
A family cares for one another, understands & meets physical & spiritual needs, has mutual respect & responsibility for each other, nourishes, helps all grow to maturity & enables all to find their role & contribute in the family. In poor, persecuted situations the Early Church family gave each other that sense of 'belonging', unity & support that Christ’s prayed for his followers in Jn.17. Our unity is with each other & the Trinity & we have a family responsibility in mission to reunite the world with its Source. The Church today is meant to fulfil this & extend Christ’s family through its mission and ministry.
The best families are not insular but out-reaching. I remember as a child, feeling fairly unhappy at home, but a large family who lived a few doors away often welcomed me as part of their extended family. I played there, was invited to join their meals or to watch television; they shared their toys. They were for several years my second and warmest home. Only later did I realise that they were committed Christians; they didn’t force their beliefs down my throat, just loved and demonstrated care for me (and no doubt prayed for me without repeatedly telling me). The Church works well when it works similarly, as a wide extended family, welcoming people, making them comfortably at home, representing Christ to them truthfully, loving people, whatever their needs or failings, letting Christ’s truth and love reach into lives and transform them in his time. We present the truth, perhaps more by the way we live as a family and in our attitude of love to others than in how we teach faith. Of course both need to go together; we need to teach faith. But some churches too often preach faith much more than living it out. Are you a family that loves outsiders? Does your relationship with Christ embrace and nurture others, bringing them in to share, grow and flourish in that relationship?
AGRICULTURAL METAPHORS: The Church as Plant/Field/Vineyard/Vine/ The Planting of the Lord.
Hebrew imagery used many agricultural metaphors, as one might expect from a largely agrarian society. Israel was likened in the scriptures to several plants: an oak tree [Isa.61:3], palm [Ps.92:12] or cedar {Hos.14:8]are all signs of resilience & permanence & strong growth into old age if supported & nurtured by God. These are positive images, like the olive tree, a sign of our fruitfulness through God [Jer.11:16-17; Zech.4:3]]. The OT also used agricultural metaphors to warn of judgment for those who misuse exalted privileges given by God. With God we find nourishment & growth; rejecting, neglecting or cutting ourselves away from him deprives us of necessities for growth & nutriment.. New Testament images often suggest believers’ privileged connection of to Christ, the resources available through him & our attendant responsibility to keep linked to him & to offer a ‘harvest of righteousness and peace’ [Heb.12:11].
VINE
Israel was imagined as a grape-vine & vineyard. Remember that Joshua and the spies in returning from Canaan eulogised over the fruitfulness of the land [Num.13:27]. Artists traditionally represented them as carrying a huge bunch of grapes. In the Promised Land the people were meant to similarly flourish if they remained true to the Covenant. But they often failed and lost their fruitfulness. A Psalmist described God’s People as ‘a vine from Egypt’ transplanted then nurtured by God in the Promised Land [Ps.80]. In Isa.5:1-7 Israel is ‘the vineyard of the LORD Almighty’. Judah is ‘the garden of his delight’. God cared for them & judged when they failed, either by damaging the harvest or breaking down the vineyard walls. Ezekiel uses vines as a metaphor for judgment on Jerusalem [Ezek.15:1-8 & ch.17] & on Israel’s leaders [19:l0-14. 39]. 17:l-24 describes the Exile in an allegorical story of shoots transplanted in Babylon, a remnant of which God will replant Israel, where ‘it will produce branches and bear fruit’ [Jer.6:9; 11:16-17; Hos.10:1-2, 13].
In the Gospels: the Parable of the Wicked Tenants [Matt.21:33- 46; Mk. 12: 1-1 2; Lk.20:9-19] & Jesus' discussion of the vine & its branches [Jn.15:1-8] salvation-history is imagined through the metaphor of planting, nurture & growth. God’s People are his vineyard. The Jewish leaders who Jesus criticised in the parable [Mk.11:27; 12:1,12] had failed repeatedly to give the agreed portion of the harvest to the owner. They even rejected & killed the owner's son [Mk.12:7-8] & stood under judgment [Mk.12:9]. In other parables they are described as bad stewards of the ministries & resources entrusted to the. Is our Church stewardship any more worthy?
Jesus described himself as ‘the true vine’ [Jn.15:l-8]. His disciples were branches who promised to bear much fruit if faithful and fruitful. Yet unfruitful branches were threatened with being ‘thrown away’ & ‘'burned’ [v.6]. To bear fruit & flourish branches must ‘remain in the vine’ [v.4], staying connected to Christ who provides nourishment & nutrients [v.5-6,8]. Fertility comes through being in him, praying in his name, obeying his ways [v. l0]. In remaining in unity with him and faithfully following him they can experience and share in his joy and blessings [v.1].
FIG TREE
Fig trees were a feature of many gardens; they were a symbol of God’s provision ‘everyone should be able to sit under his vine or fig-tree’. A barren fig tree was a sign of God being distant [Hab.3:17]. The Fig Tree [Lk.13:6-9] is about our need to remain fruitful. As with the vine we need to receive nutrients from God & are called to bring forth fruit faithfully. In criticising the clerics of his day Jesus also warned that there are good & bad trees, wolves in sheep’s clothing {Matt.7:15-20; 12:13].
OLIVE TREE GRAFTING
Paul used the olive tree image of God’s people [Rom.11] to describe the Church’s continuity in building on Old Testament promises. He also addressed the in-grafted Gentiles, reminding them that they were privileged to share nourishing sap from the olive root [v.17]. They are as much under threat of failure & judgment, as all are if we separate ourselves from the root [Jer.11:16-17]. As wild olive shoots grafted into the tree, none should be arrogant toward Jews who have been cut off, but be afraid. ‘For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either’ [v.21].
FIELD
In 1 Cor.3:6-9 Paul used the agricultural metaphor of believers as ‘God's Field’. The focus there is on Paul & Apollos as workers, rather than the field. There are equally necessary but different roles in the Church. We are responsible & may be judged for faithfulness to our calling. Matthew’s agricultural parables use the field as a symbol of the fruitfulness that can come if the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and those who receive the truth are nurtured. The Parable of the Sower shows that the seed of Christ’s teaching is good, but growth encounters many hazards [Matt.13]
The parables of the Labourers in the Vineyard [Matt.20:l-16] & the Two Sons [Matt.21:28-32] describe our physical and spiritual work in the world. We are called to be wise stewards, righteously and actively working to advance the Kingdom.
The agricultural metaphors in scripture are organic ways of representing our relationship with God, the benefits and fruitfulness of remaining linked with him and the inevitable withering that comes when we are out of union. This is as true of the Church as of individual Christians. We often interpret fruitfulness and union as personal, because the Protestant Church so frequently emphasises personal salvation and our personal responsibility. But in context the agricultural images often refer to the nation or a group of believers. This reminds us of the need of the whole ‘ekklesia’ to keep linked to its life-giving, nutrient-bearing root in Christ. We have seen that the institution of the Church often acts too independently. Sometimes I feel that the Church would keep going and acting the same if God’s Spirit withdrew, or we became separated from the root, because we are so entrenched in our ways and practices. But of course we wouldn’t be spiritually fruitful because the source of our nourishment, inspiration and vitality isn’t present. That may actually be true of some churches, Christian institutions or organisations, and individuals’ lives today. We cannot of course know what is happening under the surface of people’s faith. Yet sometimes there is little apparent fruitfulness, growth or energy in some Christian lives and groups. You sometimes wonder from where they are deriving sustenance. The only true growth comes when our spiritual nurturing is fed from the main source of abundant life - our relationship with the life-giving God through Christ. Our role as a teaching, training, encouraging and worshipping Church is to strengthen people’s links to God so that their growth to maturity can be true, strong, fruitful and life-giving.
THE CHURCH AS AN ARMY OF SOLDIERS IN BATTLE
A strong Christian metaphor describes believers as combatants in a regular battle between good & evil / flesh & Spirit / angels & demons [Rev.12:7ff]. It encourages us to be strong and active, but has also led the Church for centuries into mistaken ideas of its role and has created dangers for many Christians who have entered battle. The image has roots in Hebrew scriptures such as Isa. 59, where God was described as the divine warrior combatting his foes. If people imagine the world or the cosmos as a balance between equally opposed spiritual powers of good and evil they are theologically mistaken. Several religions for millennia have interpreted good and evil in this dualistic way. But the Christian understanding of God is that he is the strongest power in the cosmos. Nothing in the Christian scriptures imagines God as anything other than the ultimate victor in any struggle against wrong.
Rev.19:7 describes Jesus in military terms as a warrior on a white horse & sees Christ’s followers as combatants in the cosmic war against evil and satanic opposition [Rev.2:10]. Christ makes promises to those who endure and conquer [Rev.2:7,11]. But we are not the ones who conquer: we engage in a struggle for right, and against sin, but ultimately it will always be Christ or God’s Spirit who creates the victory. There was an Evangelical/Pentecostal trend in the 1970s/80s for churches to march around areas ‘claiming them for the Lord’. This militarist triumphalism sometimes implied that if we had enough faith we could twist God’s arm to create revival through the Church. That derives partly from Old Testament thinking that we can persuade God to do what WE want and that God’s mind and actions can be changed or determined by his followers. But our mission is not that simple. We are to work with God, rather than him working for us. We have responsibility to explain and communicate faith in effective ways. Triumphalism may seem attractive to believers but it rarely attracts thinking seekers to come to God and find a satisfying faith. Christ never displayed triumphalism; even in his Entry into Jerusalem, he arrived humbly.
Paul encouraged believers to put on divine-gifted armour & join Christ in the spiritual & ethical battle to form God’s Kingdom [Rom.13:12]. Ephesians 6:11 continues the metaphor. But we need to regard Christ as loving all, a universal peacemaker through teaching, & reconciliation, not a wielder of arms or in any way arrogant.
Our own armour is spiritual and metaphorical; it should not be militaristic. Romans 13:12 tells us to ‘put on the armour of light’ and ‘put aside the deeds of darkness’ (exemplified by debauchery, licentiousness, quarrelling & jealousy). The light he talks of is to ‘put on Christ’ by following his example and metaphorically allow him to clothe us with his life and righteousness. This implies that we win the battle through living like Christ & being true examples of him to the world rather than ‘fighting’ or ‘contending’ for him. The metaphor of soldiers is about our working together as an effective and active group to help Christ in the winning of the Kingdom. It has nothing to do with aggression or violence. Nor do we win or witness faithfully by triumphalism.
The description of a wrestler/boxer pummelling his body and making it ready and strong for a fight again implies that our mission requires energy, readiness to withstand blows, and physical, spiritual and mental determination. But these are mental and spiritual preparations not necessarily physical qualities. Our armour, muscle-building and subjugation are more in terms of preparing our abilities and minds, strengthening our apologetics & our abilities to communicate God’s truth and Christ’s Gospel effectively. The physical nature of our preparations might include looking after our bodies, self-discipline, keeping ourselves holy and worthy of God to use, not neglecting or abusing our physical selves as some Christians have done in the past; (or as some do today through over-work, lack of restful refreshment and exhaustion in ministry). We cannot minister or exemplify Christ effectively if we physically, mentally or spiritually neglect our well-being. Who will we attract to Christ if they imagine that faith creates miserable, exhausted specimens!?
Eph.6:11-20 defines our armour more fully. The writer encourages us to prepare ourselves & assume the whole armour of God. One piece of the armour alone is not enough; we need to have thorough protection and the tools with which to spread the gospel:
- standing firm,
- girding ourselves with truth,
- protecting ourselves through our righteousness and
- shining it out so others see Christ in our lives,
- ability to communicate & proclaim Christ’s gospel of peace,
- strengthened and protected by our faith,
- our head and mind protected by being assured of our salvation,
- inspired and guided by the Spirit and the Word of God,
- praying at all times,
- being bold, confident & sensitive in proclaiming Christ’s gospel.
When Eph.6:10-11 invites believers to ‘clothe themselves with the armour of Christ’, the writer is not telling us to rely on our own strength or even the above armoury. Christ is the divine warrior; we should clothe ourselves by his example, allow ourselves to be protected by him and trust in his protection and strengthening. The passage assures us that only his way will ensure victory against the cosmic powers [6:12]. (Cosmic here include ‘everything in all creation’ - on earth and in the spiritual dimension’. But it does not imply that everything in creation is against us; it recognises that life, mission and ministry face difficulties and some are way beyond our understanding.) The armour we require for such a struggle includes prayer, bold proclamation of "the mystery of the gospel", [6:18-20] and prayer-support for "all the saints". The writer recognises that he needs such prayerful support himself for the ministry in which he is engaged.
The image of the Church as Christ’s fighting army should not be interpreted too literarily: Crusades, ‘killing or damaging in love’, tyrannical religious leadership, insensitive proclamation of limited truths, insensitive teaching and pastoring have all resulted from over-literal reading of militaristic language in scripture. Popes at one time led physical armies into war for papal lands. This is SO far from Jesus’ example of peaceful yet challenging leadership. He may be described as a soldier in Revelation [19:11-16] and told his disciples that the time would come when they would need swords [Matt.10:24], but he is more likely to have been meaning spiritual rather than physical arms and conflict. Believers may be active, passive or metaphorical combatants in God’s battle against wrong, but before all else we are required to be authentically Christ-like and his Gospel is meant to bring peace and reconciliation, not discord, disharmony or death. Christ’s is the one who wins any cosmic battle in which we are engaged with him, and he will be victorious righteously. We should not over-emphasise our role as his aids or to be over proud when we fight or struggle on his behalf.
In the Lord's Prayer [Matt.6:9-13] we ask God ‘to protect us from evil’ or hardships and to spare us the ‘time of trial’. But Christ told his followers to expect hardships to come. We, like them, may be as ill-treated as he was. In John 17 Christ prayed that we would not be taken out of the world but protected within it. He prophesied that his followers would suffer, yet had reassured them that ‘the gates of hades’ will not overcome God’s truth or the Church [Matt.16:18-19]. In the Book of Revelation, the struggle is described as intense: the Church is imagined as a woman facing a dragon's wrath. The foe ‘makes war’ not just on Christ but on "the rest of her offspring" who ‘obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus’ [Rev.12:17]. Casualties are to be expected [6:9-11; 14:13] but this suffering is regarded as temporary, since victory is assured [12:11]. Ultimately (continuing the imperial army imagery) there will be a triumphal celebration before the throne of God for all who have come out of "the great ordeal" [Rev.7:9-17; 14:l-5]. These ‘conflict metaphors’ describe a struggle to build God’s Kingdom in many aspects of human life as in the cosmos. We are encouraged to endure in faith and trust [13:10; 14:12] and to feel secure that Christ’s will ultimately be the victory.
We should not take all the military image in the Apocalypse over-literally, as some militaristic Christianity has done for centuries. Believers as combatants are exhorted to strengthen themselves by exercise & scriptural understanding, to put on spiritual armour and develop necessary gifts, to stay awake and clothed 16:15, awaiting the conquering Lamb [17:14] and the victory of the rider on the white horse, who will lead ‘the armies of heaven’ [19:11-16].
Military symbolism would be understood citizens of the Roman Empire, to whom the writer was communicating. Many would have seen soldiers most days. They might have been resented in occupied countries, like Palestine, for their violence and insensitivity. (We have to be careful not to be resented for insensitivity in our communities.) But the soldier was known for his rigorous adherence to orders and to rule, as we should be admired for our adherence to God’s ways. He was well-drilled and kept to military discipline. He was strong and equipped for the struggle in which he was engaged. He was also strong because he worked together as a team with other soldiers. A soldier is only as strong as the team in which he works and their unity of purpose and action. The Christian can only be effective in witness and in combatting the wrong in the world if we are working together as Christ’s body, campaigning and witnessing to present a unified, truthful message to a confused world where corruption often seems stronger than truth. (The way that the Evangelical wing of the Church in America supports President Trump’s untruthful behaviour, the gun lobby and unthinkingly supports the politically corrupt activities of Israel against Palestinians, even seeking to rebuild Jerusalem’s Temple is a disgrace that witnesses badly against Christ and all Jesus stood for. He emphasised truth and justice, peace and reconciliation. Love and redemption of one’s neighbour or enemy was Jesus’ message, not vindictiveness or materialism.)
Paul saw the story of salvation as conflict where good should always seek to combat evil. He gives confidence to the Church by reassuring them that the battle will culminate in Christ and his Church being vindicated and exalted. He appealed to Christians in every generation & place to engage in this conflict as a matter of urgency, as he believed that Christ would soon return. The Church worldwide has largely lost this sense of urgency today and often seeks comfort rather than activity. Christ has taken 2,000 years and still not returned, but we should be always prepared to be active, like the bridesmaids, ready and waiting for the bridegroom. We serve him, while he is absent. We no longer know for sure what Christ’s teaching about his return means. It may mean that we are simply meant to be representing Christ actively and truthfully in the world for all the time we live on earth, as fellow-builders of God’s Kingdom.
Rom.13:11-14 used words similar to an exhortation to soldiers at dawn on the day before battle to call for the ‘ekklesia militans’/‘the Church Militant’ to prepare. Whether Christ’s return is imminent or distant, like the wise bridesmaids, we should always be prepared & vigilant: “Do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ & do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” 1Thess.5:6-8 gives a similar exhortation: "Do not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake & be sober... But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, & the hope of salvation as a helmet."
The command to "put on the armour of light" reminds us that our struggle must be righteous and righteously engaged. God’s Kingdom cannot be won by duplicity, false tricks, a false message or false faith. This is a spiritual battle for truth. Paul parallels this with the exhortation to "clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ". He reminds us that all our actions in the struggle must emulate and be guided and inspired by Christ. Only his righteous-ness and his integrity can build the true Kingdom. False ministry may build numbers but a Church built by false power or false proclamation is not Christ’s Church.
After defending his ministry and that of his co-workers, Paul encouraged believers in 2 Cor.10:3 -6 to join them by becoming well-disciplined troops, armouring and strengthening themselves for a struggle in the full light of Christ’s day. They are not to use false arguments or worldly methods; only spiritual strength and God’s truth can bring victory. This has much to say to our contemporary world and leadership styles that disregard truth or proclaim ‘alternative truths’: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete.” Paul says we are to use ‘weapons of righteousness’ 2Cor.6:7 ‘in the right hand and the left’. That is: we are to be fully armed in preparation, ready for defending faith & truth (left hand) and being more proactive in ‘attack’ through our mission (right hand).
1Cor.16:13; Phil.1:27-30; Col.1:11 all call for us to ‘be strong' or ‘stand’ in ways that resemble military commands & rallying calls. 1 Pet. 5:7-10 calls us to rely on Christ & discipline ourselves against spiritual attack. Timothy was exhorted to faithful ministry in military language: "Fight the good fight," [1Tim.6:12]; "Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus." [2Tim.2:1-4]. These calls for confidence & strengthen recall mobilisation for war in Deut.20:l-9: "Finally be strong in the Lord & in his mighty power."
The spiritual struggle is not a battle where losing is an option if
we remain faithful. Christ's past victory through the Cross & Resurrection assures future victory & vindication; this encourages us to persevere: "Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” [Col.2:151]. 1Cor.15:24-28 is confident in the future victory of Christ when "he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power". Having achieved victory he will hand over the redeemed and cleansed kingdom to God.
Eph.6:14-17 reassures Christians that they are protected by weapons of "truth," "righteousness," "faith," "salvation," "Spirit," "the word of God". They are fit their "feet with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace". The writer seems to be assuring us that the quality of God’s armour is trustworthy and effective.
The fruit of the Spirit is part of our armoury as well as our strengthening: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’: These all combine to make us stable and able to live and witness effectively to others. Joy gives us energy and enthusiasm, love protects us from being insensitive; peace prevents us from damaging and brings reconciliation; impatient or unself-controlled tactics rarely lead to victory; faithfulness helps us trust God, gives us confidence & gratitude; gentleness helps us consider how to communicate sensitively and effectively.
The writer of Ephesians recognised that there are risks in mission. Like Christ and other persecuted Christians he describes himself as "an ambassador in chains" [Eph.6:20]. The church should ‘wage peace’, fully committed to the struggle to represent Christ authentically, alert, reliant on God’s protection, looking to God to provide, guide and aid. The Christian community is also intended to corporately support and encourage each other in the struggle for truth and the building of God’s Kingdom.
Believers are not merely meant to be sentinels or to acquiesce. We are to be active, engaging with commitment to a spiritual struggle for truth and growth, courageous and hold on to good ground. Paul also imagines the church's battle against foes as ‘wrestling’ and disarming those who are hostile to the truth. This isn’t necessarily referring to the sport of wrestling. Most Jews and many Gentile Christians would have been offended by Roman, pagan games and not attended. ‘Wrestlers’ was also a term used of the troops who fought to disarm opponents when soldiers encountered each other in the hand-to-hand combat, following an attack. We are meant to ‘wrestle’ in a similar way, to disarm what is wrong in the world and in the church. But such combat is not easy, nor did Christ or Paul imagine it to be. As well as knowing that we or others may be damaged in the fight for right, part of our spiritual insight & sensitivity needs to judge how to best influence others. Too many Christians, even leaders, put their foot in it and damage the Church’s witness by their misguided activity, rather than being winsome examples of Christ.
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