Being Church

An Ecclesiology for the Rest of Us

Andiñach

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781630876777
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This little book resulted from the conviction that we need to contemplate what it is to be the church in the contemporary world. We are aware that we are living in a time of crisis, with rapid social and cultural changes that challenge the way we have been a church: challenges that come not only from outside the institution--from the society where it acts--but from the inside as well. In this book we face old and new questions:What is the foundation of the church?Who are we as Christians?Who is this Jesus Christ in whom we believe?What is the mission of the church today?Proclaiming the Word: Is it another Sacrament?From what does Christ save us?What is sin?

Part 1: Being Church

1

People of God or Body of Christ?

The church is the community of men and women gathered by the Holy Spirit in order to express the will of God to the world. This condition and this mission constitute the being of the church. As we explore them we can appreciate that being the church is a wonderfully rich and deep experience.

We can say that the church is a place where a person can live out his or her faith, and also that the church is a community where the love of Christ should be shown to the people around us. Yet, the church is also a community for worshiping and studying the word of God, and the church is that place where we grow and find ourselves. When we think of the church we do not think of a building. We think of the people, all of whom are different from each other. In the church, different generations come together, different cultures and tastes get mingled. Traditions and styles, ways of talking and ideologies, different personal and social choices: they are all gathered together in the church. Taking all of these into account, we can adjust our first definition in order to arrive at a broader, although less precise, affirmation: the church is a space given by God. The aim of this chapter is to explore that space.

The Church as the People of God

As we proceed toward a deeper understanding of the church, we should take a look at two expressions we often use to refer to it. We say that the church is the people of God. In the Old Testament, the Israelites are addressed as “the people of God.” They are the ones the Lord has chosen to communicate his word to the world. The concept of being the people of God was understood, from the very beginning, as something very exclusive and limited to the Israelites. Thus, it was thought that only those coming from that seed were truly part of “the people of God,” while those who did not belong to the nation of Israel were not covered by His protection. However, this idea was questioned even in biblical times. The story told in the book of Ruth shows how a foreigner, Ruth, who was a Moabite and thus did not belong to “the people of God,” could “discover” the real God and, by her own will, join the community of believers. This is not the only example in the Old Testament: there is a striking example in the book of Exodus. We are told that at the very moment the Hebrew people were about to leave for Egypt to be freed from slavery “a mixed crowd also went up with them” (Exod 12:38). Who were these people? The text does not need to explain this because the reader has no doubt that it refers to other people who were also slaves in Egypt, and when they saw God’s liberating project they decided to join the cause. It is important to see that the text indicates that the Israelites had no trouble receiving them and that they were incorporated into the rest of the people of God right away. There is not a single narrative in Exodus referring to this crowd as a group separate from the rest of Israel. They became people of God from the moment they embraced the faith of Israel.

Later we encounter a second instance when belonging to the people of God was understood more as a responsibility than as a privilege. There has always been a group who has understood being part of “the people of God” as giving them privileges over the rest of humanity. They felt that God protected them in such a way that they could do what in fact they should not do, that is, take advantage of their neighbors. They thought this way: “If we are the people protected by God and He has chosen us, nothing bad will happen to us,” and “any sin we may commit will in the end be forgiven by God, who loves us so much.” They were only one step away from thinking that God must forgive us because we are his people. It is easy to fall into this trap. The prophets rose up against this attitude. They announced to Israel that being the people of God was a responsibility and not a privilege over other nations. If they failed in that responsibility they would face the Day of the Lord.

There are a series of images scattered in the prophetic books describing the Day of the Lord. “Day of the Lord” is an expression that refers to the day when God will gather all nations in order to judge them. While some were expecting that in that final day God would congratulate them for what a nice and fair people they had become, the prophets were there to remind them that, on that particular day, there would be more judgment than happiness for them.

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!

Why do you want the day of the Lord?

It is darkness, not light . . .

(Amos 5:18)

Amos does not say that the Day of the Lord will be only judgment and punishment. What is at stake is that those who feel protected because they belong to the people of God and live without openly expressing their faith in their lives will find out that God’s plan is different. Yet the same prophet Amos says, “Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4). For God does not desire the sinner’s death, but his conversion.

So, as time went by it was clear that being the people of God was not an ornament to be exhibited before the nations who did not belong to that category, but a responsibility to be exercised in the world. The mission of the people of God is to be a witness of the will of God for the whole creation before the nations. And the nations include those peoples who do not know Him.

By the time of the New Testament, this restrictive concept of the people of God was still alive even though it clashed with the ideas of the prophets and other biblical authors. The arrival of the Son of God was to produce such a drastic change in the faith of Israel that only a few were mature enough to understand it. Sometimes we misjudge the people who did not understand the message of Jesus in that time. However, we should remember that it must have been difficult to distinguish between the words of the real Son of God and the words of all the others who claimed to be the real Messiah. Besides, it is known that Jesus’ message clashed with the message that the wise and illustrious took to be the message from the one sent by God. It helps us understand Jesus’ words when He says, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants” (Matt 11:25). Or when the Apostle Paul tells us, “but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise”(1 Cor 1:27).

This is not an approval of ignorance; nor is it a call to give up studying. It is a declaration that the wisdom of God has different coordinates than those expected by the wise in that time. The revolution of Jesus created a new perspective. The wisdom of the day became the darkness of ignorance because the new understanding of reality and the message of God was to come through the experience of the death and resurrection of Christ. Those who believed they knew everything found themselves to be empty-handed.

The Church as the Body of Christ

In this new situation created by the arrival of the Messiah and His message, the believers who gathered in the newly formed church considered themselves as forming “the body of Christ.” This idea is expressed in many texts in the New Testament. Even though in the beginning it was the heir of the Jewish concept of the people of God as a community that should serve their fellows and be responsible for communicating God’s message to all people, it also soon generated that distortion where they understood that being the church was a privilege that placed them above the rest of the people. Consider two texts. In 1 Cor 12:27 it is said, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” This statement is made within a broader context of a passage about the tasks that everyone is to develop in the dynamics of the church. Some are called to be teachers, others to be preachers, others to be healers, others to administrate and thus become “the body of Christ.” This means that we should perform the role that was assigned to us in that body. The image of the body is excellent because we all know what happens when one part is not performing properly. Even if we do not know exactly where it is placed in our body and what its function is, if one part is not working, the whole body suffers and raises the alarm.

Hence being the body of Christ is an awesome responsibility and not a privilege. If we do not comply with our tasks, someone somewhere in the body will be injured. If we do not function properly, a fever or pain will stop the organism. So when we say that the church is the body of Christ we mean that each member has a unique task in God’s plan, a task that cannot be transferred to others. Discovering this task is part of our responsibility.

The second text can be found in Eph 1:22–23: “And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” This is a beautiful text and it should be read within the whole passage in which it is located, but now let’s pay attention to certain details. It is argued that Christ is the head of the church and then that the church is the body of Christ. This recurrent image in the New Testament leads to a major conclusion. It captures the relationship between Christ and His church, highlighting the fact that, Christ being the head, He is the one who governs and rules. Therefore the body cannot rebel against Him who is a crucial and irreplaceable organ and who allows the body to live and develop. Going a step further, we can observe that the body has life only if it is united with its head, so that if that link is severed there will be no future for any of its members.

When we say that the church is the body of Christ we mean this: it is Christ who rules. Christ is not any member of the body but the one who gives life to the rest of the body. It is fascinating to observe through history how human beings have managed to transform the power of God into our human power. With the passage of time, Christians took the expression “under his feet” not as a call for the church to serve Christ, but as a claim that the church be served by everything around it. Like those who misunderstood the concept of being God’s people as a privilege and not as a service to the world, Christians took the idea that the church is “the body of Christ” to mean that the whole creation should pay homage to them. The text in Ephesians says otherwise: everything has been put under the feet of Christ and the church must have Him as its head. This means that the church must put itself under Christ, who will guide her conduct according to His will. It means that the church should have no other orientation than Christ’s. If it does not, then it has put aside a fundamental aspect of its call. When the church is not serving God’s plans and seeks to acquire privileges, it shows that it has given up an essential characteristic of its being. In a real way it has stopped “being church.”

The church is the people of God and the body of Christ. It is neither God nor Christ. If the church forgets what it is and pretends to become another thing, it loses its identity and its credibility. This would not be the first time that the words of the church sound hollow because they are built upon human and earthly powers and not founded in the service of the gospel. On the other hand, one of the most significant experiences of the believer happens when he or she realizes that to be a Christian is to be part of a body that is much larger and broader than the congregation he or she attends regularly. The church transcends geographical and temporal boundaries; it runs from the origins of time and will survive when there is no memory of us. However, the church that will not be defeated is the church of Christ, the church that is a servant to the suffering and a companion to those who are alone. It is the church that resists the temptation of power and remains faithful to the message of peace and justice, of solidarity and humility, that will endure. If it ignores this, its message turns grey and tepid—and the Lord can tell what is genuine from what is spurious.

Nobody Can Be a Church in Our Place

To be the church is to have an irreplaceable identity. The really interesting thing about the church that makes it different from other social organizations is that its identity does not consist of a definition it gives itself, but in its relation to Christ. Christ is the identity of the church. It is not the other way around: the church is not Christ’s identity. What do I mean? Consider two points.

First, the church is established by Christ’s decision to be its Head. It is not our decision. Technically, we cannot establish a church because every church is created by Christ Himself through the work of the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the church cannot be said to be a human community since it expresses the presence of Christ among the people in that specific time and place. It is Christ who provides meaning and identity to the church. Without Him it loses all significance and reason for being.

Second, the church is effectively a human entity made up of people who run, organize, and lead it. The church is an organization that cannot claim that its spiritual and transcendent dimension frees it from mistakes or even sins. That is why I say that the church is not Christ. If it were, we would, on the one hand, put the blame on Christ for our mistakes and slip-ups. On the other hand, we would be confusing our thoughts with His. We must always remember that the Lord comes to us in his mercy and good will and not because we deserve it. As it is beautifully written in Eccl 5:2, “for God is in heaven, and you upon earth.”

2

Being an Evangelical (and Catholic) Church

The Visible Church and the Invisible Church

Let us now look at the distinction between the visible and the invisible church. The visible church is the church we all can ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Being Church
• Chapter 1: People of God or Body of Christ?
• Chapter 2: Being an Evangelical (and Catholic) Church
• Chapter 3: Is the Church a Perfect Institution? (Am I Perfect?)
• Chapter 4: The Bible: Is It the Word of God?
• Chapter 5: A Church without Spirituality?
• Chapter 6: The Spirituality of the Believer
• Chapter 7: The Missionary Church
• Part 2: Christ and Us
• Chapter 8: Who Do We Say He Is?
• Chapter 9: Remembering Our Baptism (Who Am I?)
• Chapter 10: The Lord’s Table (Who Are We?)
• Chapter 11: Proclaiming the Word: The Third Sacrament?
• Chater 12: From What Does Christ Save Us?
• Chapter 13: For What Does Christ Save Us?
• Chapter 14: Our Faith and Our Mission: The Pond Begins to Tremble
• Bibliography