Belonging to the Church

Colossians 3:1-11

Continuing our theme of belonging today we're looking at belonging in the community of the church. Of course, to do this requires us to ask some basic questions about how we understand what the church is and where it can be found.

It is appropriate that we're reading through sections of one of Paul's letters as we explore our sense of belonging in the church. When Paul was writing his letter to the people in Colossae, and to the many other places he wrote, Paul was seeking to help those fledgling Christian communities understand what it meant to live as a community of followers of Jesus Christ – to be the church.

The church in Colossae is thought to have consisted largely of people from outside the Jewish faith who had converted to become followers of Jesus. Many of the other early church communities had originated from within Judaism but the Church of Colossae was different.

Maybe this is a part of the reason that throughout his letter Paul keeps referring to much broader universal themes. The Christ that is described in Colossians 1 is sometimes referred to as the cosmic Christ. And, in today's reading we finished with those wonderfully inclusive words “Christ is all and in all!” Being part of the church was an expression was having a life hidden in Christ’s life.

As people reading this letter 2000 years later it behooves us to recognise the cultural influences that are acting upon us in how we interpret what it means to belong to the church and to be in Christ. 

In the first chapter of his book about the church Jürgen Moltmann says, “At every period the church has a duty to be clear about its commission, its situation and it's goal.” (The Church in the Power of the Spirit p.1) In 1959 the Joint Commission on Church Union put out its first discussion paper entitled The Faith of the Church it explored the fundamental question of where the faith of the church is to be found. In this sense the Joint Commission sought to reflect on the commission, situation, and goal of the church in the 20th century. The quest to understand what it means to belong to the church continues to involve reflecting on how we understand who we are as people and what the church is.

On one level we can recognise that in the modern world the church could be seen simply as an institution in which like-minded individuals gather and support one another. However, this kind of oversimplification is influenced by the individualism and consumerism of the era in which we live. 

In his book Humanism: The Wreck of Western Culture the Australia sociologist John Carroll postulated that, “humanism had to undermine the ‘I am that I am’ if it was going to establish its rock. It had to replace it with ‘I am’, where the ‘I’ is the individual man [sic].” (p.3) 

At the centre of our culture is the individual and their preferences which are often elevated over and above other individuals and any notion of the common good. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age speaks about the bounded or buffered self that has emerged as our way of being in the world. 

He says, “The buffered self is essentially the self which is aware of the possibility of disengagement. And disengagement is frequently carried out in relation to one’s whole surroundings, natural and social.” (Taylor p.42)

The emergence of our contemporary way of thinking about being in the world began over 500 years ago. As people who are children of the Protestant Reformation and continue to be influenced by reformation thought it is pertinent to take note of how the Reformation contributed to the rise of the individual and potentially some of the negative impacts this has had on us when it comes to thinking about what it means to belong to the church.

John Carroll explores the contradiction of the Protestant and Reformed thought found in Martin Luther and Jean Calvin. The contradiction that Luther developed in his debates with Desiderius Erasmus on the concept of free will. And then were deepened by Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, as he defended the concept of God’s sovereignty and unconditional grace in the doctrine of predestination. The contradiction was that “Man [sic] has no freedom but is responsible.” (p.52) 

For both the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers of the 16th century what was occurring was a discussion grounded in how we were to understand our legal relationship with God as a judge. It was a theological and spiritual approach that had developed under the influence on Biblical interpretation of how the ancient Roman society structured itself and understood personal relationships. In other words, a person’s belonging was determined by how the society defined it legally. This is an oversimplification, but the question of how a person legally appeared before God became a core issue and for the reformers it was very much an individualistic question.

Carroll goes on to say, “The cost [of the Protestant movement] was the decline of community. Once there is faith alone and Calvin's conscience, the vital unifying role of family, village and town has been eclipsed. The Reformation threw out the incense and holy water, the chanting, the bleeding Madonnas and most of the sacraments. It burnt the relics and smashed the statues; it banned the dancing. It found, however that the church it occupied had cold floors and bare walls. The communal warmth had gone.” (Carroll p.52)

The elevation of the individual and of personal salvation in the Western Protestant tradition can limit our understanding of what it means to belong to the church, so it is helpful to bring in other perspectives on what the church is.

This brings me to make a comment about the architecture and theology of Eastern Orthodox churches, like the Greek Orthodox Church. For those of you who may have had the privilege of looking in an Orthodox church or even worshipped in one you may have noticed the iconography. Often centred at the top of the dome of the church will be an icon of Jesus, sometimes referred to as Christ Pantocrator.  

The image represents Christ, who is fully God and fully human, coming down to be present within the creation. Surrounding Christ are the prophets and the apostles, and then further down the walls there might be a depiction of the saints. The otherworldly artwork serves as a reminder that in the process of worship Christ becomes present to the congregation through the power of the Holy Spirit. But more than this the icons of the prophets, apostles and saints remind us of the cloud of witnesses that are also present as we worship.

The worship within the orthodox tradition is imbued with the mystery of God’s loving presence coming to be with us in and through Jesus Christ. It is the kind of imagery and belonging that the buffered Western self might tend to resist. It might be easily dismissed by the modern mind as lacking relevance or practicality. But being the church and belonging to the church draws us into the great mystery of God's life and God's love.

In his excellent book about the church called After our Likeness Miroslav Volf reminds us of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18:20. Volf says, “Where two or three are gathered in Christ name, not only is Christ present among them, but a Christian Church is there as well, perhaps a bad church, a church that may well transgress against love and truth, but a church none the less.” (Volf p.136)

When we gather in Christ’s name, we become what we are – the church. Volf’s book brought into conversation Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Reformed ideas about the church and he summarizes his thoughts on where to identify the church saying this:

“Every congregation that assembles around the one Jesus Christ as saviour and Lord in order to profess faith in him publicly in pluriform fashion, including through baptism and the Lord supper, and which is open to all churches of God and to all human beings, is a church in the full sense of the word, since Christ promised to be present in it through his Spirit as the first fruits of the gathering of the whole people of God in the eschatological reign of God.” (Volf p.158)

There are moments within my reflection on where we are as part of the Western Protestant church that cause me to think that when we seek to be relevant and find practical application in our teaching, we inadvertently remove the mystery of the presence of God and domesticate our faith and experience of God to something that is under our control.

The question for us as we think about belonging to the church is whether we believe that we belong to something that gives to us a different understanding of our place in the world and the mystery of our human existence. Are we drawn into something that is far bigger than something that we can control? God’s very life.

When we come to celebrate communion today, we enter these mysteries, and we celebrate. When we partake of the bread and wine the Uniting Church believes God is present and acting in and through Christ and the Holy Spirit. This is not a mere remembering of what Jesus did but an encounter with the divine.

The word that we use to describe this is anamnesis. The word loosely  means the opposite of amnesia. It is an act or remembering that draws us into the original event and through which we are transformed by an encounter with future. In the act of remembering the past, we encounter the risen Christ who comes to greet us from the future in our present with his presence. 

Let me make a few observations about what the implications of us sharing at the Lord's supper might mean. First, whilst I may appear to be presiding, the host of this meal is Jesus who is present with us and within us. He is always the host at every celebration of the eucharist. 

Second, because Christ is constantly the host all those who have gone before us and all those who are yet to come are gathered alongside us. This is what the physical paintings in an Orthodox Church might remind us of. To put it more personally alongside us as we celebrate are the people that we have known and loved, like my parents, and like the people who have gathered through over 150 years in this place. People we have known and loved, the great cloud of witnesses to whom we also belong, for the barrier between life and death is not opaque for us it is translucent.

Third, through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit our participation in sharing the bread and wine help us to be the church and to grow into out the discipleship as followers of Christ as we participate in Christ’s very life, which as Paul pointed out to the people in Colossae is hidden in us. Participating in eating the bread and wine we are drawn closer into God’s life, and so drawn closer into each other’s life, and into the life of the world.

Likewise, being drawn into the church, belonging to the church, is celebrated in baptism which draws us into the life death and resurrection of Jesus. Living out our belonging in a church community is a lifelong process of growing into Christ’s life. We come not as people who are perfect but as people who have been set free by God to be renewed throughout our journey of life as what Moltmann helpfully refers to as the “wayfaring people of God.” (Moltmann p.1)

Paul’s reflection on being draw into the life of the church for people of Coloasse speaks to us about the gift of unity in the church,” In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” This union and renewal are what we celebrate and seek to live out. As always, I invite you to take a few moments to contemplate what God might be saying to you today. 

As you do so I will share one final thought from Moltmann about being the church, “The church participates in the uniting of men [and women] with one another, in the uniting of society with nature and in the uniting of creation with God. Whatever unions like this take place, however fragmentary and fragile they may be, there is the church. The true church is the fellowship of love.” (Moltmann, p.65)