Greetings Dear Readers,
How often have you heard people say, or maybe even said yourself, that churches only want your money. Unfortunately it is true. Many churches focus so much on how the electricity will get paid or the mortgage met that they forget for whom they work. Many of us remember the televangelists’ scandals of the 1990’s. Many more think that most churches are interested in many other things that have nothing to do with who Christ is. The observance is that churches are out for themselves and not the community in which they are called to serve.
Both of these aspects drive people away from church. For one reason or another men of real faith abandon churches instead of working from within to change or protect them from the things that make them ineffective. I would say clearly that there are no perfect churches. I do believe there comes a time when God will move us from one place of worship to another for his purpose. I also believe that we make the flaws of churches an easy excuse for not being in a place where the word of God is taught well and where we can grow closer to others who belong to Christ. We use the flaws in a church as an excuse not to gather and try to influence those around us to do what churches should do.
As we walk through Holy Week together we come to a day where we must ask the questions about preparation. In light of the state of church at large in the world, I think that Christ would agree that most local churches have little to offer a fallen world. He would stride in and perhaps drive out the late’ vendors and book sellers. We can proudly say that our form of worldly identification is not as bad as that of the money changers in the Temple Court, but we still want our coffee and doughnut or we are unhappy.
Do not get me wrong. I drink coffee at church on Sunday morning and I complained when they changed brands like so many others. I also see that my church leaders try very hard to make sure that they focus on the Gospel and not the money. They do things to promote service and not to promote social entertainment that is Christ flavored.
I think that what matters as we journey through this Monday of this Holy Week is the cleansing of our own temple. Have I cast out the money changers and offering vendors that rule my heart. Do I see others in my life with anger and contempt or have I cast the out for love and forgiveness in the magnitude that I seek from Christ as he approaches the cross. It is an easy thing to compare myself to a group of fallen people who do not do thing the way I think they should. It is altogether different to compare myself to God in the form of a man who demands that I be like him as he moves closer to the burden of my sin that put him on a cross.
I attend the church I attend for the sake of the leadership there and its teaching. Many of the people do not get it, but I am no better than them. I will not use their crookedness as an excuse to indulge my own. I will work to cleanse the temple that I am to be for Christ so that others may see my cleaning and wish to do some of their own. I will spend the time cleaning my inner temple so that Christ feels no need to drive anything out. The focus after all should be on the man for whom we laid down palm fronds yesterday and whom on Thursday we will kill.
Wishing you joy in the journey,
Aramis Thorn
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Maybe this can open up a good discussion, maybe not. I just wonder how much Jesus spent time at his place of worship, rather, at the accepted place of worship. The Bible shows him there during the important festivals, but he had a different purpose then than we ever do at church. He probably went there when he was a boy, and maybe his family insisted that he do this; maybe he chose to. All the same his real mission did not seem to include "going to church", unless you decide that his time with the outcast people in his country was just that. Perhaps he even kept the Sabbath in a divinely correct way, but does The Church do that in a normal service?
ReplyDeleteI hear what you're saying about changing it from the inside, but what if the whole business has gone bankrupt and something totally new has to be done? What if the people that could change it from the inside are only hurt by trying to do so and give up totally, or simply volunteer in some small personal setting that lets them feel like a "different" cog without really reaching out to change the whole machine? Is there a reason why we shouldn't be open to a totally new way of doing things? Does it not suffice to gather in our homes with eachother, or do we need to be in a traditional church?
Where you're right that it's important to try to start change from the inside, I wonder, at what point do we say, "This has to stop."?
Just curious.
I thank you for your well reasoned comments. They deserve a well reasoned response and I will work on it and post it after Holy Week. Thank you
ReplyDeleteAramis