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Our theme this morning is the church and discipleship. We have been doing a sermon series on discipleship, and I think there is a question which needs answering, a question which can be applied to both areas of the theme of our service this morning:
- What qualifications do you need to be a disciple?
- What qualifications do you need to be church?
Our reading this morning goes some way to answering both these questions, largely by stating what is obvious, but perhaps because it is so obvious we miss it; or, more likely, it all seems a bit too risky.
To be a disciple and to be church you need love: love one another, and love God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. You don’t need anything else. And that is risky business.
Considering how long I have been formally studying theology I am very unqualified. I did three years full time for a BA in Biblical Theology, and then a postgraduate certificate for one year in Christian theology, and then have been doing, for a painfully long time, an MA in Practical Theology which is nearly finished. That’s four years full time and another three years part time, and right now the only formal qualification in theology that I have that is worth writing down on paper is a BA.
It is easier to get an honours degree than it is to love one another. I wish that the qualification for being a disciple was a BA in theology, it is much easier. What is surprising about what you need to be a disciple is not so much what you do need – love, we might of guessed as much, but what you don’t need – anything else.
Hold that thought of the qualification we need, and the qualifications we don’t need, and we’ll take a look at how risky that is.
Risky church
Church is risky because it is tough to define. Just what is church? This is a very difficult question to answer, and different people come up with different answers.
But there are a few things that I think we can say church is, I thought I would start with something a little controversial:
1) The Church is God’s agent of salvation in the world.
That sounds posh; what I mean is that the church is how God is going to save the world. Why is that controversial? – quite simply because we all know that Jesus is God’s plan of salvation for the world. The Church, at the best of times is full of broken people who make mistakes.
Salvation comes though Jesus, but the church is the Body of Christ.
Imagine that the Risen Christ is ascended into heaven. We can see this from the bottom up if we read Acts One – we are with the disciples looking up at Jesus ascend. If we want to see this from the top down then we need to look at the Enthronement Psalms, the company of heaven crying out for the watchers on the gates to look up and see the triumphant Jesus returning to heaven. In Psalm 24, “Lift up your heads oh you gates, be lifted up you ancient doors that the king of glory may come in.”
And so imagine Jesus enthroned at the right-hand of the Father. Now imagine the celebrations in heaven. Jesus has done it, it is finished, death is beaten, sin defeated. So the angels gather around Jesus and sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty.’ And then they do a whole bunch of hi-fives and back slapping. ‘Sweet work Jesus, I like your skills’ we imagine the Archangel Michael saying.
And then someone asks the obvious question: what next? Jesus is in heaven, and there is a lot of work still to be done on earth. So who and how is the ‘sweeping up’ going to be done. So the angels might wonder if they will be sent to do it. And the answer from the throne of God is no. So who will do it? The Church. The same church that is made up of the broken, the outcasts, those who have fallen short of the glory of God.
And I am pretty sure there is no plan B.
Church is a risky business.
The church is holy
But the church is holy. As much as we are broken and outcasts, as much as we have fallen short of the glory of God, we are also holy. We are a royal priesthood, set apart to do the work of Christ. This is how followers of Jesus are described in the Bible. The Church is called the Bride of Christ, spotless, blameless and pure. There is a Jewish custom that a bride is ceremonially bathed before her marriage to the groom. And the church is a perfect bride for Christ.
But we have all fallen short of the glory of the Lord. Look around you. Actually don’t, look at yourself. The church is not holy, not set apart, not pure and spotless.
We are an unlikely bunch. Why would God chose us to bring a message of salvation to the world, it doesn’t make much sense. It makes about as much sense as it does God revealing himself to the world in the womb of a young peasant girl living in an unremarkable, rural part of the Middle East 2,000 years ago, and by eventually dying on the cross, but that is true and so it is true that he has chosen you and us to be the Body of Christ in the world.
So we are plan A, and there is no plan B, but we don’t need to be too worried by that. We need to live the life that we have been called to live and be full of God’s Holy Spirit. God knows we need help on this one, all we need to do is be willing and live as God’s holy people.
The Church is interdependent not independent.
Disciples love God and love one another. Loving one another means being there for one another, supporting one another, building one another up.
We often think we come to church for our own benefit, to learn something about god and fall more in love with God, to worship and be in the presence of God. And that means that in our Sunday supplement, in the magazine section of the newspaper when we come across a special offer for a short weekend break, we are prone to take it. This Sunday we can miss church and it won’t have too much of an averse effect on me.
We forget that we don’t just come to church for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others, and what if they need us to be there?
I am oversimplifying a little. Of course we firstly need breaks, and secondly we aren’t just church on a Sunday morning – very far from it. But the illustration helps demonstrate my point.
The author of Ephesians begins his letter to the Christians in Ephesus like this:
‘Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.’
God has given us every spiritual blessing in heaven. That doesn’t mean God has given me every spiritual blessing. As Paul says in 1 Cor. 12,
‘To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another…etc. etc.’
I don’t have all the spiritual gifts. If you are in any doubt about this, let me chat to you about a pastoral problem, then you’ll know. And that means I need you because you have gifts I don’t. We need you because you have gifts we don’t.
Pause and think on that for a while.
And now let me finish by taking this one step further. But be careful, this may well mess with your head.
You are the bride of Christ. Christ is the groom.
On Thursday Zoey and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. Zoey was the bride and I was the groom. The bride needed a groom. Zoey needed someone to marry and in our relationship that continues to be true. When I am away busy with work and such like, I come home and Zoey needs a hug from me, and she sometimes get one. She needs a kiss, she needs me to show her that I love her. But I need her too, the same is true. I need her to buy me fountain pens, leather journals, and CDs of obscure indy music. That way I know she loves me.
We the church, we are a bride and we need a groom.
This is where the challenge comes. The groom needs the bride too. Jesus needs you. The Creator and Saviour of the cosmos, the Divine Logos, he who has conquered sin and death, who has risen triumphantly from the grave, needs you to be part of the Body of Christ.
Of course God needs you, that is why he paid the ultimate price to ensure that it was possible that you could turn to God and chose to love God. We are not independent, but interdependent.
It is a risky business this church and discipleship. All they both needs is love and nothing more. As Augustine once said, and I paraphrase, ‘Love God and then do what you like.’
Amen.
29th May 2011, 11am All Saints Ecclesall
