Church is Where We Find It .. er, Us

Since my "Matrix" post, I've wondered if I made one very important distinction clear. It seems now, looking back, that I only hinted at it, but "it" was the whole point, so maybe it bears clarification.

It was Jesus who said, "On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." ("Gates" refers to city gates, which was where a town's leaders usually congregated to do their thing. So Jesus is saying that the powers and authorities of the evil one cannot prevail against the church.) So whatever the church is, it cannot be destroyed.

But When we say "church," what we often mean is that not-for-profit corporate entity that owns or rents a building, serves designer coffee on Sunday morning, holds worship services, hosts events and conferences, organizes mission trips, sponsors Youth Group, has a elementary and nursery age program that's perpetually in need of warm bodies, a mission statement, etc. Sometimes we mean a national or international outfit. Those are institutions. Instituted and maintained, to be sure, by Christians, but not The Church. The church -- as we were rightly taught by the radicals who deserted traditional church buildings in the '70s and '80s and took over abandoned Safeway stores, warehouses and other cast offs of the American Dream -- is people. Their actual argument, "The church is not the building, it's the people," just didn't go far enough. The church isn't the organization or institution either.

I don't think Jesus had a big problem with church institutions, per se. He began his ministry by standing and speaking at the local synagogue, the "local church" of that day. There was a place in the service where those men (but not women) who desired to comment on the scriptures could do so, in turn. Jesus took his turn. (The Lord of the Universe waited his turn. That still freaks me out a little.)

While Jesus took issue with the Pharisees on several occasions and wasn't too gentle with some Sadducees who posed a trick question about marriage in Heaven, the Jewish institution of weekly worship got nary a comment. (Not even about the fact thatonly men, not women, could comment).

Jesus did finally give up on the synagogue, because synagogue devotees tried to throw him off a cliff and their lack of faith (in his own home town, no less) apparently had some negative effect on his ability to do the signs and wonders thing (that still freaks me out, too). So he took to meeting with people (men and women, no screen) in the Desert. You could argue, successfully , I think, that Jesus was actually kicked out of the synagogue, but he was not, to my mind, an active "deconstructionist" as a result.

I don't see God too concerned about curing the ills that have plagued church institutions since, either. In fact, in the Old Testament, God saw how people worshipped their own power and abilities, and when they began to construct a tower that would "reach to Heaven" he frustrated their design by multiplying the languages so that they could not understand one another. I have often wondered if that might explain the troubled state of many Christian institutions.

Nor was he particularly interested in secular power structures. His followers were, though. They thought he was there to free them from Roman domination and wrest the throne of David from the Herodian line. (A Biblical mom was pretty concerned to make sure her sons would at his right and left hand when he did.) He did quite the opposite. Remember when the crowd tried to take him by force and make Him king? He fled. When they asked him about paying taxes, in one instance, he did a miracle to permit someone to pay his tax, and in the other he said the famous "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" reply, which I can only take to mean, "Yeah, you need to pay your taxes, but what I care about is are you giving God what belongs to Him?" (Which is, of course, ourselves). The evangelical/charismatic crowd went through a "theocracy" phase there a few years in the heyday of the so-called "Religious Right, which (thankfully) didn't go anywhere. Though some still hold out hope that we can force the U.S. government to re-institute school prayer or mandate "creation science" as public school curricula, I see no concern great for such things in Jesus life and ministry.

Don't get me wrong. Jesus was labeled as a subversive. But he intended no such thing. He simply told the truth and lived the truth. One reason I don't much mind being identified as a "charismatic" is that those with such leanings have created a conversation that has forged a fragile unity that crosses institutional boundaries. They've done so not by complaining about the boundaries, but by simply ignoring them. They've certainly been seen as subversive! (And there have been times they've deserved the label.) But the point I'm trying to make is that they didn't just unplug. While there are still Baptist and Presbyterian church bodies, most of the Baptists and Presbyterians I know are where they are for reasons other than to uphold traditional denominational "distinctives." When was the last time you were asked, "What denomination are you?"

When I was in therapy -- on and off, for 10 years with a guy down in Colorado Springs -- I remember one session where I was struggling with the pain of something or other, and he said to me, "Don't take it so serious."

"But it's wrong," I complained.

Yeah, that's true," he allowed. "But ... just don't take it so serious." (I wish I could say I took his advice seriously (ha ha) but I didn't for a long time. He spent many sessions with me, often with his only goal that of getting me to laugh and get outside myself.)

Jesus doesn't seem to be as worried about church institutions as I am. He doesn't take them very seriously. And I think he's trying to teach me that I don't need to either. When he speaks of the church, he's inevitably thinking of His Bride. Us. The gifted ones. The holy priesthood. The ones who are empowered from within, by His Spirit, not from without, by a human institution or power structure.

While several people I know are "unplugging from the church," I really think they're unplugging from the current Christian institutions and power structures -- and from those who, seeing them slipping from their grasp, still cling to them.
I'm okay with that. I think we need to get unplugged from them. Certainly, we need to loose our white-knuckle grasp on the institutional jobs and paychecks and, most important, the sense of significance we hoped to derive from them. They can't satisfy. They're not the point. They're not even real ("There is no spoon.").

But we are still the church. And if we meet in an ancient cathedral, a stadium, a retreat center, a public school, a rented building, a Rescue Mission, someone's home, or at a Starbuck's -- just you and I, over coffee on a cold Saturday afternoon -- it's all one to Him. But wherever Jesus and His Kingdom is the subtext of our conversation, He promised to be there. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them." We are a holy temple, says Paul, made not by human hands.

If we, like Morpheus, Neo and Trinity, get free enough, we could maybe even plug back in regularly, guns blazing (metaphorically speaking), because so many people are still seriously plugged in. We can't stay unplugged from them, can we? They are church. We is them. (Church 'R' Us? -- God forbid. Yes, I've learned to laugh.)

Church is where we find us. Sometimes even in McChurch if we are willing to ignore the smell of spiritual French fries and sesame seed buns and serve up the Bread of Life. That will be labeled by some as subversive. Change always is. And maybe we'll all end up out in the metaphorical desert. Wouldn't be the first time.

Today, just the idea of it had me humming a paraphrase of one of my 14-year-old's favorite songs:

"It's the end of the church as we know it
It's the end of the church as we know it
It's the end of the church as we know it
And I feel fine."