3: The Church Is A Living Body Series

I want you to meet a friend of mine (hold up a paper cut-out of myself). I just feel like he and I have so much in common. He’s very handsome. He dresses like I do. He has the same degree I have, from the same seminary. He has his own ordination certificate, signed by Bishop DeWitt, just like mine, only smaller.

In fact, we are so much alike, I was thinking maybe I could take a couple months off and head for the Bahamas and leave him in charge here. Would anybody notice? Watch how you answer that!

He looks like me. We can give him many of the same trappings I have. But there’s a huge difference. He’s not alive.

And there are many ways that we try to describe the mystery of life. A theologian would say he doesn’t have a soul. A biologist would say he doesn’t have any DNA. And this morning I want to talk like a biologist for a minute, even though I’m not a biologist and I don’t even play one on TV.

DNA is that amazing, microscopic substance that makes us who we are. It contains in just one cell every instruction to make every kind of cell in the body. That’s why stem cells are so much in the news today, because they haven’t started differentiating themselves yet and some scientists are very keen to learn to control them so that they can make any body part they want. Real cells, with real DNA can reproduce, grow living things, repair damage, create brain cells that can learn and think and respond to challenges in the environment.

As handsome as he is, my friend here can’t care about you. He can’t make his way to the hospital or your home in a crisis. He can’t pray for you. If he is injured, he can’t heal himself. If the church catches fire all he can do is sit here. He can’t think or act to put it out. And if the flames came his way, he’d just end up feeding them.

It is so easy to see the church as an institution. The building is visible, and it takes a lot of our attention. The Book of Discipline tells us committees that we are supposed to have. And we have them and they meet, discuss, take minutes, vote and do their work. We raise money and we spend it. We have classes and circles and an MYF.

I suppose that theoretically the bishop could send a church inspector with a clipboard who would check for all those things and conclude, yes we are a church.

But are those the things that make us a church? No way! A church that was those things and nothing more would be as inadequate as a cardboard cutout for a pastor, even a very handsome one. We can all feel the difference.

The church is alive because of its DNA, not because of the building it’s in or the programs it has. A church can have the most beautiful building and offer every program, with everything perfect, but if it isn’t made alive by the Spirit of God, nothing will come of it. I’ve seen pictures of churches in Africa that meet under the shade of a tree because they don’t even have a building. There is no sound system, no organ, not even very many Bibles. But it’s the church and they are worshipping God and loving each other and filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit. That’s why I love getting out of the building and doing an outdoor service once a year, so that we can say, we don’t need any of that stuff to be the church.