Stephen
Terry, Director
Christ-Shaped
Lives and Spirit-Inspired Speech
Commentary
for the August 19, 2023, Sabbath School Lesson
"Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and
anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and
compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God
forgave you." Ephesians 4:31-32, NIV
Many years ago, I attended a small
Adventist Church struggling to stay alive in a town in Washington State. Our
little family of me, my wife, and my son found ourselves there because it was
the only Adventist Church for 50 miles, and I had recently found work with a
business in town. It did not take long for us to find out why the church was
struggling. An elderly couple were running the church and held all the decision-making
positions in the church, fearing that anyone else might lead the church astray.
Even with our family, there were fewer than a dozen attendees. Those who had
been there before us already understood that it was better to go along with the
couple leading out rather than risk the wrath of the wife who had a quick
temper and a tongue that cut like a knife. If things went the way she felt they
should, there seemed to be heavenly harmony, otherwise not.
As a former pastor in the
Midwest, I felt I had a responsibility to help them understand how this was
hurting the church. Their displeasure at that insight was revealed with the next
nominating committee when they allocated to me a position as Religious Liberty Secretary.
This is a person whom the conference sends religious liberty material to that
can be shared with the church on Religious Liberty Sabbath. It is not an Elder,
a Deacon, a Sabbath School Superintendent, a Lay Ministry Leader, or even a
Sabbath School Teacher. It also meant no presence on the Church Board or
opportunity to address the membership beyond Religious Liberty Sabbath. All
those positions of influence the couple assigned to themselves. On the surface,
they appeared to be engaged in a heroic struggle to keep the doors of the
church open in that town. But they were the problem rather than the solution.
The conference did not understand
the situation and felt they only needed to invest more resources in building up
the church. To that end, they held an evangelistic crusade to drum up more
members from the local community. Success was limited, but a middle-aged couple
did join the church. They were a lovely couple and were heavily involved in the
local Episcopal Church and with student activities at the small high school.
Due to her influence, I was honored to present the baccalaureate for the graduation
ceremonies one year. Because she was used to being involved in church
activities, she ran headlong into the couple running the Adventist Church and
the wife quickly put her in her place. After that the new member's husband
stopped attending our church, returning to the Episcopal Church. But she was
not willing to give up so easily, so the wife of the couple running the
Adventist Church began a gossiping campaign accusing her of being a traitor for
supporting the Episcopal Church. She bravely hung on for about six months of
this treatment partly because she believed in much of the Adventist message,
and partly because my wife and I had befriended her. Unfortunately, because we
were also allowed no real voice in the church, there was little we could do to
spare her such an evil experience. I understood why she left, and we remained
friends while we lived in that town. Sadly, after she left the woman who had
been persecuting her gloated that she was right about the new member being a
traitor.
This church was part of a
multichurch district with the other church being over 50 miles away. The pastor
there rarely visited our church, and I had the feeling he had given up on dealing
with this couple's death grip on the church as well. We rarely saw him in the
summer and usually not at all in the winter because the churches were separated
by a snowy mountain pass. Several decades later, the church still has a
membership of less than a dozen and has been downgraded to a company instead of
a church per the current yearbook. The only way I see to break the power impass
of that church is to bring in a full-time minister and demand the membership
elect him as a local elder if he is not already ordained. But the church does not
produce the revenue to support a pastor, and the conference refuses to use
self-supporting lay ministers, fearing they might lead the people astray from the
fundamentalist perspective that has dominated Adventism since early in the 20th
Century. As a result, the church continues to struggle, waiting for some Shepherd
to come in search of his lost sheep.
While Ephesians, chapter four,
reveals that Paul fully understood how selfish behavior and the strife it
causes could destroy a church, we seem to find it difficult to put aside boorish
behavior so that grace and love can flow freely among the membership. Larger
churches are not immune to these squabbles. Those who try to inject Christian perspectives
into church politics are at times slandered and if the pastor is not
discerning, he is used as a tool for the furtherance of their agenda. Sermons
are preached about being genuine to one another and not wearing a different
face to church than is worn the rest of the week, but those who wear such masks
often do so for their own protection from the power mongers in church. Like
those in the small church, too many in larger churches have given up on trying
to effect change and just show up each week as they have been told they should
and sit quietly in the same pew week after week while letting those who demand
the power to do so run the show up front. Those who are up front whine about a
lack of participation, but they, like the couple in the small church, fail to
see that they are the problem. In their lust for power, they had no room to
grant it to others.
While I have focused thus far on
local churches, the problem is so endemic to the human condition that it exists
at every level of the church from the local parish, all the way to the General
Conference of the world church. Politics more than a relationship to God gets
people elected to positions at every level. Then once elected, they deceive
themselves into believing that it was God that made it happen. Therefore, God
must see things exactly as they see them, and with that supposed endorsement,
they proceed to consolidate power to advance their personal agenda as though it
were God's. At every level, this often drives people from God's presence, or at
the very least, to seek it elsewhere. Most people have sense enough to realize
that the Bible directs us into a direct, personal relationship with God and not
with someone who inserts themselves as an intercessor, parsing God's will to
us. Martin Luther discovered that, and it sparked the Reformation. Since that
great discovery, we have lost our way, elbowing one another off the path as we
blindly rush toward what we feel is that strait and narrow gate, a gate defined
by our desires rather than God's.
We have created much of this
problem by allowing the denomination to be seen as a fortress against the world
much as the Jewish religious leaders thought in Christ's day. But Christ broke
down that wall of separation through his ministry, death, resurrection, and
ascension.[i] We
were never called to hide behind barriers of dogma intended to keep people out.
We have wounded many in doing so. This is contrary to the healing ministry of
Christ. When Christ's disciples wanted to call down fire on a Samaritan village
for refusing them lodging, he rebuked them, implying that they did not
understand the Spirit they were of. They were still living with the "eye for an
eye" teaching of the Pentateuch.[ii]
Jesus had refuted that teaching in his Sermon on the Mount.[iii]
If we couple this with Paul's assertion that all have sinned,[iv] it
becomes apparent why Mahatma Gandhi is reputed to have said that an eye for an
eye will leave the whole world blind.
For a brief, shining moment
after Jesus' ascension, we seemed to be getting it right. The fellowship of the
early believers was incredible.[v] As a
result the church grew phenomenally, but within a few centuries, the barrier
that Christ had broken down was being rebuilt. Churches became centers of power
and control as different factions warred upon one another, and they brought
those battles to the state to resolve as Athanasius brought his squabble with
Arius to Nicaea to be resolved by Constantine. We have been battling ever since.
We say Jesus is coming soon to take his people home, but we have a strange
definition of what are considered his people. I see nothing to indicate that we
are in any way ready for him. I thank God for his mercy in delaying that
return.[vi]