The Church
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the August 23, 2014
Sabbath School Lesson
“Jesus replied,
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh
and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and
on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome
it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on
earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed
in heaven.” Matthew 16:17-19, NIV
Today when
we say, “I am going to the church,” or “I belong to a church,” we often have in
mind a building where we gather for worship and social activities with like-minded
individuals. But this is an evolved meaning that has changed over time. This is
true whether we look at the archeological record or simply limit ourselves to
the biblical account. Perhaps it is fitting that this evolution took place, for
worship has also changed.
If we define
worship as fellowship with the Divine, then we might consider the Garden of
Eden the first setting for worship, for man and God came together for
fellowship there in the “cool of the day.”[i]
When man turned from God, we lost this intimacy. Instead of being a celebration
of life, death intruded into the relationship. Our next glimpse of worship in
the Bible concerns Cain and Abel.[ii]
These two
young men, raised in the same home, turned out so very different from one
another. But in spite of their differences, they both understood that worship
now involved sacrifice. How or why they came to know this is not revealed in
the biblical record. Nonetheless, the worship was sophisticated enough that
Cain’s violation of the correct form precipitated conflict. Despite the
negative results of that conflict, the worship system endured. It was the
system used by Noah after the flood.[iii]
It was also the system still in use by Abraham and the Patriarchs in their day.[iv]
An interesting side light to this record is that one individual, Enoch,
apparently found a means to return to the previous form of worship by simply
cultivating an intimate relationship with God.[v]
Perhaps after walking daily together for so long, God simply said, “Enoch, we
are closer to my place than yours. Why don’t you come on home with me?” Enoch
seems to have accepted the invitation.
This is not
to say that others did not walk very closely with God. Abraham knew God so well
that when he was told to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah, he did not
question it.[vi]
However, as time passed, the closeness faded so much that when Joseph received
dreams from God, he was viewed with hostility and suspicion. While Joseph
frequently looked for God’s guidance in his life, his siblings did not, and in
that state they entered into a 400-year sojourn in Egypt. While some like Amram
and Jochebed kept hope in God alive, many did not and the forms of worship
faded from their memory. Even their son, Moses, had to be reintroduced to God
at the burning bush.[vii]
We might
question why the Israelites relationship with God was so weak, but perhaps it
was because they came to associate God with altars and placating Him through
sacrifice rather than seeking, as Enoch did, a personal, intimate relationship
with Him. We might ask ourselves if we make the same mistake. Do we feel that
somehow a building built for worship is somehow more holy than where we are
when seeking God’s presence while walking in the yard or through the
neighborhood? If so, maybe we are confusing the thing with God.
Under the
tutelage of Moses, Israel fine-tuned their worship style, first with the
wilderness tabernacle then later, during the period of the kings, with the
temple in Jerusalem. But in spite of the Levitical bureaucracy and the rivers
of blood flowing from the thousands of sacrifices, they continued to worship
the thing rather than a personal God. The temple became more important than
their relationship with their Creator.[viii]
But God continued to try to call them back to the relationship that Enoch came
to understand, the relationship that existed with God in Eden.[ix]
Even the
disciples of Jesus struggled with worshipping things instead of God. They came
to Him praising the beauty of the temple that was nearing completion.[x]
At the time of Jesus’ ministry, it had been under construction for almost five
decades.[xi]
But notwithstanding the building’s beauty or the strength of its structure, it
would be torn down to the ground, and it was done by mere mortals when the
Roman army took Jerusalem in 70, C.E. Ironically, the Jews who bypassed a
relationship with Jesus in favor of the glory of the temple they had built
ended up with neither.
With the
destruction of the temple, worship evolved again. The Jews pointed the way with
the institution of the synagogues well before the temple was destroyed. Perhaps
the impetus for this was the desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes
and the subsequent struggle to restore its sanctity. In any event, when the temple
was finally destroyed by the Romans, the synagogues, by default, became the
focal points of worship in the diaspora. Christians, excluded from those
synagogues, developed their own dispersed places of worship. First in houses,
then when persecution subsided, they began to remodel larger homes to become dedicated
buildings for worship. Eventually even basilicas were constructed or repurposed
as church buildings, after Constantine made it possible for the churches to own
property without the ambiguity caused by the previously unofficial status of
Christianity.[xii]
Jesus had
told His followers that wherever two or three are gathered together in His
name, He is there among them.[xiii]
Since later Christians gathered in buildings constructed for the purpose, they perhaps
began to associate those buildings with the special presence of Jesus. However,
they overlooked that it was the gathering and not the building that created
that special fellowship. Maybe this is what has created the dichotomy between an
affected “holy” behavior in church on the weekend and a profoundly secular
lifestyle the rest of the time. If God’s presence is only at the church, and
one need only be “holy” in His presence then everything else is secular by
default.
Today, we
have come to so identify holiness with the church building that we almost
presume the larger the church, the holier it is, its size being proof of God’s
endorsement. Conversely, small, struggling churches, barely able to keep the
lights on, are seen as somehow spiritually inferior. We perhaps lose sight of
the fact that a humble soul praying thankfully over a crust of bread can create
a space more holy, than thousands gathering in a magnificent cathedral in their
designer clothes where they worship prosperity and opulence before returning to
their secularly chic homes where they have need of nothing.[xiv]
Perhaps it
is arrogant to build spectacular monuments to our wealth and success as God’s “chosen”
Christian people. While diseases, poverty, and warfare ravage the world, we pat
ourselves on the back for being so blessed as a “Christian” nation to not have
these things afflicting us. Yet, while we presume to have all this because of
God’s favor, we overlook who He really is. While we might tend to be this way,
He does not withhold his blessings because someone is evil rather than good.[xv]
Logically then, He also does not prosper us because we are more holy than our
neighbor, and probably does not provide beautiful church buildings as a sign of
His favor. If God’s favor could be seen by our blessings, then Jesus would have
lived in a palace and worn kingly robes, but as it was, He had nowhere to even
lay his head.[xvi]
Perhaps we
would do well to remember God’s words to King David. “Wherever I have moved
with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded
to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house…?”[xvii]
There is no command to be found in the New Testament for Christians to build
large church buildings. Maybe this is because the upkeep for such edifices is a
budget item that can dwarf the budget for evangelism into relative
insignificance. Amidst that silence in the Gospels on building such buildings,
there is a command to carry the message of salvation to the world.[xviii]
With our huge commitment to maintaining the infrastructure of the church, how
is that working out for us? Maybe we would do well in considering our
commitment to church building programs to not let evangelism suffer for lack of
funding.
