The Holding Company
“Father, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ....”
May 15, 1983
Why come to church? Wouldn't some extra sleep this morning have been delicious? (Of course some might say going to church and sleeping are not mutually exclusive!) A second cup of coffee and a leisurely read through the Sunday paper? Or perhaps some serious fishing or just watching TV? But you came. Some voice outside you like your parent or spouse, or maybe a voice deep inside you said, "Come on now, you're going to church." And happily or grudgingly, you're here.
Digging a little deeper with the question of why come to church, we come to the question, why the church at all? Lord knows, we don't need another institution with its hand out for our money and time. Yes, there's a lot wrong with the church. And for everything wrong with the church someone outside the church can tell us, we inside it who struggle to love it can name a few more of its warts.
Yet, despite all my cynicism and doubt, it surprises me how much I believe in the church. And as honestly as I can say it, it has nothing to do with the paycheck I get from the church. I deeply believe that the mystery we call God is able to keep this world from destroying itself very much because of and in spite of the church.
With some help from Paul, I would like to talk about why the church. Paul, or someone writing in his name, was imprisoned by the Roman authorities a long time ago for pushing a faith and lifestyle built around one called Christ, which shook up the state's desire to put life together built around one named Caesar. This Paul wrote a letter to some struggling young churches, one of them in the city of Ephesus. In that letter from jail, Paul wrote some of the most powerful words every written dealing with why the church.
The church, he says, is like the body of Christ in the world. All kinds of people, differences of opinions, countless arguments along the way, but still one in belonging to God and one in being equal in his love. Why the church? Paul says for people to reach "mature manhood". If Paul were alive today, I think he would be glad for us to say "mature humanhood" or "mature manhood and mature womanhood". He says God has empowered the church to help us "grow up".
Become mature, grow up, those are neat psychological terms we can buy. We are all for maturity. But Paul takes it farther. This maturity is measured by a certain standard. "...the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” “...we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ...." What was Jesus, the measure, like, then?
As I think about the picture of Jesus given in the Gospels, I experience a holding person. In at least two ways, Jesus was always holding people. By his model and our experience, we learn that people in order to become mature, healthy functioning human beings need to be held. The church as Christ's body is, therefore, meant to be a holding company.
The two main things I mean by the need of humans to be held in order for them to grow up and the church as God's holding company on earth are to be explored in what follows.
1. THE CHURCH EXISTS TO REMIND PEOPLE AND THE WORLD THAT HUMANS NEED TO BE HELD.
Bumper sticker wisdom usually lacks a lot of...wisdom. I, however, have seen a couple that are on target. "Don't Get High on Drugs... Get High on Hugs" and "Prevent Mental Illness: Hug Your Child". As I look at those of you who worship here, I see as much intelligence, wealth, and beauty per square inch as anywhere I know. But with all of our sophistication, we sometimes forget we humans just need to touch and be touched by each other if we are ever to grow up and be much good to ourselves or anyone else.
Jesus shocked people because he was willing to touch and hold persons who many wouldn't even come near. With words of forgiveness, tenderness, and love, he held them. And in ways we do not fully understand, his words and touches were healing.
Lewis Thomas is the chancellor of the famous Sloan-Kettering Cancer Hospital in New York City. In his recent book, Dr. Thomas reminisces about his father who also was a physician shortly after the turn of the century. It was, he relates, a time when the best doctors could do was often simply be good diagnosers, as there was little they could do for killers like pneumonia and tuberculosis.
Yet there was one thing he says doctors knew they could do: touch the patient. The touch was at least comforting and at times healing. From his book The Youngest Science we read: "The oldest and most effective act of doctors (is) the touching. Some people don't like being handled by others, but not, or almost never, sick people. They NEED being touched, and part of the dismay in being very sick is the lack of close human contact. Ordinary people, even close friends, even close family members, tend to stay away from the very sick, for fear of interfering, or catching the illness or just for fear of bad luck. The doctor's oldest skill in trade was to place his hands on the patient.”
I fear there are people who are never touched except when they go to the doctor. And that may be why many go when it's not so much their body but spirit which is sick.
There are so many human conditions that need "touch – hug – therapy.” Our feelings of inferiority, our failures, our fears of growing up or growing old, our fears of being ugly, our big and little, griefs, loneliness, guilt, fear of dying.
When the call came two weeks ago that my grandmother who was in many ways my stand-in mother had died, Dianne answered. Before she said a thing, she put her arms around me tight and then said what she had to say. That hug, in ways I can't explain, has helped hold me together.
Jesus, the big hugger, knew that we humans need a lot of touch in order to grow up. Think of all the artist's conceptions of him: holding children, touching the sick, carrying a lamb, his arms stretched out to the world even as they were nailed to a cross. That's what the church is about, the holding company, it reminds us and the world that people need to be touched and hugged with arms and hugging words. Fists never work. Hugs do.
Sometimes at home our communication boils down to cuts, cold shoulders and for at least
two brothers I know, slugs. You and I need to roll out of the sack and get to church so the holding company can remind us to keep those arm and word hugs coming and going.
If people are to mature and grow up they need to be held. But we can't stop with the hugs if we are to pattern ourselves after the Jesus model. The purpose of Jesus was not to make the world knee deep in sentimental sugar.
2) THE CHURCH EXISTS TO HOLD PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE.
Jesus spoke of forgiveness and acceptance galore. He embodied God's willingness to forgive
us far more readily than we are willing to forgive and accept ourselves or each other. But he never implied that it is okay for people to just do their thing.
To the woman caught in the act of adultery, after he had saved her life from the stone throwers, he said: "Don't do that anymore.” To the wealthy guy who loved his money better than anything else, he said, “You've got to let go if you want to travel with me.” To the picky little law pushing Pharisees, he said, "Shame on you, people are more important than how you wash your hands, what you eat, or what you do or don't do on the Sabbath. Perhaps most powerfully, he said, "What you do to the least important human being, it's just like you're doing it to me."
You see, Jesus did not just hold people, he held them responsible for their lives. You, I, or our society will never grow up unless we take responsibility for our lives.
And so, the Church exists to hold you, me, and our society responsible. Responsible, that is, according to the measure of Christ, the fulness of Christ. Jesus our measure calls for faithfulness in our marriages – even on the days that we don't want to be faithful, tenderness in parenting – even when those little darlings have us climbing the walls, honesty in business – even when everyone else is cutting corners, compassion for the poor – even when you think you saw a food stamp recipient in a Cadillac, love for the enemy - even when they are so-called sub-human Russians. These are mature humanhood measures from Christ.
It is tough to be the church in a world that does not mind being hugged but hates to be held responsible. The majority today we are told wants to fry criminals in the electric chair, kick the poor into the streets, and build bigger bombs even if we destroy ourselves and the economy in the doing of it. The church will rankle and irritate with its feeding and peace-making questions from its Lord. People will tell the church to mind its own spiritual business, to get its bleeding heart back into the sanctuary. But the church will answer, we are minding our business. This is God's world. Whatever affects the life of God's world and his children is God's business and thus the business of God's people, the church. This is God's world and it does not belong to Yuri Andropov or Ronald Reagan.
In his book The Gospel for the Person who has Everything, William Willimon speaks to this matter of the “holding us responsible character” of the church: "Stay in church long enough, and there is a good chance that it will demand your time, your money, your love, maybe even your life. And it will make no apologies for its nagging demands. The church wants not just our...vague 'love' or abstract 'faith'; it wants us to put our money where our hearts are.... It wants commitment and response. The church will ask you to feel some of the world's aches and pains along with your own. It will challenge your cynicism and defeatism with talk about Easter and 'all things being possible'. It will tell you that you are more competent and capable, more responsible for yourself and others than you think you are. The church demands a response from you simply because every time the church opens a Bible, sings a hymn, hears a sermon, baptizes a person, eats the Lord's Supper or a family night potluck dinner, the church hears God demanding a response."
God through Christ through the church holds us, just holds us, and then holds us responsible for what we do to ourselves, each other, and the world. Paul said that we need to mature so we will not be blown like children in the wind by the false doctrines of the world. And with false doctrines, the world abounds! Oh, you know them: “Get all you can while you can," "Look out for number one," "It's okay as long as you don't get caught," "Don't worry about them, it's their own fault," "Those people are not like us, so we don't have to talk to them, understand them, or worry about their extinction." These are false doctrines, you see, when measured by the fullness of Christ who taught that God created this world out of and for love. This world will never successfully function without fierce, forgiving, never-quitting love. Dog-eat-dog business practices, mutual-assured destruction military strategies will never work. We will either learn to live in love with our friends and enemies or die. That's the choice, it has always been the choice: love or die.
Why the church? The world needs a holding company if it, as well as you and I, are going to survive. Augustine (born in 354 AD) knew what people needed in the church. "Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low spirited to be encouraged, the weak supported, objectors confronted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil born with, and ALL ARE TO BE LOVED."
To grow up, we need to be held and held responsible. God help us hold on to each other in the holding company. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
God, we are such puzzling mysteries to ourselves:
We can feel deep love and fierce anger for the same person,
On some days we can work so hard to make things better while on other days we just want to be left alone,
We can be around many people and feel so lonely, at times, on other occasions we can be so at home in our solitude,
We fear that things will change and fear they won't,
We can pretend to know it all and feel so uncertain inside,
Even though we think about ourselves almost all the time, we can at times forget ourselves and really care, give, and sacrifice for others,
God, sometimes you seem so real to us, other times so absurd.
We are complex creatures. We are amazing and confusing. We need you to help us make sense of our lives. In our wonderful exasperating intricacy, we find clues about you, the original mystery. We sense we are the result of a powerful and caring creative process. We come to realize that there is more to us and the world than meets the eye, that you coarse within us and in our world.
God, thank you for the puzzling mystery of life in general and our lives in particular.
We thank you for Jesus who shows us how to live life, loving you and each other even when it hurts. Amen.