Sermon from October 2, 2011
"Church"
Ephesians 2:19-22

We often hear people express admiration for Jesus and disdain or even disgust for the Church. That is easy to do. Anyone with remote in hand can catch a random rant against the Church. It is understandable. People expect better out of the Church than they often get. But there’s a problem. How can a person admire Jesus and despise the Church that Jesus died to create and for whom He has high hopes and a splendid future?

Do you know what the Church is like? When Christ raised Lazarus from the dead, and Lazarus came lumbering out of death, bound hand and foot in burial cloth, he looked more dead than alive, and he smelled more dead than alive. But he was alive. What he needed was for someone to remove the burial cloth and let him wash up.

That’s the Church. This congregation and hundreds of thousands like it are alive with everlasting life, and at the same time they are still encumbered by a grave cloth and giving off a disagreeable odor. Underneath is something beautiful, if we have the faith to seek it, and if we can just get some more of that grave cloth off. Look with me into Holy Scripture and see the hidden beauty of the Church.

A Bride in Tatters
Look first at Ephesians 5:25-27. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

I have been to many weddings in my life. I have never seen a bedraggled bride. Whatever drama they had at home and whatever nerves gnawed at their composure in the bride’s quarters, all brides come down the aisle on their fathers’ arms with every hair in place and pearly whites gleaming behind flawless lips.

Christ in contrast has betrothed Himself a bride in tatters. Her professed “love (for Him) is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.” People who rail against the indefensible failures of the Church aren’t telling Christ anything He doesn’t know. He says to her. “It was I who taught you to walk, taking you by the arms; but you did not realize it was I who healed you. I led you with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from your neck and bent down to feed you. And yet, my people are determined to turn from me.”

Have you been harmed by the Church? So have I. Do you grieve at her public shame? So do I. Do you flame with anger at her public folly? So do I. Yet I love her. She is our spiritual Mother. She is the chosen bride of Christ. Let us look past her failings and think of her as she some day shall be: a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Let us love our imperfect spiritual Mother, remembering that she is the Bride of Christ, and her life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is her life, appears, then she also will appear with him in glory.

Carnal Anchor Sunk in the Soil of Earth
In spite of its imperfections the Church is called to be the sign of God’s presence on earth. Here’s how the apostle put it in Ephesians 2:19-22. Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The Church is not just another choice in the free market of ideas. It is God’s dwelling place on earth. It is the flesh and blood anchor that God has sunk into the soil of earth. It merits our loyalty, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s God’s dwelling place on earth.

Our Dual Loyalty
The Apostle Peter used the language of Israel to define the Church. 1 Peter 2:9-10 says this: But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Three times he called the Church a people, a chosen people, a people belonging to God, and he called the Church a holy nation. That is language we ordinarily use to describe a sovereign state; and that language introduces a necessary tension into the soul of the Church. It is the tension of a dual loyalty.

You can feel the tension by placing side by side two declarations of loyalty. One declaration says, “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.” The other declaration says, “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple” – Luke 14:33.

My allegiance to my country deepens when I take in the Lincoln Memorial or find the names of men on the Vietnam Memorial. My allegiance deepens when I remember September 11 or read the Civil War story Rifles for Watie or Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech or sing O beautiful for Spacious Skies or stand with my hand over my heart at the playing of the National Anthem. I love my country, not because it’s better than other countries, but because it’s mine, my fatherland, my country.

And there’s another country
     I’ve heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her,
     most great to them that know.
We may not count her armies,
     we may not see her king.
Her fortress is a faithful heart,
     her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul, and silently,
     her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness,
     and all her paths are peace.
-Cecil Spring-Rice

My allegiance to my other country deepens around this central meal of that other country where we commune with Christ. Here evil and hope and the ceaseless strivings of man come for judgment to the eternal pity and mercy of God.