Have you ever heard anyone say, “Jesus sounds good to me; it’s just Christians I can’t stand,” or “I can follow God without being part of a church”? I understand. Sometimes it’s hard to believe in “the holy catholic church.”
On these communion Sundays, we are exploring the affirmation of our faith in the Apostles Creed. To this point we have expressed our belief in events which we have not personally witnessed -- like the creation and the resurrection.
But it’s different when we speak of the Church. There is a church right across the street. Look out the window. It’s there. There is also where are sitting right now -- and the people we are sitting with.
Maybe some child has been kicking your chair all through worship. Maybe the person next to you can’t sing -- and it’s your spouse. Maybe it’s too hot or too cold. It’s not all very spiritual, is it? Doesn’t it make you wonder?
Now if we spiritualize the church as the mystical union of all who believe in Christ, it’s not too hard to believe in “the holy catholic church” But it’s different when you bring it down to earth -- to the church as it is. Then you face the history of failures and compromises with evil. You see the sex scandals and cover-ups in a part of the church. Maybe you see an institution with denominational differences, budgets, committees, confusion, debate.
Doesn’t it stretch your imagination to say all this is the “holy catholic church” -- and that you believe in it in the same way as you believe in the resurrection?
The question for me is, “Do I just believe in the spiritual church of my ideal or do I also believe in the actual church of my experience?”
It is important for me to believe in both. For the church is both. The Church is a divine institution. But the Church is physically expressed in the world. It is the Church of God. But it is also the church of God in Corinth or Ephesus or Moorpark.
And for me to believe in the actual church as well as the ideal is for me to recognize the great role that God gives to His church -- the goal of connecting us to each other. We are meant to be part of a community.
An early Christian named Cyprian of Carthage wrote: “No one can have God as his Father who does not have the church for his mother.” In other words, to acknowledge God as Father means to join a community of people. The New Testament stresses the importance of a personal faith, But the New Testament has no time for self-sufficient individualism.
For me to believe in the actual as well as the ideal is for me to recognize what really connects me to other believers. It isn’t common interests or common background. It’s Jesus.
In the powerful words of Deitrich Bonhoffer in Life Together, “We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.”
Bonhoeffer observes: “The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves -- Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to the church.”
And what is the promise? The promise is that in spite of all of our past and present failures, we are holy -- just as we say in the creed. It is the promise that God is not caught by surprise by our sins.
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 at twice the projected budget and three times the estimated construction time. One delay was the discovery that the cable provider had substituted inferior cable strands. Work came to a halt. It was not resumed until the bridge designer announced that he had anticipated this possibility and intentionally over-designed the bridge.
God is just as smart with His church. When Jesus ascended to heaven, He left his unreliable and largely unproven disciples to span the continents with the message of the kingdom of God. That happened. But subsequent history has revealed countless examples of questionable theology, mixed motives, and the moral failure of those who lead the church.
Still the core integrity of the church’s purpose and mission is still not in jeopardy. The Lord of the church anticipated human sin when he entrusted imperfect servants with His mission. And despite it all, we still belong to Him. We are still the “holy: church.
We are also the catholic church.
Maybe the most common question I hear about the Apostles’ Creed is this: “Why do we say ‘holy catholic church’? I thought we were Protestants.”
The answer is simple. There are two ways to use the word “catholic”. If you talk about the Roman Catholic Church with a capital “C”, you are talking about a particular part of the body of Christ, based in Rome and presided over by the pope. But if you say “catholic” with a small “c”, you are using the word as an adjective that means universal. The church is catholic. It transcends all boundaries of nationality, race, language, culture, and political and economic systems.
That’s true on an international level. It’s also true on a very local level. For we church members are part of each other.
A seminary professor named Tom Long writes: “Not long ago, there was a baptism of a baby in the little church where I worship. I watched from the pew as the young parents, holding their child, took their places at the front of the church for the ceremony. Mostly it was the father who caught my attention that morning, because I was struck by the differences between us. There he was, barely out of high school, wearing black jeans, a T-shirt, and a couple of tatoos. He had more body parts pierced by metal than the getaway car in a mob hit. There I was, middle-aged, coat and tie, not a tongue stud or a nose ring to be seen. We obviously came from different planets. Nothing in common. But there we were in worship together, he pledging to raise his newborn son in the faith of Jesus Christ, me standing up to promise that I would help him, and both of us somehow meaning it.
Long continues, “That is, after all, what our Confessions mean when they call the church a ‘covenant community.” It means that, unlike Lulu’s bar where like-minded, beautiful people of the same generation gather, the church always throws you together with people with whom you would not be caught dead if this were merely a matter of social protocol. It means that only God’s grace is strong enough to keep people as wildly different as we are not only in the same room but also on the same page, doing things together -- like helping each other’s children to become faithful.
For it is within the Church that the story of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith are preserved. It is the Church which goes out in missionary and pastoral endeavor. The Church is the instrument and the agent through which people meet Christ.
Bill and Gloria Gaither wrote a song called "The Family of God." It's the story of the body of Christ, the church at work.
A young couple in their Indiana church, Ron and Darlene Garner, have three children. The day before Easter Ron went to work at the garage where he was a mechanic. While Ron was working with combustible material, there was an explosion. He managed to crash his way through the large double doors before the building blew apart and went up in flames. He was severely burned over most of his body.
The news from the emergency ward was pessimistic. Ron was alive but not expected to make it through the night. It was only minutes before a chain of telephone calls alerted the body, the church, the family of God. The community of believers began to pray for Ron. All day long they prayed, in little groups, in big groups, in homes, at the church, over the phone.
By evening the word came that Ron was still alive. The doctors couldn't understand how he was holding on -- but they said that now he had lived eight hours, if he could make it until morning, possibly, there was a chance just a chance.
The family of God kept on praying. The church building was kept open, and the lights burned all through the night, as a steady stream of folks who cared and loved came to talk to Jesus about this young father who was "bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh."
There were very few Easter bonnets or bright new outfits the next morning. Gloria Gaither says, "we were just there, drawn together closer than we had ever been before by the reality we'd been sharing that when one part of the body suffers, we all suffer with it." There was hurt, and there was pain in the body. That pain had drawn the attention of every other member.
About twenty minutes into the service, the pastor came in with a report from the hospital. Although he had gone without sleep to be with the Garner family, there was sunshine in his eyes. "Ron has outlived the deadline. The doctors say he has a chance. They are going to begin treatment."
For the body of Christ, that news was better than eight hours of sleep and a good breakfast. Hope and gratitude poured itself into the glorious songs of Easter.
Those songs that day were songs of commitment too. That group of believers knew that long, hard days for Ron and Darlene and the children had only just begun. The body, the community of believers, would be called to help with the children, to provide many long trips to the hospital, pints of blood for transfusions, money for hospital bills, meals to be taken to the family -- long months of support while the slow skin grafting and healing process went on -- leading to the place of active health Ron enjoys today. Gloria writes: "We knew what it would mean and in our celebration we pledged ourselves to whatever it would take to make that injured part of the body whole and well again."
On their way home from worship, Bill and Gloria could hardly speak. Finally, one said to the other, "they'd do that for us, too!" No, they weren't model church members. Their work often took them out of town on weekends. But the fact was they were part of a community, part of the body -- not because they were worthy or had earned special treatment or were indispensable, but just because they were part of the family of God. They too were important.
What Gloria Gaither tells about her church is true about ours. I’ve seen you in action.
None of us has it all together. Each of us is incomplete on our own. We are privileged to be part of Christ's body life. We are privileged to part of the holy catholic church..