What's the Point?

What's the Point?--August 25, 2016

"For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God." [Gal. 6:15-16]

This might seem like a strange question coming from a pastor--and one who grew up in the church, at that--but I'll ask it anyway: what is the point of the church? 

Seriously, what's the point of any of it? Why do we bother going every Sunday, why do we bother being involved in ministry activities, why do we bring our children to learn the stories, and why did early disciples like St. Paul risk their lives to bring the word of Jesus to new places and people?  What's the point?

I ask that question, because I think we often assume the answer... and usually the default assumption answers are the wrong ones.  Often, the default answers Christians give to "why church?" are either, "To get people into heaven," or basically, "Because it's a nice social club to belong to with people who are already kind of like me and who think and talk and look and vote like me."  Both of those miss the boat by jumping off the pier into the overly shallow waters on either side. 

So, what is it, really?  For Paul writing to the Galatian Christians a mere couple of decades after the resurrection, already they were making those kind of wrongheaded shallow assumptions. So Paul has to ask them, "Seriously, are we a part of this new community called the church as one more social club, where we can keep the uncircumcised out and let the circumcised in, or is there something more?  Is the point of belonging to the church just a matter of securing a place in heaven when we die?" 

Because, in all seriousness, if the church is just a means for lining up reservations for the afterlife, you've got to ask why we don't just give up on the weekly gatherings, the bread and the wine, the welcome of strangers, the housing of the homeless, the teaching of stories, the singing and praise, and the working alongside of people we don't always get along with. Why not just mail out pamphlets where people can check a box and pray a prayer to reserve their spot in heaven if that's the sole point of this thing called church?  We had better ask ourselves the same questions Paul put to his fellow disciples of Jesus back in the first century. Is church just my heavenly fire insurance policy?  Or is the scope of being the church bigger--including that promise of eternal life, but beginning even now? 

Paul thinks so--he thinks the old club mentality (even if it's the "heaven-club" mentality) is just too narrow for what God is really about in this community called the church.  God has it in mind to begin a new creation--and in fact, Paul would tell us, God has begun that new creation in the person of Jesus.  So in one sense, this "new creation" business is about each one of us being transformed individually--in a way that begins even now--from the heart outward.  "New creation" is about grace making something renewed out of my old dust and ashes.  "New creation" is about God taking the emptiness and spent-ness that is "me," the empty-handed, "I-got-nuthin" sense we sometimes get when we are at the end of our rope, and how God breathes into us again like the Creator breathing into the clay in Eden to bring humanity to life in the first place.  New creation is how God does that to me, and to you, as a free gift.

But it is also about the whole creation. As in everything, as in our societies and relationships, our politics and economics, our environment and our internal selves.  God's intention with the person of Jesus--and the community that gathers around him called the church--is nothing less ambitious than a whole new creation.  Paul has been telling us all along that God has begun that new creation already by the sheer grace of God.  As people who trust that promise, we are dared to be that new creation already.  Paul is telling us: God says you are a new creation, so go and be a new creation!

We practice that new creation--we embody what it looks like and what it will look like--in the ways we serve and love everything in God's creation.  That's the answer to the "why church" question.  It is an attempt, however meager, however imperfect, to let the new creation begin among all of us, and to offer our whole selves, from the heart to the head to the hands, from our piety to our passion to our politics, up to the God who brings about new creation.  We don't just send out pamphlets and say, "See ya in heaven," because the new creation begins now.  It sure as heaven ain't done here... but it does begin here. And God is determined to renew every last square inch of it... including the inches inside your ribcage, or mine.

This day is full of opportunities to practice the new creation that God has begun in us in both big and little, glamorous and unspoken ways--recycling, visiting the sick, forgiving the grudge I am holding, calling for reforms that provide justly for those in need, singing a new song.  The day is wide open with possibilities to be the people God says we are--to be a part of a new creation.  We will fail at it, too, in all honesty, but we will trust God's declaration that we are nonetheless still a part of the new creation and are still children of God--and we will God's declaration more strongly than we will trust our failures.  And we will be raised up again, in this day, and on the next day, and on the third day, too, to practice the new creation all over again.  Where will it begin for you in this day?

God our Creator, your works are so wide and so deep and so big.  Help us in this day to recognize everything we touch is a piece of your creation, a piece that can be touched with new creation as we embody the love of Jesus for all we meet and all your world.  And with that recognition, give us the courage to be the presence of your new creation today.