12-31-23

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
December 31, 2023
If all religions want peace, then why are we having such a difficult time achieving it? I would like to suggest that religions do not want peace. Almost all of the people who inspired the major religions of the world wanted peace, but once they became religions, they also became institutions. Institutions are wired to protect themselves at any cost, and whatever the original values might have been, they are set aside for the sake of the primary objective, which is the survival of the institution. Sorry to be the pessimist once again, yet the church’s primary metaphor was not based on any modern-day school of organization. Instead, the image the Apostle Paul used was that of a body. It was a very organic image, and the purpose of this body was (and is) to love. If you think about it, love is a rather immeasurable concept that does not fit the qualifiable markers that institutions seek to achieve. In the church, a group of people striving to be the Body of Christ, faithfulness expressed in love is the primary purpose or function. It is sort of impossible to say, “We’ve had a 30% increase in love this year.” But those who are following Jesus, if they are serious about the work, are constantly striving to grow in their capacity to love as Jesus loved. And even when it appears as if that love is making little or no difference in the world, we keep on doing what we have been called to do.

O God of Love, O Giver of Goodness and Grace, we have too often taken the message you embodied in a body and created rules and bureaucracy in the strange belief that we can manufacture the Christian product better than what you called forth through your Spirit. Not that a little structure and organization are bad things, but we pray for the capacity to toss away anything we might have established in the greater pursuit of sharing love with the world. Amen.