19 December 2024
I’m sorry. This will sound very harsh. Please know that I feel myself challenged deeply today. I am among those to whom John Baptizer would call chaff, deserving of the cleansing fire. Thank God, that holy fire is meant to cleanse and purify rather than destroy outright. Thank God for His mercy and love.
I look at the Church as one standing on its periphery looking inward. This is not what Paul meant when he spoke of being like the Romans when in Rome. Fitting in that one might share the Gospel, the Gospel, mind you, was what he had in mind. Instead, too often the church and its people seek to fit in so that they might be found acceptable by the culture they are charged to change. The call to make disciples of all people as we go out into the world has, unfortunately, been turned on its head. The world has made a disciple of the Church.
In 2 Peter, the second chapter, a powerful indictment is leveled against believers who have fallen back into former belief patterns. Righteousness was used to give them liberty to do as they so please. Three things does Peter accuse them of, slander, adultery, and greed. Consider how casual we have grown in our talking about other believers. ‘They believe or behave or dress differently than us’ is the real motivating criteria of our speech, not righteousness or our form of orthodoxy. We speak against the promiscuity of others, too, and yet do not consider our own holiness when it comes to flirting or what we’ll wear to church. Under the guise of needing more money to pay the bills, repair the car, feed our families, we have entered into the same guilt as those ‘at the top.’ Sin has a way of trickling down, and that is why we rejoice when a king of the old testament repents for their entire nation. It is the example of those at the top that promotes the sin of the church. We have been marked by a subtle, unconscious, ignored envy of the world.
In that context, with that indictment made against the Church, and I confess, against myself, I read Matthew 5:3-11. We are called to be poor, not be envious of the rich, mourners rather than envious of the party-goers, gentle, not driven by power-seeking, seeking instead righteousness, rather than what we can get away with, mercy-extenders nor grudge-keepers, pure in heart not pure for appearance, makers of peace rather than wielding our righteousness in judgments. It may well be that we are not persecuted because the world finds nothing to accuse us over. This is true in so far as the Church has allowed itself to be made a disciple of the world.