I walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious. To stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart, to gaze and glory and to give oneself again to God, what more could a man ask? Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap, in mercy, He shall give me a host of children that I may lead through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose fingers’ ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, smell His garments, and smile into my Lover’s eyes, ah, then, not stars, nor children, shall matter–only Himself.
― Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot
If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
~ paul, The Least of The Apostles, in Philippians 3
Oh Beloved, it is true.
Some things are so deep, that they reach all the way across, and around, the saddle of eternity, and present themselves to us as something profoundly simple. And as is often true, the most profound things are simplest. However, just as simply, we can miss the profound unless we become willing to see it. This fool of a writer was this man for the first 45 years of his life.
I had grown up in church. And, I am truly glad that i did. For, it is in and through the Church that our salvation is found. But, even in being there, I had missed what Church is.
Many of you know the story (either mine, or yours, or someone you know). In sitting in the pews of a building we called a church, we were missing what The Church was. We were warming the pews, but the church was not warming our hearts… It was actually a terrible thing.
We knew that the organization had a mission; a Great Commission even. But somehow we felt that, while we were part of something very good, it was just one more place to go. One more thing to fit into our schedules. We even prioritized it… Awful, really.
Can we see it?
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Church is not a place, though It is an Edifice. It is The Builder Himself. We are not just inside some building. We are In Christ. But, what does this mean?
Everything.
Much of what most of us experience in our day to day lives, has been influenced by a wide range of thought models that tempt us to put much more faith in our eyes than is wise. We cannot see G_d. We don’t sit next to Jesus at the church. And in experiencing this sensation, we draw that the inference that the Greek idea of dualism (a separation between secular and sacred; a gulf between the physical and the spiritual) is correct.
Thankfully though, the Philosophers of ancient Greece, and you, and this fool of a writer, are dreadfully wrong.
When we go to church, we are not going to meet G_d. We, each of us who are re-born into belief in Christ, are His Mystical Body. We are the physical expression of a Real Person Who is far more real than we can begin to imagine.
So, when those who are in Christ are called “The Church,” we are exactly that. The location where we go to worship is not to bring us closer to G_d. It is to bring us to a place where we can begin to see who we really are. We are the very hands and feet of our Blessed Savior – being drawn together in our communion with Him – until, One Day, we will be like Him, and drawn into the Divine Life in a tangible and eternally visible way.
So, are you feeling like you are not part of a church during this period of separation wrought by a virus? The sensation is understandable. But, it could not be further from the truth. You, beloved, are the Church. You, beloved are the mystical body that survives quite well, apart from the beauty of a sanctuary.
Tonight is your night. Change your perspective. You are not alone. The Chief Cornerstone has already laid you into a Body that can never be separated from Him… Because it is Him.
The people who keep on asking if they can’t lead a decent life without Christ, don’t know what life is about; if they did they would know that ‘a decent life’ is mere machinery compared with the thing we men are really made for. Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear – the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.
~ CS (Jack) Lewis
