|
 Dear
Saints:
Why
the church? If you are like me, this simple question has plagued
you from time to time.
In
1899, Leo Tolstoy wrote his last novel entitled Resurrection.
In it, he asked a similar question and concluded that the
institutional church served no meaningful purpose. The important
thing, in his view, was the ethical aspect of the Gospel, what the
apostle Paul termed "faith expressing itself in love."
(Galatians 5:6). Paul, however, understood something that Tolstoy did
not: that faith is hard to come by or to sustain apart from the church.
The
church is that place where the Gospel is proclaimed and the
sacraments are rightly administered. The church is the place where
Jesus Christ has chosen to make himself personally available to his
people and to the world.
Have
you ever heard someone say, "I don't have to go to church to
experience God?" Such people may insist that they see little
difference between those who go to church and those who do not—so
why attend?
The
former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, tells the story of a
woman with whom he was in conversation about the Christian Faith. At
one point she retorted, "Why should I go to church? They are all
hypocrites!" To which he responded, "Well, there is always
room for one more."
For
years, I bounced around from church to church trying desperately to
find that one pure and holy denomination or congregation. It took me
a long time, but I finally realized that if there ever was such a
church, and if I found it and became a participant, it would no
longer be pure and holy! In my arrogance (though I did not recognize
it as such at the time) I thought the church was in desperate need of
someone just like me.
What
I have discovered since is that I desperately need the church. For
only in the church do I receive the instruction, the encouragement,
the strength, and the grace necessary for me to carry out the ethical
demands of the Faith.
Why
the church? In his disgust, Tolstoy broke away from the Orthodox
Faith in Russia to establish his own moral and political brand of
religion. It was briefly known as "Tolstoyism." Funny ...
we know little to nothing of his "religion" today while the
Christian church marches steadily onward.
When
I think about how for centuries people have rejected the church in
favor of their own particular brand of "true" Christianity
only to be lost in obscurity, my question concerning the church has
begun to change. Seldom do I ask anymore, "Why the church?"
More frequently, it seems, I find myself asking another question instead,
"Why
not the church?"
Grace
and peace,
Pastor
Larry |
