Church as Sacrament
There are no lone rangers in the kingdom of God
He can no longer have God as his father, who has not
the Church for his mother1.
John Calvin
The Church is a whore, but she is my mother2.
Tony Campolo
When I was growing up, my parents would make us go to church no matter where we were. In Hawaii, Panama, Mexico, or some measly shamble of a town in West Texas. If it was a Sunday and there was a church, we were there.
I hated it then; all I wanted to do was sleep in, eat some pancakes (I’m actually a waffle guy) and watch TV.
Now, at 28, I see the beauty in this discipline. In rest and trials, on vacations and at home, I need the people of God.
I often forget that the church exists beyond my individual spirituality; it is an ontological mystery that is both in time and beyond. As author Tish Harrison Warren reminds us, “Our relationship with God is never less than an intimate relationship with Christ, but it is always more than that3.”
The church is at once an institutional miracle that will continue far beyond my days and yet is as ordinary as 18 elderly folk proclaiming Christ as King around a table with Yorkshire tea and stale Tim Tams.
And this rhythm of church going is not just about feeling good or ticking a box but about reminding myself that God is still at work and out working as He always has.
Two weeks ago, I attended a service at a small Anglican parish – no fancy lights or music, no flashy sermon or moving speech, simply the radical act of a few gathered – mostly elderly – to practice resurrection.
During the final song, I noticed a woman who looked beat up by life; her spirit was beaming, but she was tattered, tattooed, and weeping.
I thought here is a stranger who's walked a life, possibly of pain and loss, of dreams deferred, in this random country town weeping and worshiping Christ. The lyrics went something like:
God cares for all his little children
All are safe in his embrace
And as she wept Sunday school let out, two toddlers came running to her, she embraced them as Christ has embraced her (and as he has every other soul on this planet whose made themselves at home in the arms of Love).
The Church is a mother indeed. A wretched, amazing Grace.
But the church also sucks. The church is a place of grace and, simultaneously, hypocrisy.
I know that I cannot give up on the church for it will one day be without blemish, but “our task is not simply to dwell on what the church will one day be, but to face what she currently is, square and honestly4.”
The scandal, greed, racism, violence, and bigotry sit right alongside the church’s care for the poor, generosity, and beauty. These evils must be named and wrestled out before healing comes naming and acceptance.
The church is frustratingly made up of people like you and me, which is to say full of contradictions and shadows, yet cable of radical acts of kindness, mercy, and reconciliation.
There is nowhere safer and more dangerous than community - the community of faith. A place of healing and manipulation, deceit and restoration, burnout and blessing. There are no simple answers for the pain many have experienced, but God is not mocked or confused; there is hope yet.
The church as sacrament - blessed and holy and signalling the redemption and hope in a breaking world. An imperfect and fractured sacrament, yet a sacrament nonetheless. I don’t want to idealise or depersonalise the church; I want to embrace that God is at work in this place in this time with these broken, beautiful people.
I still wrestle with getting my butt and heart to Church – yet I am grateful now that my parents instilled this love and practice and joy of gathering with the broken and baptized, sinners becoming saints, to proclaim and worship, to weep and laugh and yell all under the name of King Jesus.
However, I do still want a waffle.
Read in Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in everyday life, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 120. Original quote from: John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.1.1.
This quote is often contributed to St Augustine, however it was made popular by the late pastor and author Tony Campolo who synthesized the following quote by Augustine: “Let us honor the Catholic Church, our true Mother, the true Bride of her Husband, because she is the wife of so great a Lord. And what shall I say? How great is that Husband and of singular rank, that he discovered a prostitute and made her a virgin.” See: Tony Campolo, “Why the Church is Important,” in Christianity Today, May 1, 2007, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2007/05/why-church-is-important/.
Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in everyday life, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 118.
Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary, 123.