I feel like I don't have any closure yet with the post I wrote yesterday.
After sitting around a fire last night with a couple friends, I explained to them the best I could how my beliefs have changed dramatically over the last few months, how I'm kinda liking not going to church on Sunday, and how I always have this drive to keep pushing the envelope.
Yet, at the same time, I feel like I've been on hiatus from really following Jesus the way I want to.
I need to read that Boenhoeffer 40-day devotional book or something, or maybe read Irresistible Revolution again. Maybe then I'll get that extra umph that I'm looking for.
Or maybe not.
There's this phrase that I thought for a long time could be found in one of Paul's letters to the churches. It goes something like: "you are in the world but not of the world."
I looked and looked and looked and it turned out it wasn't there.
All these years of hearing this supposed quote, and it's nowhere to be found in the scriptures.
I had a great post lining up with regard to that crafty little cliche, but I guess I'm gonna have to save it for a rainy day. Actually, I can still use it, because the cliche still exists (it just won't be found in the canonized scriptures).
I think what's meant by the phrase (which is a very Christian phrase) is that Christians need to watch how close they get to sin (or sinners).
And so, as we were sitting around the fire last night, there were some isolated coals inside the firepit. My buddy was explaining to me that I was part of the isolated coals, while all the burning embers represented the church (or, the body).
While it didn't dawn on me in the moment, but started dawning on me today, I realized there was an even bigger piece of the pie that was missing in the fire analogy. I missed it as well as my buddy.
That phrase that I always hear come from the mouths of people who are claiming spiritual truths, is the best representation of the stark reality that is the church (at least the Church I'm familiar with): the Sunday service and all its trappings are a pretty modern way of getting us out of this ole' world.
While we teach and talk about the Jesus of the streets, hangin out with the roughnecks and the drunks, we know that that was then. This is now.
One thing that we can gather from speed-reading through the Gospels is: there were people who disagreed and didn't believe. But wait. If we're reading about specific people like Roman centurions and prostitutes and Pharisees, then that means that Jesus and/or Jesus followers were right in the middle of it all.
Right in the middle of the chaos.
Not closed off from the world in some synagogue, hiding from those meanie-head Pharisees.
Which looks very different from the Sunday service of today's church.
The only accounts we have in the gospels of verbal sermons are accounts that involve scenes like outdoors, by water wells, on hills, with cripples, with "sinners," and in harm's way.
To prevent from going too extreme, some of it was because that's just how it was back then.
But then, there's other parts that don't fit the that's-just-how-it-was-back-then mold.
What does it look like to take the Sunday service to the people as if the building didn't even exist?
What does it look like to get deeper into the world instead of deeper into the church?
Are those of us standing on the margins, wondering if the church is right for us, doing it all wrong? Or, are we closer to the world?
Are we closer to the world in which Jesus lived? Closer to the people whom Jesus talked to and ate with? Are we closer to the lepers, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors? The despised of society? The atheists? The agnostics? The rebels? The burnt out? The discontent?
It seems that when I walk into a Sunday service, I have to force myself to forget about the real life going outside. To forget about the real people who couldn't even come if they wanted to because they didn't have money to put gas in the car. Or, they didn't have a car.
So, my next question to you, the reader, is:
If you're on the fence about the Sunday service or even the church in general, are you being Jesus where you are? Or, do you have any creative ideas of what it would look like to be Jesus where you are?
I'd love to hear your stories!
After sitting around a fire last night with a couple friends, I explained to them the best I could how my beliefs have changed dramatically over the last few months, how I'm kinda liking not going to church on Sunday, and how I always have this drive to keep pushing the envelope.
Yet, at the same time, I feel like I've been on hiatus from really following Jesus the way I want to.
I need to read that Boenhoeffer 40-day devotional book or something, or maybe read Irresistible Revolution again. Maybe then I'll get that extra umph that I'm looking for.
Or maybe not.
There's this phrase that I thought for a long time could be found in one of Paul's letters to the churches. It goes something like: "you are in the world but not of the world."
I looked and looked and looked and it turned out it wasn't there.
All these years of hearing this supposed quote, and it's nowhere to be found in the scriptures.
I had a great post lining up with regard to that crafty little cliche, but I guess I'm gonna have to save it for a rainy day. Actually, I can still use it, because the cliche still exists (it just won't be found in the canonized scriptures).
I think what's meant by the phrase (which is a very Christian phrase) is that Christians need to watch how close they get to sin (or sinners).
And so, as we were sitting around the fire last night, there were some isolated coals inside the firepit. My buddy was explaining to me that I was part of the isolated coals, while all the burning embers represented the church (or, the body).
While it didn't dawn on me in the moment, but started dawning on me today, I realized there was an even bigger piece of the pie that was missing in the fire analogy. I missed it as well as my buddy.
That phrase that I always hear come from the mouths of people who are claiming spiritual truths, is the best representation of the stark reality that is the church (at least the Church I'm familiar with): the Sunday service and all its trappings are a pretty modern way of getting us out of this ole' world.
While we teach and talk about the Jesus of the streets, hangin out with the roughnecks and the drunks, we know that that was then. This is now.
One thing that we can gather from speed-reading through the Gospels is: there were people who disagreed and didn't believe. But wait. If we're reading about specific people like Roman centurions and prostitutes and Pharisees, then that means that Jesus and/or Jesus followers were right in the middle of it all.
Right in the middle of the chaos.
Not closed off from the world in some synagogue, hiding from those meanie-head Pharisees.
Which looks very different from the Sunday service of today's church.
The only accounts we have in the gospels of verbal sermons are accounts that involve scenes like outdoors, by water wells, on hills, with cripples, with "sinners," and in harm's way.
To prevent from going too extreme, some of it was because that's just how it was back then.
But then, there's other parts that don't fit the that's-just-how-it-was-back-then mold.
What does it look like to take the Sunday service to the people as if the building didn't even exist?
What does it look like to get deeper into the world instead of deeper into the church?
Are those of us standing on the margins, wondering if the church is right for us, doing it all wrong? Or, are we closer to the world?
Are we closer to the world in which Jesus lived? Closer to the people whom Jesus talked to and ate with? Are we closer to the lepers, the prostitutes, and the tax collectors? The despised of society? The atheists? The agnostics? The rebels? The burnt out? The discontent?
It seems that when I walk into a Sunday service, I have to force myself to forget about the real life going outside. To forget about the real people who couldn't even come if they wanted to because they didn't have money to put gas in the car. Or, they didn't have a car.
So, my next question to you, the reader, is:
If you're on the fence about the Sunday service or even the church in general, are you being Jesus where you are? Or, do you have any creative ideas of what it would look like to be Jesus where you are?
I'd love to hear your stories!
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