A hundred years ago, the United Presbyterian Church in North America – one of our predecessor denominations – spent some time and energy thinking about why the church exists. That’s always a good question to ask. It’s important for us to constantly remind ourselves why we’re here, because it is so easy for us humans to lose our way, to wander from the path that God has set before us, to “go astray,” like lost sheep. We can be more intentional about doing that which we know we ought to be doing when we have a deep understanding of what we’re all about in the first place. A hundred years ago the United Presbyterian Church in North America identified six “great ends of the church” – six fundamental reasons why the church exists. The second “great end of the church” is the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God. What does that mean for us, here and now?
Let’s begin first with that last phrase, “children of God.” If we’re going to affirm that the church exists for the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God, we need to know who the children of God are. It is all people, everywhere? Is it just those who call themselves Christians? Just those who have been baptized? Is it some subset of Christians? (Are only 144,000 saved?!?)
We understand that God created all people, everywhere, “in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27). We were created, indeed, to be in relationship to God. But something went wrong; the powers of evil and sin entered this world; we drifted away from the people God created us to be. All is not as it was intended to be. So, from practically the very beginning of all things, God has been trying to bring us back home.
We understand that God called the ancient Hebrew people to be “the children of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 14:1). God freely chose to enter into a special covenantal relationship with these people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; God called Israel to be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The Old Testament recounts the story of how God continually reached out to God’s children with love and mercy and justice, and how God’s children continually wandered from the path that God had set before them. Every now and then there were moments of repentance and reformation, such as when King Josiah tried diligently to restore Israel to faithful service to God (see chapters 22 and 23 in 2 Kings), but on the whole the story of the Old Testament is a story of an extraordinarily faithful God and a more-or-less unfaithful people. We can see ourselves mirrored in the pages of this story.
We understand that with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, the invitation to become children of God has been extended to all of us who are not direct descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As Paul so eloquently testifies in chapters 9-11 of his letter to the church in Rome, we are like a “wild olive shoot” that God has grafted onto the olive tree. We are latecomers to this salvation story! That is why the New Testament uses the language of adoption: “when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:5); “you have received a spirit of adoption” (Romans 8:15); “he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:5). The people of Israel were the original children of God; those of us who respond to God’s call in Jesus Christ become the adopted children of God. Every time somebody responds in good faith to the grace and the claim of God upon their life, they join the household of God, and the world is one step closer to what God originally intended it to be. The invitation to become part of God’s household is to be extended everywhere, to all people, and it is our job, our privilege, and our responsibility to keep extending this invitation anywhere and everywhere we go.
The phrase “children of God” therefore can refer to three different groups of people: first, the people of Israel; second, all those who have already responded in faith to the claim and call of God upon their lives; and third, all those who might yet become members of the household of God. We belong to the middle group, but it is important for us to remember that we need to have loving and familial relationships with the other two groups – those who were members of God’s household before us, and those who might yet become members of God’s household after us. Paul reminds us that God’s covenant with Israel still stands and that we Christians have not displaced the Jews in God’s heart, “for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29); Matthew and Luke remind us that we bear responsibility for spreading the love, grace, and justice of God to the whole rest of the world: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20); "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). We can never claim that God’s love belongs to us, and to us alone. There is room in God’s heart for so many more, and it’s our job to spread that love.
Therefore, the church is called to promote “the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.”
We provide shelter. Shelters offer refuge from all the unpleasant realities of life, all that stuff that exists in our world that is not as God intended it to be. Disaster relief, housing for the homeless, food for the hungry, medical care for the afflicted and injured, resettlement for the refugee, places of refuge for victims of abuse, care for the widows and the orphans, recovery programs, all kinds of initiatives to help people become independent and self-sustaining – the list is endless. Wherever there is a child of God (or a yet-to-be-adopted child of God) in need, there we need to be, providing shelter through the incarnation of the body of Christ, the church.
We provide nurture. Nurture has to do with helping people grow: supporting them, encouraging them, teaching them, developing them. When we nurture someone, we help them to grow, to become better, stronger, healthier, more self-reliant, more self-confident, more mature. Nurturing people doesn’t happen at a distance; nurturing people happens close at hand, when we really get to know the people whom we are seeking to help. Teachers, tutors, mentors, parents – the good ones really know the people with whom they are working. Wherever there is a child of God (or a yet-to-be-adopted child of God) who could stand to grow (and we all fall into that category!), there we need to be, providing nurture through the incarnation of the body of Christ, the church.
We provide spiritual fellowship. Fellowship is a unique kind of relationship between people of similar interests; spiritual fellowship is an even more unique kind of relationship between people who find their grounding in God. When you know that you can look deeply into someone else’s eyes and see in that person someone who places a firm and certain trust upon the rock of our salvation, that’s spiritual fellowship. When you can sit down with someone and offer heartfelt prayers for one another, that’s spiritual fellowship. When you can talk with someone and know that this other person sees the world through a God-oriented lens, that’s spiritual fellowship. When the church is at its best, we can look past all the other barriers that might divide us from one another, and all the matters about which we might disagree with one another, and we can see inside each other the mark of the Holy Spirit and, indeed, even the very image of the divine. There are times when I find myself in conversation with other people whose theological views are vastly different from mine, but I know deep down that at some basic, root level, those people really get it, and those conversations can often be tremendously rich and deep, despite our surface-level disagreements. That’s spiritual fellowship, and it is incredible and amazing and profound. The deeper we go in our own spiritual walk, the closer we come to others – because the deeper we go, the closer we are to the center of all things. Wherever there is a child of God (or a yet-to-be-adopted child of God) yearning for depth and meaning in life, there we need to be, inviting them to go deeper into their relationship with God and with one another through the incarnation of the body of Christ, the church.
Why does the church exist? For the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.
Peace and blessings,
Rev. Bill Pinches
Pastor
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