scope creep

One of the honors my church has given me in the last few months is the privilege of writing study notes to go along with the Sunday Sermon. These notes are then available for use by home groups that meet throughout the week. We’ve been working through 1 Corinthians, and today I’m supposed to be working on the “how do you build on Paul’s foundation” part of chapter 3, but I’m stymied because of how hard this section pulls on my heartstrings. Build the church, man. That is what I am about.

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

The second time I went to school to learn to be a minister was much better than the first. It was thicker, richer. And one of the first things that I realized was that my charismatic, independent, localized vision for the church was just too small. It didn’t even cover richness and breadth of the interconnected networks of secular society, and the church is greater than that.

Look, Nebuchadnezzar saw it. Daniel tells us his vision about the layered statue, with the golden head and clayey feet. The statue represented the governments of nations, and the stone which destroyed that statue was Jesus Christ. But what is the mountain that came from that stone, if it isn’t the church?

The shape of that mountain is important. It’s a single mountain that covers the entire earth. As I realized once in a conversation with some Mormon missionaries, it’s a single mountain, not a mountain range. So Daniel 2:” the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.” No interruptions. That casts down any assertions that there was a true church, which stopped, and then an intermediate period with no church, or a false church, followed by a restored true church.

At the same time, the mountain is a good deal bigger than the statue. It’s a mountain, not a hill, so it’s taller than the statue, and it clearly covers more ground. I take that to mean that it lasts longer through the generations (hello? forever?), and that it touches more of society. Local congregations, private associations, friendships, national governments… all of these things, inasmuch as they are real and valid ways for people to relate to each other and work together and form a society, will be subsumed in the world-mountain that is the church.

All of it. I can’t read the news without my vision of the church getting bigger. I can’t read about economics without my vision of the church getting better. I can’t think about business, or logistics, or farming, without my vision of the church getting bigger.

And here’s Paul talking about building the church, like it’s all okay. Now, it’s not enough to be a component of God’s active retrofit of all of human civilization, he wants me (us) to build it. That’s exciting. It’s astounding. And it’s not too daunting, because as best I can tell, the church universal is still only made up of the church local. I build up the church by building up my church.

And, hey, look. I get to help build the church by writing review questions for a sermon about building the church. The challenge is following the sermon, and not the pictures in my head. (And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here…”) Talk about scope creep!

Seriously?

Ok. So we bought this house, and it has no flooring in the attic, and weird a/c ductwork. But it’s fine, we can work with that. Anyway, I’m upstairs, moving insulation around so I can see the boards I want to lay rough flooring on. And there is a random wire that keeps popping up. Like Indiana Jones, I carefully dust off the wire to see where it goes.

Where it goes is everywhere. it comes up from the outer wall, wraps over the main strut of the recessed ceiling, then dives through the insulation to wrap under the air duct and around the HVAC fan. it looks like somebody literally braided the wiring through the attic structures.

Apparently, when they built the house, they blew in the insulation first. Then they laid the electrical, telephone, and cable wires. And finally, they put in the ductwork. Who does that?

Incidentally, the phone line in question is the only one we use in the entire house.

God’s Presence

“Listen, there’s no such thing as the “manifest” presence of God. God is always present everywhere. The only difference is whether he blesses us with an awareness of it.”

“That’s not what Moses said at the bush, at the sea, or on the mountain. It isn’t what the priests said at the dedication of Solomon’s temple. It isn’t even what David said in the psalms. Do try not to take a single verse out of context.”

The Lion Comes (Dennis Jernigan)

The Lion comes but to steal and destroy,
But I have the heart of the shepherd boy,
The shepherd boy,
and in my sling is the Rock of the ages,
And in my mouth is the song of the King,
And m feet will run to the roar of the beast,
As I cry to the north, south, west and east,
Give up!

Run to the roar! Give up!
Run to the fight! Give up!
Shout the song of victory
Bless the God of might
Give up!
Oh! Oh! Give up!

North, give up!
South, give up!
West, give up!
East, give up!

You’ve gotta give up!
You’ve gotta give up!

I couldn’t find these lyrics, so I’m providing them, as a public service.

The Better Part of Worship

I want to push back just for a minute on the idea that all of life is worship. All of life could be worship, but saying it don’t make it so.  Like love, worship has components.  The two components of love are loyalty and affection, and a shortage in one can’t be shored up by a surplus in the other.  I think you can say that the two components of worship are adoration and obedience.  But it feels as though, when people say that worship is all of life, that they mean the most important part of worship is the obedience.  But a “surplus” of obedience can’t make up for a shortage of adoration.  Martha was of the “all of life is worship” party.  Jesus told her that Mary had chosen the better part.

There are lots of reasons why we should be obedient to God in every area of our lives, and every part of our lives should be worthy to be offered up to him as a fragrant incense. Everything should be done to the glory of God, but remember that he is already glorious, and not one thing we do can add to the glory that is him. He is altogether worthy of our adoration, and without that adoration, obedience is rather worthless.