I remember back in my early days of
ministry in West Virginia having a conversation with a woman about church membership
that certainly opened my eyes. I asked
if she and her husband had ever thought about becoming members of the church
and her immediate response was “Why would I need to do that?” The question caught me off guard a bit. I had grown up in and around the church and I
just assumed that everybody knew that once you came to faith in Christ Jesus
you joined the church. Not being
prepared for that question I decided to use humour to buy myself some time so I
replied, “Oh, so that you can vote and hold office.” I was not prepared for the question, “what
benefit to me would there be in joining the church?”
What it is to be a member of a church
is a difficult concept to get across these days as Western culture has become
so anti-institutional. Ever since 1965
people have stopped joining things, church and civic organizations the
same. The reasons why are very complex
and beyond our timeframe for this morning.
So consider yourselves spared.
Nevertheless, I would not be far off if I said that within and without
the church the default understanding of church membership is simply getting
one’s name on the membership roll and accepting a few more responsibilities in
the area of giving, attendance, and sharing duties. In this case, church membership simply equals
club membership and the basis of the church club would be the practice of
religion.
Oddly enough, this utterly unbiblical
understanding of church membership has arisen in Western culture alongside of
the struggle for religious freedom. In
order to ensure a person’s basic human right to believe what they want to
believe in a world where there are many ways of being Christian as well as many
religions, Christian faith has been reduced to simply being a matter of private
belief, the church has been reduced to just another voluntary association, and
Christianity has been reduced to simply being one expression among many of the
same universal truth. It is this mindset
that must be countered to understand what membership in the church is all
about.
First, today one must be ready to give
account of how the Christian faith is not simply one expression among many of a
universal truth called god. It is about
the one and only God who is not a part of this creation really acting within
history to save and transform his creation that has fallen into futility
because of humanity’s rebellion. His
actions to save began a long time ago with people named Noah and Abraham, and
then Moses and ancient Israel. It
culminated when God revealed himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the
life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ God the Son become human. As Jesus Christ God has acted uniquely to
save humanity once and for all from the futility of sin and death. Through him we are given eternal life which
is knowing God the Father and God the Son by participating in their
realtionship through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit ( see John 17:3). The Triune God of Grace is really acting in
real history and matter, in time and space, to make all things new and will
ultimately do so on the Day of Resurrection when Jesus returns. We live by faith until that day with the
guarantee of the Holy Spirit with us and working healing in us, in our bodies
and particularly works of reconcilliation in our relationships. In and among us us is now where God has
chosen to dwell. As our reading from
Ephesians said at the beginning of this service “we are being built together
spiritually as a dwelling place for God” (Eph. 2:22). The Triune God of grace is acting concretely
within history to deliver his creation in, through, and as Jesus Christ and
this is the foundational truth of the Christian faith. No other religion says this. So, to be a member of the church one must
believe this and the only way one can believe this is by God graciously giving
us the faith to trust the love of the Father revealed in the Jesus Christ, a
gift that comes to us by the work of the Holy Spirit upon us. Apart from God’s revealing himself to usthere
is no true faith.
Second, the church is not a voluntary
society where people of like-minded beliefs have joined together for the
worship of God. The church is a
fellowship that God creates by calling people to faith and in the same act
calling them together for the express purpose of being a fellowship that
reflects his image by the love he creates in and among them. We are the body of Christ and each of us
individually is member of it (1 Cor. 12:27).
The earliest understanding of church membership is that we are each body
parts of the one body of Jesus Christ resurrected. Keep an image in your mind
of resurrection where in communities all over the place God is rising up the
body of Jesus Christ through which God reveals himself to the world through our
life together, a life that is shaped by the cross. We together as a church globally become like
a resurrected Jesus, the New Humanity as opposed to Adam the Old Humanity walking
around in our communities. To be a
member of the church is to be called together by the Father and joined together
in the Holy Spirit to be the body of Jesus Christ to our community.
Finally, the
Christian faith is not a matter of private faith. It is a matter of shared
faith. Private faith simply says, “I
believe this and so I do this.” The
Christian faith says, “We believe this so we do this.” We believe that God so loved the world that
he sent his only Son so that all who believe in him may not perish but have
eternal life. We know this because we
have found healing by looking towards him.
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so has Jesus Christ
been lifted up. To be a member of a
congregation is to make a promise to a group of Christians to whom God has
called you. The promise is to live by
Jesus sole commandment that we love one another, the love he proved and
demonstrated to us by going to the cross for us. It is the promise “I will love you as I know
the Lord has loved me and, as we all know, we will fail miserably at this task
so I promise to forgive, as I know I have been forgiven”. We promise to do this undconditionally and
even if we do not receive in kind from our sisters and brothers in Christ. Just as one does not go spouse shopping after
marriage, so we do not go church shopping after making the promise of
membership within and to a particular congregation. Even if it gets to the point where we say “I
can’t stand that preacher’s sermons. In
fact, I can’t stand him.” Even if it
gets to the point of “I’d get more out of shopping at Wal-Mart on Sunday
morning than spending time with that dying brood.” Even if it gets to the point of detesting
that miserable fellowship. God has still called us each to this fellowship and
in faith we have made the promise that we each will look to the cross together
and find healing when those serpents start to bite because “we been thinking on
Egypt”. The real relationship involved
in life together with the congregation to which Christ has called us each to
live as his disciples is the closest thing to Jesus Christ we will know until
we meet him on that day. It is in the
body of Christ that we meet Jesus Christ, him crucified and resurrected for
us. Being a member of a congregation is
a serious matter. It is a promise akin
to the promise of marriage. It is a
promise to love and pray for and be together with those whom God has called us
to and whom he calls to us so that we might come to know Christ and be formed
in his image.
