Since we started our new church year in September I have been team teaching the Sunday morning adult class in the auditorium with Todd Merklin. Our study has been focused around the title “Acts: The Church’s Earliest Witness.” It has been great to teach with Todd and we have some really sharp folks in class. The dialogue back and forth as we have reflected on Peter and Paul’s preaching has been very edifying and encouraging. We have had a great time together and some good laughs too.
A couple of weeks ago we were considering the account of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. This passage raises a lot of really good questions. Why did Luke include this? What was this whole event about? Why was God so harsh with them? What did their deaths teach the believers in Jerusalem and what should we learn from it as well? When you read it with fresh eyes, it is a shocking and disturbing part of Acts.
One thing that is very clear is that Ananias and Sapphira had an essential misunderstanding of the nature of the church. Their behavior betrayed an idea that the church in Jerusalem was a means to an end for them. False claims about an act of generosity were meant to garner attention, favor and praise for them amongst the believers. They must have thought of the church like a philanthropic society, or college athletics booster organization or a non-profit relief agency. Obviously they did not understand the church as a people called and gathered out of the world by God himself, indwelt and empowered by God’s Spirit to serve as witnesses to the world, embodying the good news of Jesus. What and who the church is was what really was at stake.. Clearly God takes this business very seriously!
Frequently our language and behavior betray our own misunderstanding of who we are as God’s people. The point was made that Sunday morning in class that no one in the first century ever “went to church.” We talk about “going to church” all the time. What are we saying? Our language both reveals and forms an idea in us that “church” is an event and / or a location. When we talk about “going to church” what we are usually describing is worshipping with the church, meeting with the church for Bible study, the Lord’s Supper, a LIFE group, a potluck meal, service project or any of the other things we do together. Or we might be saying we are going to meet at the building that we are blessed to own and use for many of these activities. What we are describing really with this language is our association with God’s people.
Why does this matter? Am I just being nit-picky? If we don’t talk about the church and our involvement with it correctly, we also do not think about it correctly. When we talk about “going to church” we start thinking about our church as an event or a location only. It becomes very easy to compartmentalize our relationship with God’s people as a thing on our schedule, an activity we attend as a spectator, a place we go to or just a group of people we see at a certain time and place each week. We end up giving short shrift to the identity God has called us to and the new life he is shaping in us.
The reality is we can’t “go to church” because we are the church! It is who we are, it is our identity, a new identity we have received by God’s grace. We are the church every day, in every place, in everything we do. We bring this identity to bear on every relationship we are involved in, in all of our activities and responsibilities. “Going to church” is too shallow, too thin to do justice to the great work God is doing amongst us. So, let’s stop just “going to church.” As a matter of fact, let’s stop saying that too! Instead, let’s be the church, all day every day in everything, because that’s just who we are!
See you Sunday, Howard