What is Church?

Text: Matthew 16:13-20
Other texts: Romans 12:1-8

The word “church” appears only two times in all the Gospels. The first time is in the passage we just heard. The second time is also in Matthew, two chapters later.

It is useful to point this out so that we church people do not get to feel too self-important. Jesus spends next to no time in his ministry establishing, concocting, or even discussing church. He spends a lot of time hanging around with people, gathering them together, healing them, teaching them, and calling them to follow him.

People who are interested in the institution of the church like this verse in Matthew, in which Jesus says to Peter, “on this rock I will build my church.” They like it because it makes the church seem reasonable. By this I mean it makes the church seem like any other human organization, with founders and foundations. It seems structured in a way that a lot of our world is already structured. It works in a fairly predictable, thought-out way. It also establishes a legitimacy to certain ways of organizing churches, Peter being the first of a long line of special people who become church rulers. If your assembly of Christians cannot trace itself through an order of succession back to Peter, well—some might say—then, you are not the church of Jesus. St Augustine, a favorite of our buddy Martin Luther, said this to be so, and he has not been the only one.

There have been times—and not so long ago—in which the church has acted a lot like everyone else. Faith Lutheran Church, for example, is a chartered corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have officers and a set of bylaws that are registered with the state. Our parent, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America talks about things like market share and church growth and demographics. I don’t think this is all bad, but it is not the essence of what it means to be a church.

In good times, this sort of reasonableness in the sense that I’m using is fine. We feel we can explain how and why things are happening. If a church is growing, we figure there is a reason. And we often think the reason is us—that we are doing something right. If we really think that it is something we are doing, we write a book about it, so that other churches can do it right, too. That’s good. It gives people ideas. Being a church is oddly hard, and ideas help.

But when times are not so great, explanations are not helpful. Rarely do people write books explaining what they did wrong. That may be partly because it is discouraging and embarrassing. But mostly it is because no one really knows what they did wrong. The church turns out not to be so reasonable after all.

On any Sunday in Boston and Cambridge, there are about 300 Lutherans altogether worshipping in churches. That’s a far cry from the way it was in the middle of the twentieth century, when there were lots of Lutheran churches here, and Faith alone had 1200 members. So, is the current situation good or bad? I know it has been a rough summer for some of the churches in the Boston area. There have been lost pastors, declining attendance, and turmoil. Is that good or bad? But in another church—Our Savior in Dorchester, which nearly closed its doors a couple of years ago—the church is being revitalized with new ideas and committed helpers. Is that good or bad? How should we judge these things? Should we judge these things at all?

Paul, unlike Peter, was not the rock on which the church stood. He was, however, the person who made the early church grow. Paul was a missionary, and planting churches was his business. Paul, unlike Jesus, used the word “church” a lot. He had ideas about what was right and what was wrong. He had no problem judging anything. But when Paul describes the church, he does not talk about reasonable things at all. He talks about the people who are gathered together, and what they are doing, and what they should do. Paul does not see the church as a place to which people come. The church is the people, not the place.

This passage we heard from Romans lists some things that people in the church do. Gifts they bring, as Paul says. The list is like similar lists in other letters of Paul, but it is not the same. All these letters list different gifts. Paul is not creating an organization chart with boxes for open requisitions. It is not that any one church needs a prophet, a giver, and a teacher, and that they had better go out and get one. It is that the church is a place in which prophets, givers, and teachers and all sorts of other people come together and when they do, their gifts are used. Every church is different. There is no way to write a book about how we did it because each church is a different gathering. Which is, I would say, a good thing. The church’s job is not to recruit people with special gifts, but to be a place in which people can put the gifts they have to great use.

The word “church” that Jesus uses hardly ever and that Paul uses all the time is in Greek “ekklesia.” It means a people called out to gather. So it means first a bunch of people, which we’ve just be talking about.

And second, a people called. No one is compelled to come to church anymore. People come because they feel drawn, or called, to gather.

And third, people who are called out. Out of their own individual existences. Out of one part of their lives into another. Or out of their own individual thoughts and patterns into others, new thoughts and patterns (and perhaps transformed, as Paul says).

And fourth, people who are called out to gather. People called out from one place to a particular place. A place of meeting with others, to relationships and interactions with particular others, people they engage with on purpose.

And finally, all this is in the service of God. People are called out to gather so that they might know, worship, and confront God. We are all here because in our many different ways—each according to the measure of faith God has assigned, Paul would say—we are here because we take God seriously.

The good news is that God, according to Paul, likes this. The word our Bible translates as “acceptable” is better translated “pleasing.” Worship pleases God. Our gathering here makes God feel good. A church is a place in which the gathering of people called out makes God feel good.

Peter’s name used to be Simon. Jesus in this passage called him Peter. But until that time there was no such name as “Peter.” People did not name their children Peter. Peter in Greek means “rock.” So Jesus is giving Peter not a new first name but a nickname. Jesus is calling Simon “Rocky.” Jesus says, I tell you, Rocky, on this rock I’ll build my church.

Peter, who is so flattered here in this passage, is the same Peter who a couple of verses later is called a stumbling block like a rock on a path, and the same Peter who denies Jesus at his trial. Peter is a man of enthusiasms, strengths, weaknesses, second thoughts, craziness, cowardice and bravery. Just like us. Just like all the people who are called out to gather.

The foundation of the church is not like granite blocks or poured concrete, firm, unshakeable, boring. If Peter is Rocky, then the foundation of the church is a bunch of pebbles and sand, shifting, unpredictable, flexible, and exciting.

And our job here is to be a place to hang out. A place that makes use of God’s gifts in people. A place to engage in serous conversation with God. A place to do that with others. And a place to hear God’s call.