It's Sunday around Noon. Normally, I would just be arriving home from church. Last week, I walked by myself around the corner to a service held in the Masonic lodge. Today, I had planned on walking past the lodge to a Baptist church across the street, but couldn't muster enough emotional energy to do so.
It's Sunday past Noon, and I am home. I am wearing pink pajama bottoms with penguins on them and a school t-shirt. I still have bed head and have not painted anything on my face to make myself more presentable.
Yep, it's the Sabbath. And I have iTunes and Spotify and Pandora. I can listen to hymns, gospel songs, contemporary worship music, even Mumford & Sons for that matter.
It's the Sabbath and I have the Internet. I can watch live services around the city, the country, around the world for that matter. I can pick my topic, pick my denomination.
Churches have become the new e-tailers. I will be the first to say that there is something missing with that formula and that something is face-to-face community. What's missing is the meeting together (Heb. 10:25). Matthew Henry had this to say on the topic:
The communion of saints is a great help and privilege, and a good means of steadiness and perseverance; hereby their hearts and hands are mutually strengthened. To exhort one another, to exhort ourselves and each other, to warn ourselves and one another of the sin and danger of backsliding, to put ourselves and our fellow-christians in mind of our duty, of our failures and corruptions, to watch over one another, and be jealous of ourselves and one another with a godly jealousy. This, managed with a true gospel spirit, would be the best and most cordial friendship.
But what if you don't receive exhortation? What if no one knew you and could even decipher if you were backsliding? What if no one watched over you?
So, I look to other ways in which I do have community. I have accountability with one or two. I have a Bible study with a sister. I can tell of my sins. I attempt to encourage those around me. I attempt to love with Christ's love.
It's just that...
I am really struggling with is loving the Bride. And I know the Bride consists of the broken {including me}. It's not that. It's when she maintains her virtue while clothing herself in harlotry. It's the church of the convenient, the congregants that turn a blind eye in favor of the status quo, in favor of the two hours every Sunday that make themselves feel good. It's the gospel of hate that the world sees preached outside the sacred, stained glass walls by careless words and deeds. It's those who would irrevocably and callously condemn people to hell while waiting three hours for a chicken sandwich only to later go home and watch Internet porn. It's those that would mock the alcoholic on the freeway off ramp and then throw back a few too many while watching the big game {yet God loves them all}. It's all of the ways in which we aren't teachable. It's all of the ways in which we exclude those that are different. It's when I hear the pain in my sister's words because after working with the youth for many months at her church, she finds herself the focus of a witch hunt because of her personal conviction not to pledge her allegiance to a flag.
It's all the ways we have tried to make Jesus like us. To make it all easier to swallow, we have tried to make Jesus into someone who would prescribe to our programs, our political views, and someone who would sit idly by in the pew next to us. Nondescript, not radical.
And it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. As I have been trying to read through the Bible, I have been praying. I have really wanted to focus on what Jesus said. What Jesus taught. The real Jesus. The real Son of God. How Jesus lived and loved.
And He loved His Bride. And He died for her. And I am inextricably a part of her. So, I look to the Bridegroom. I have been praying to fall in love more with Him, and with His Bride as well. I have been praying for Jesus to bind up all of the wounds I have received by her in His name.
Even in taking that small step, I can feel hope swell.
And grace abounds.
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