Why Go To Church?

This past Sunday we began a mini-series of homilies on the doctrine of the church. Why Go To Church? This was the title of the first one. Here is a recap:

Today we are taking up the question: why go to church? There are many ways to answer this question but I think one way of getting at the heart of the matter is to consider an example of what sort of thing God intends to happen in the body of Christ and because of the body of Christ. I say, in the body of Christ because it is the church community, referred to as the body of Christ in the New Testament and in other literature of the early church, that is God’s normative means and instrument, through which he shows the world how to be reconciled to God and to one another. I say because of the body of Christ because it is only through the grace of God at work in the community through the Holy Spirit that true reconciliation can occur.

The example I want to consider with you can be a particularly difficult one to get our heads and hearts around because it is the story of a runaway slave named Onesimus and how Paul urges his master, Philemon, to be reconciled to him. As modern Westerners we, of course, would prefer Paul to have commanded Philemon to free Onesimus. I have included below an addendum that is a brief summary of why the New Testament authors did not take this kind of head-on approach when confronting the social relationships common to the pagan Roman world. However, in this recap, I want our main focus to be on how God uses the church as a theater of redemption for the world to watch.

Luke Timothy Johnson has this to say about the church: "The church is, in a real sense, the continuation of the incarnation, the embodied presence of the resurrected Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit... the church is.... the laboratory for communal life before God, the model that the world can see.... as the basis for its own rebirth."

I can think of no better example of this principle at work than in what Paul prescribes for Philemon, Onesimus and the church that met in Philemon’s home.

Here is a brief summary of what Paul urges but first a little background on this letter:

Background:
Philemon was a Christian leader in the churches that met in around Colossae. We can deduce that he came to follow Jesus through Paul's church planting efforts in this region. He and Paul had become friends, Philemon probably had helped financially with Paul's ministry, and now one of the regional churches met in Philemon's home. Onesimus, one of Philemon's household slaves had run away, perhaps stealing money on the way out the door. Somehow Onesimus ends up coming to Paul who is under house arrest - perhaps in Rome? He becomes converted and Paul desires to see Philemon and Onesimus reconciled. Most likely, Onesimus carried this letter to Philemon, asking for reconciliation, along with the epistle to the Colossians when he returned from being with Paul to home.

The gospel at work!
What is so remarkable about this letter is how Paul goes about leading these two brothers into reconciliation with one another. He does it through a bold series of representational identifications putting into action his words in 2 Corinthians 5:18 where he challenges us to a ministry of reconciliation. First, Paul identifies himself and Philemon as brothers in Christ (v7). Secondly, he identifies himself as Onesimus' father ( v.10). Lastly he urges Philemon to accept Onesimus and be reconciled to him as no longer a slave, but as a dear brother (v.16). Later in the letter he identifies himself with Onesimus yet again when he tells Philemon to charge whatever Onesimus owes him to his (Paul's) account. This whirlwind of identifications all suggest one thing: Paul is boldly representing Christ to Philemon and to Onesimus. As one theologian has put it, Paul is standing in the middle of them with one arm on each of them and drawing them together, mirroring Christ's role as mediator between us and our father. Luther saw in Paul's logic a great picture of the gospel. Paul is taking Onesimus' debt to himself and appealing to Philemon not based on his feelings for Onesimus but on Philemon's feelings for him (Paul). Basically Paul is saying this: reconcile with Onesimus because of your love for me, because of my love for Onesimus, and charge his debt to me. This is rhetorical drama at its best. Paul has painted a picture with words where he plays the role of Christ, thus subtly yet surely drawing Philemon into the presence of Christ and his reconciling love for him, Paul, and Onesimus. Paul has truly appealed to Philemon based on love (v.9) and not law, knowing that only love can produce true transformation and reconciliation.

To put it another way with a slightly different emphasis, in the exhortation to Philemon we have Paul creating an analogy of the gospel by the way he appeals to Philemon to be reconciled to Onesimus. Philemon is beckoned to be reconciled to Onesimus because of Paul’ love for both of them and, implicitly, because of God’s family love for all of them. Just as God has received all of us because of Christ, Philemon is to receive Onesimus. Philemon is being exhorted to give up his rights as a Roman pater familia, or head of household and recognize his identity as an equal to Onesimus in the family of God. One cannot help but think here of the Christ hymn in Philippians 1 where believers are exhorted to take on the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, who did not regard equality with God as something to be used to his advantage but emptied himself and took on the form of the slave. Philemon is to take on the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, that of a slave, emptying himself of his power, and becoming a slave to his servant, Onesimus.

Onesimus and Philemon are invited, exhorted, to turn their lives over to the work of gospel - they are to be reconciled through the power of the Holy Spirit. The main point I want to draw from all of this is that the place ordained of God for this sort of gospel reconciliation to happen is in the church, the laboratory for communal life before God (see above) that the world watches for clues about how to experience the renewal God intends for humanity. Note very well that this letter is a letter not just to Philemon but to the public gathering meeting in his home; this reconciliation is meant to happen in the context of the public church and because of the church, teaching us that the gospel is meant to be performed physically and acted out physically in relationships within the public body of Christ. We are called and graced by God, through our involvement with church, to be the physical representation of God’s salvation in the world, pointing forwards, in hope, to the consummation of God’s redemptive work. It is through the church that God has put on display for all to see the power of his redemption at work.

Questions for discussion:

1. It is often said that Christians in our society suffer from a consumer mentality when it comes to thinking through our commitment to the physical body of Christ, the church. Do you agree? Explain it in your own words and offer examples.

2. Does it put you in awe to think of the church as a laboratory for the world to learn from? What is the most important sort of thing the world is meant to learn from the church according to the Luke Timothy Johnson quote from above? Based on your conversations with folks from outside the church, what do you think most people have learned from their observation of churches? (I know there are as many answers as people to to this but maybe your own anecdote will be helpful to the group.)

3. If you were to say in your own words why you want to be in the habit of going to church, what would you say?

Addendum:

Let me be the first to say that the letter to Philemon in the New Testament is a difficult letter to deal with, especially in our socio-cultural setting. Apart from simply being so distant from our experience, the letter begs so many questions. Why in this letter and elsewhere does St. Paul not, in the name of God's kingdom, call for an abolition to slavery? Why does he not just tell Philemon outright that he ought not to own slaves instead of begging the two of them to reconcile with each other as equals in Christ. A full answer, whatever a full answer would be, to these questions would take us far afield from what we can do this morning but we can note a couple of things quickly. If Paul had chosen to challenge Rome with an anti-slavery message, the rising Christian movement would have probably been snuffed out like so many other failed slave revolts; indeed, it would have likely been perceived widely as nothing more than a salve revolt, so common and fleeting were they. Instead, Paul in Philemon and elsewhere, sews the seeds of a new society, where social relationships in the church begin to mimic the perfectly egalitarian Kingdom of God where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male and female, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all (conflation of Col.3:11; Gal.3:28). We need to remember that because of this the gospel was the most dangerous - in a good way - sort of challenge to the abuses of power built into Roman law; because, rather than confronting authoritarianism and its abuses in a typically revolutionary way, the gospel created a new community within the old world and rendered Roman law ultimately irrelevant to the relationships of the new humanity in the body of Christ, the church.


This is how New Testament Scholar, Gordon Fee talks about the revolutionary power of the gospel with regard to the kind of social relationships in the Roman world where people had power over others: male and female; fathers and children; masters and slaves, etc.:


“Such.... ....was not intended to abolish the structures, which were held in place by Roman law. Rather, it was intended forever to do away with the significance attached to such structural differences, which pitted one group of human beings against another. And the most radical thing of all was that such people - Jew and Gentile, slave and free, men and women - shared a common meal together, itself a cause for cultural shame, and thus celebrated their Lord’s death until he was to come again—which, as 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 makes clear, created considerable tension for the traditional householder. No wonder the world had such difficulty with these early Christians, and why they were considered to be “haters of humanity,” because they so willingly broke the rules - not by tearing down the structures, but by making them ultimately irrelevant! Such people are greatly to be feared as they are the worst of all possible anarchists.
So what in the end is it that makes our present text so radically counter-cultural? What Paul obviously did not do was to demolish the structures and create new ones. What was radical lay in his urging those who are filled with the Spirit and worship Christ as Lord to have totally transformed relationships within the household.”