The Church is Catholic Part 2

We come back this morning to theme of the catholicity of the church. We noted last week that the Greek word that is translated, catholic, means the whole, or throughout the whole. When the leaders of the early church used that word in the creeds what they were confessing was that the love of God expressed most fully and comprehensively in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was never meant to be for a few people, one group of people, or one sort of people, but for the entire human race (to take the language from the New Testament, God’s love is for every tribe and the gospel is recognized as accomplishing the healing of the nations - this is how the book of Revelation talks about it). Moreover, we find the catholicity of the church promised in the covenant made with Abraham: in you all of the families of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12).

Another way of saying all of this in an earthier way - there is no sort or kind of person anywhere in the world that God does not claim as his divine image bearer (albeit, in need of restoration). As such, God desires for all to experience Christ’s redeeming and life-giving love. Now, It is one thing to confess these words and to say, “hear, hear.... that is the sort of God I want to worship - one whose love is limitless.” However, it is another thing to want catholicity to come to pass in our midst - and to celebrate it when it does - when the kinds and sorts of people that are God’s own make us uncomfortable, uneasy, or afraid. For each of us there are some people who follow Jesus who make us suspicious, simply because of their ethnicity, their political views, their social/class status, or because they have come to conclusions about how to apply the gospel to their lives that differ sharply from the sorts of applications we might make. This suspicion, at best, and hatred at worse, that is brought about by the fear of the other is itself, of course, a consequence of living in a fallen world. For the kind of healing to come that God desires for the world, the church must grow in its passion for catholicity. Christians all over the world must long for catholicity to be a robust reality in our own lives and our churches. Another way of saying this is that for the universal to come we must all care very much about the particulars of our own church communities; for it is upon the upon the fabric of our relationships with people in our local churches, Grace Chicago in this instance - it is upon the fabric of our relationships in our church that God desires to sew a message of hope for a world where fear of the others results in daily violence and misery.

I put it this way because I think it is too easy to keep things in the abstract when we simply say, “God loves everybody”. Part of our spiritual formation must include a longing for God to enable us to love, serve, and pray for people who we would find it difficult to be involved with apart from the gospel at work in our midst, through us, and in our church community.

In the time we have remaining I want to look at some clues about what this looks like in the texts before us this morning. In Acts 6 we have ethnically Hebrew Christians in charge of the temple of Jerusalem. Because of a language and cultural barrier the Greek speaking Jewish widows in the temple were being overlooked in the distribution of food for the poor. The apostles’ response is to share their authority by quickly pulling together some more leaders, all Greek speaking, in order to successfully administer that aspect of the ministry of the church. The applications to take from this: when the Holy Spirit comes to work in opening up local churches to catholicity, the dominant and the powerful in the church will become sensitive to the needs of the weaker and less powerful in their midst; everyone in the church will turn away from their self-interests and look for ways to help others; and people in the church, without renouncing their identity and histories, will see their unifying identity in Christ as more important.

Note well! The result of all of this is that many priests in the temple began to follow Jesus. Talk about a tough crowd. When catholicity is at work in a church community even the most skeptical onlookers can’t help but take notice and begin to question who and what is at work to produce such a strong and loving community. So, it is of the utmost importance that we come to understand that our repentance over our lack of catholicity is a crucial component to living out the gospel for the sake of the world who looks on. For example: the leaders who allowed the Greek speaking widows to be overlooked had to repent and change course in order to meet their needs, reminding us that the world is not looking for perfection from the church but for authenticity, and a model for how reconciliation and wholeness can come to pass. Stephen Fowl puts it this way: "we are reminded that.... compassion and mercy are necessary if Christians are to exercise forbearance and forgiveness/ For Christians, this is crucial because the quality of common life in Christ is not simply judged by the holiness of believers' lives (though that is certainly to be encouraged). Rather, Christian community is more definitively judged by the forgiveness that enables and calls Christians to be reconciled and reconciling people. Indeed, it is the quality that is most attractive to a broken and alienated world (Fowl)."

Questions for discussion:

1. Can you offer an example from your life or from a situation you know of that demonstrates growth in catholicity?

2. What fears might the apostles have felt at the prospect of sharing leadership with the Hellenists? Do these fears remind you of any of your own fears that might be holding you back in your growth towards being more catholic? Examples?

3. Do you feel that you represent the life of the church to your friends outside of the church as a dynamic life-giving community that desires to be more catholic and repents of its lack of catholicity? How would you say that sort of thing in your own words?