My parish magazine item for June 2024
From
The Rectory
Do
you think about the past or the future much? There’s a lot to be said for
living in the present moment, not being too preoccupied with the past (perhaps
with guilt or regret) or with the future (anxious, fearful?). But some sense of
where we’ve come from and where we’re going gives meaning to our lives. We need
to know our history and to aim for something with hope.
The
Bible arguably contains a warning against excessive nostalgia. “Do
not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For
it is not wise to ask such questions.” (Ecclesiastes 7:10) And the good old
days weren’t always that good, or at least not in every way.
Some
Christians tend to look back to the early church as an imagined golden age. And
there is some truth in this. The Apostles preached mighty sermons and thousands
were converted in a single day. This passage from Acts 2 clearly presents a
model church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to
fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed
by the apostles. All the believers were together
and had everything in common. They sold property
and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every
day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke
bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the
Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
But
space prevents me from cataloguing all the “issues” of the early church. There
was fierce persecution from outside the church and division within. Even in
Acts we soon see tensions between different groups, financial and
administrative problems which have to be addressed, lying and hypocrisy. And a
corrupt attempt to buy spiritual power. We could go on.
Even
the great Apostle Peter acted hypocritically and Paul had to oppose him
publicly.
Paul
can tell the Galatian church that he is astonished they are bewitched and so
quickly deserting God for a false gospel which is really no gospel at all.
I
am about to preach a sermon series on 1 Corinthians. There we see the church split
into rival parties. There’s serious sexual immorality of a kind not even
tolerated among the pagans. Believers seem to be taking one another to court.
Paul says the church risks being partners in the table of Christ and of demons.
Their worship is disorderly and selfish, with people getting drunk at Holy
Communion and showing off rather than serving one another in love.
If
we can see serious problems in the contemporary church, that’s nothing new. The
old joke is that if you find a perfect church, you shouldn’t join it because
you’d only spoil it! We can imagine a perfectly ordered churchyard, but real
living churches are always messy and face their challenges.
So
we shouldn’t idealise the early church. But we can learn from it. The aim is
not to recreate exactly how things were in the first century, but to be
equipped by the Word of God for reformation and renewal, and to live hopefully
in today’s world in the light of all the riches of our Christian heritage. The
church has, as it were, died and risen many times. We can go back to the
authentic apostolic gospel with humility, courage, resolve and confidence. We
can be encouraged that new light has shone powerfully in dark days in the past.
The flame of Christian witness has never been extinguished and might burn
brightly again in our own land. The good news of Jesus is just as needed today
as it ever was. And God’s Holy Spirit has lost none of His transforming power.
No Christian, no church, will ever be perfect this side of glory, but the
church remains the hope for nations and the world. Global Christianity has much
to teach us too and we should look to the future in prayerful repentance and
faith, trusting the God of the church who surely knows what he’s doing, even if
we can’t always work out all the details!
The Revd Marc Lloyd
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