Pure Religion = Golden Relationships

The paradigm for American church community has shifted in priority from large groups to small groups in an effort to restore personal connections that have been lost due to the impersonal size of congregations, the traditional spectator format, the media-distracted/hedonistic/autonomy defined culture, and the demolition of the family unit. Many mega-churches have been directive toward dividing their congregations into smaller communities so they can have the opportunity to relate to one another, some encouraged to meet in homes where they can eat and share together without the time constraints imposed by Sunday morning structure. The house church model has also become popular, especially to church planters who are trying to correct the communal challenges intrinsic to the spectator format, to include the weighted drag and squandered resources imposed on church duplication by the effort to facilitate growing congregations by means of constructing bigger buildings and self-centered programs. While these efforts are needed, noble, and appropriate in response to the first two communal challenges, I am not convinced they are enough to overcome the other challenges of expelling cultural influence from the Christian identity nor redefining and supplementing/rebuilding Christian families. As a result, many small groups end up looking like smaller versions of the same large group paradigm – relationally shallow, culturally pluralistic, and communally distracted from the Christian identity and purpose they claim.

Last night, I became even more acutely aware of the tragedy of the church’s dereliction when I accompanied a group from Clearwater Community Church on a visit to a local nursing home. The visit was motivated by the clear Biblical mandate to love and minister to those who either lost or never had family, a mandate described in James 1:27 as intrinsic to the most basic, foundational, identifying principles of the Christian religion, a mandate that if left unfulfilled would spoil our religion, making it impure. Last night I was affirmed the greatest threat to Christian identity and purpose is not the way we gather together or even how or what we do while together. Rather, the greatest threat to our identity is what we fail to do together, by those who we neglect to include, by those we fail to invite, by those we fail to go find, those who want to and need to be found. Their absence and/or exclusion makes our family broken, robbing us of the love, well-being, security, self-realization, self-confidence, and self-actualization that are manifested in healthy families. From their absence, we have forgotten who we are.

My experience last night was a wonderful reminder of who we should be. Following is an account of what I observed that inspired my recollection.

After entering the nursing home, I approached a nurse named Janet who was serving dinner to the tenants in the rooms along the hall I was exploring to ask her help in deciding who would best be served by our time there. She indicated all of them needed our ministry, including the staff. I affirmed the truth of what she said, but clarified the limitations of our time and the advantage she had in knowing their needs given the time she spends with them every day. After pausing for a moment to think about it, she decided to direct me to those who would most likely talk to me, meaning those with whom I would most enjoy meeting. Again, I clarified I was more interested in those others would not enjoy talking to, thus representing those most isolated. After further deliberation, she finally directed us to a couple of rooms that met the profile I was looking for. Before leaving her, I asked how we could pray for her. Janet smiled and exclaimed we could pray for anything on her behalf as if to say she was simply starving for the presence and blessings of God. To her delight, we prayed over her then embraced her before we continued on our way.

I first visited a woman Janet said was often ornery with the staff. I’ll call her Gloria since I don’t remember her name. I learned as soon as I arrived Taylor had sung, "Nothing but the blood of Jesus" to her before I came because she was still glowing with delight over his offering. I offered my hand to Gloria which she grabbed firmly and swung back and forth for some time. Gloria then began telling me over and over again while smiling with joy how special that was to her, how few young men are like that these days, and what a blessing Jesus is to her because of his blood. I agreed with and encouraged her with many halleluiahs and a-mens. She told me she has 5 sons, all in the military, and how she hopes one of them becomes a preacher so she can go listen to him.

Her roommate, I’ll call Hannah, had a vacant expression most of the time we were there. However, when I would take her hand, smile and look into her eyes, she would smile sweetly back and return my gaze. Hannah asked we pray God would sustain her health so she would not feel any worse than she did right now, as if to say she is content since she did not ask to feel better. They clung to us as we embraced them and closed their eyes while sweetly grinning as we kissed them on their foreheads, as if they were remembering what it felt like to be loved by family.

We walked into another room and I sat in front of a woman sitting in a wheelchair. She had a vacant expression and drool was hanging from her chin. As I looked in her eyes, my friend grabbed some tissues then lovingly wiped her mouth with no indication of revulsion or disgust, like a son taking care of his mother. I stared in her eyes and smiled, occasionally telling her of the love of Jesus and his sustaining peace. She stared back into mine, only at times looking down for a moment before returning my gaze.

Her room companion was in a similar state though lying in her bed. I spent similar moments with her though she did not divert her gaze to look into my eyes. I reflected on what her life might have been like, sensing the possibility pain and loneliness led her to simply withdraw from reality into her personal world of indifference to the world around her, a world possibly indifferent to her. We kissed them on the forehead before we left, assuring them of the love of Jesus that never leaves or forgets.

My friend and I went to separate rooms for the next visit. I met a woman named Francy who was sitting in a wheelchair facing the wall behind her bed. She had towels draped over her chest to catch the regurgitation from her supper, some of which was still coating her chin. I was close enough to her I could smell it as well. I chose to ignore my senses and focused on looking in her eyes.

There was a sweet expression on her face as she stared at a cross stitched picture on the wall with a cross necklace hanging on it that had the numbers 12 12 22 at the bottom. She said her brother gave it to her, repeating again and again how special it was to her, intermingled with the statement, “…but that’s o.k., I like it.” She said he made it just for her and how thoughtful it was that he brought it to her for her birthday, revealing the significance of the numbers at the bottom to signify her birthday - December 12, 1922. She told me she had 5 brothers and four sisters, one of whom was still a baby, and that she was the oldest among them being she was now 46.

I noticed she had an accent and asked her where she was born. She said she wished she could get rid of the accent because she was so often blamed for being a part of killing all those people, repeating several time she had nothing to do with it, finally confessing she was from Germany. She said the pictures pinned to the wall were her family. I recognized one of them as the woman in the wheelchair I had just visited in the room down the hall. Francy said she was her younger sister.

A few moments later, two young ladies from the group came in to join the visit. She was delighted to see them, believing they were family, asking one of them if she was married yet. The girls wisely pretended to believe she was talking to them and answered the question honestly.

Janet, the staff member I prayed with earlier, soon arrived at the door and asked me to follow her to the room of a man she wanted to be sure I visited before I left. I hugged and kissed Francy, then followed Janet to my last visit; a 96 year old retired missionary Janet called Rev. Todd.

Rev. Todd was being fed the last of his supper when I arrived. His right hand was on the table in front of him, revealing bruises of unknown origin and fingers positioned in such a way that revealed they were no longer of much use to him. One of his lower eyelids drooped a little and was bright red around the rim. His head was cocked slightly to the right in what appeared to be a permanent position.

After his nurse left with his dinner tray, I sat next to him on his bed close enough to be able to hear his soft spoken words and asked him to tell me about his ministry, about where he had been. He mentioned the United States, Canada, Libya and I think Tanzania before his attention wandered.

When he returned to our conversation he smiled and softly chuckled as he said “You sure have a heavy beard.” I laughed and told him a little about my ministry, explaining how God had brought me from the pristine appearance of an Army Chaplain to the unkempt appearance of a homeless man.

A few moments later, he confessed he was tired and feeling frustrated that he was still waiting to go home. I encouraged him by reminding him of the character still being grown in him and informed the hope it produces with promises of heaven, of the wonder of finally seeing God face to face, the rest of the saints waiting for him where suffering will be no more, of the crown already prepared for him to reward his faithful service to our Lord, and the joy of dancing before the throne as hosts of angels sing praise to God’s honor and glory. His attention wandered as I spoke and he closed his eyes in what I hoped was reflection.

We prayed over Rev. Todd then left, but my thoughts stayed with him as I walked toward the exit. I wondered if God had given me the privilege of being a herald of his servant’s homecoming who announced to his saint standing at the gates of paradise that he was about to be escorted in. If not, to have been in the presence of one so close to heaven was a sacred moment nonetheless, a moment I am compelled to repeat and to share with others who are as oblivious as I was to the opportunity.

My friend Ravi Landge said Americans live as if they are in a bubble that isolates them from the world around them. His metaphor reminds me of the plastic bubble designed to create a sterile environment, protecting those without an immune system from all contamination since their bodies are not able to filter what is harmful from what is beneficial. As a result, they are confined, in a fashion imprisoned by their weakness, unable to know or experience any part of the world outside their protective shield, unable to share in full communion with other people, unable to enjoy so much that is good because they cannot tolerate the contaminated part of it they believe to be bad.

I cannot imagine willingly choosing to live in such a prison but it seems that is exactly what so many who claim Christ do, only their shield does not protect them from evil; it merely isolates them from what they determine to be a threat, most often defined by what they find unfamiliar, undesirable, and/or uncomfortable. They fear death so they avoid the dying. They fear sickness so they avoid the infected. They fear rejection so they avoid the rejected. They fear sin so they avoid the sinful. They fear pain so they avoid the painful. They fear suffering so they avoid the insufferable. Within boundaries of exclusion, homogenous communities huddle together to escape the world and all that is threatening. The most absurd reality and most depraved of tragedies is their inability to recognize or escape from the greatest threat to their security and well being – themselves.

Luke 9: 24 says if you try to save your life you will lose it. In other words, the self-preservation God provided us to sense and avoid danger has been corrupted by sin, leading us to protect the base source of eternal bondage and death and reject the base source of eternal freedom and life. Life does not exist without community in the Trinity, made possible through Jesus Christ and manifested in us by the Holy Spirit. Community in the Trinity does not exist within man made boundaries, it empowers love that knows no boundaries and fears nothing and no one. God’s communal love is perfect and casts out fear. Therefore, he compels us to explore the unknown depths of his mystery and fear no death or anything else that can kill the body. He equips us to endure and at times even enjoy pain that grows his character in us or allows us to share his character with others. Since nothing can separate us from his communal love, we are safe to love even our enemies without fear. Since all that is material cannot be kept, we do not fear giving everything to invest in the gospel that restores what is of eternal value in people and possessions.

In the kingdom of heaven, the standard of value that defines eternal currency is not material or even monetary; it is relational. Fellowship in community is the treasure that defines the interest rates of kingdom return on all investments to be considered and made in the world. Therefore, it is beyond time the church diversify their investments in interests outside of their own so the rate of return will please their master who has entrusted them with his treasure to invest. The highest yield accounts are the lost, the poor, the lonely (widows and orphans), the suffering, and the disenfranchised. There is so much money to be made and so little time that the foolishness of burying the treasure of our fellowship in fear of high risk investments has to stop. There is simply not time to be safe. Church, our master is coming soon. Get off the couch and get to work!

James 3:13-18 13 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.