by Andrea Burgard
When it comes to church and the spiritual life, we tend to think it has to be more complicated than Jesus said. For 2,000 years people have thought up complications and followed them religiously, but too often they miss out on the abundant life, the peace that passes understanding, and the joy that knows no bounds. The reality is, life in Christ is simple, so simple that a child—or a destitute person or a paralyzed person or someone in jail—can have it. Why do we make it so complex?
I have been thinking about Paul, how he didn’t found institutions, but communities. He spoke and wrote of Jesus’ message, his life, death and resurrection. He invited everyone to experience Jesus’ new way of life, where God is not to be feared, but relied upon as a child relies upon a parent, where everyone is accepted and loved, where everyone has a contribution to make, where everyone follows Jesus’ pattern of dying to the old way of life and being resurrected into a new understanding of God and of life, together. For Paul, as for Jesus, the kingdom of God was here and now, not in heaven after we die. And Paul invited everyone to meet Jesus, experience the life of Christ, and live in The Way.
Paul taught that once a person has had a transcendent, mystical experience of Jesus and has responded to his invitation to follow, then in baptism that person dies with Jesus and rises again with Jesus as a new being, whose old life has been stripped away, along with all past sins, obligations and legal claims. Then the new person joins the local Christian community and becomes part of a living organism, the body of Christ. Even though these members may not live together, they live a common life, sharing material goods and many meals.
We might see ourselves as living in the world and attending church, but as Richard Rohr points out, people in Paul’s communities lived in the church and attended the world. After joining the community, the new person would be taught, but a strong, lively presence of the Spirit in the community also would sweep up the newcomer and carry her along, rather like teaching language by immersion. In Colossians he speaks of being rooted in Christ, which is a very apt metaphor. The roots anchor the plant like a firm foundation, and protect it from being blown or washed away in a storm. The roots draw much of the plant’s food and water up from the earth, and the roots in the soil communicate with the roots of neighboring plants, and with the worms and insects which live in the soil. In just this way, the new Christian puts down roots into Christ in the community, and is fed, anchored, taught, and accompanied by that community. In this way Paul’s communities became living showpieces of what Jesus could do in a person’s life.
The Christian communities which Paul founded seem rather like our own in some ways, and rather different in other ways. For example, we believe that community is central to the Christian life, both to live in a consciousness which is alternative to the mainstream, and to stand up effectively to the corporate evil of our time, that is, the powers and principalities. We, too, view church not as something we attend, but as something in which we participate. Like Paul’s churches, our communities are independently governed and supported.
On the other hand, we seem different in that we have a formal training program which must be completed before full membership. We also have a formal list of practices to which we commit. Also, few of us actually place our community at the center of our lives, fitting family and career demands around it instead of vice versa. Finally, some of us tend to take a more intellectual view of faith, trying to know and understand God, the same God whom Paul believed cannot be known, but only loved. Are we as alive and overflowing with the Spirit as those early communities?
There are three ways in which I think we could be freer to follow Jesus as a community:
- I believe a Christian community should not own real estate. Owning real estate subjects us to taxes, unless we are declared tax-exempt. If we are tax-exempt we have to follow many rules about what we can do with money, and we can’t wade too deeply into the political process. Owning real estate can preoccupy members with caring for, paying for, and dealing with threats to that property, not to mention coming to agreement on how to do all of that. Unless that is the work of the Spirit, it will most certainly be a massive distraction from the work of the Spirit.
- Another way we become beholden to the powers and principalities is by receiving tax-deductible contributions. Once again, we must be tax-exempt and subject to government regulations, using these contributions in certain ways. It is not uncommon for us to sense a leading of the Spirit to help someone financially, and then find our hands tied by the regulations around being a tax-exempt church. Why would we give ourselves to Jesus’ work and then handicap ourselves in this way?
- Third, I have come to believe that we should not make any spiritual practices a prerequisite for membership. Jesus didn’t do it, Paul didn’t do it, and neither should we, simple as that. I do think that a personal experience with Jesus is prerequisite because there is simply no other way to be transformed into love, to become a living, working part of Christ’s body.
It is the very simplicity of the Christian life that sometimes floors us–to desire one thing. Jesus was a simple guy who desired one thing. He said he didn’t say or do anything that God hadn’t told him to, that his whole life was part of God and all of God was in his life. I believe that Christian community must be as free and unencumbered as the Spirit in order authentically to be the body of Christ. I long for us to go the whole way in following Jesus, to sell out to Jesus, to be totally rooted in Jesus, to let the Spirit make of us what it will, so that we may know the kind of life together that God still wants us to have.
Andrea Burgard has been a member of Dayspring Church and the Spiritual Support Groups of Church of Christ, Right Now.
