365: James (Day 355)

I am thankful that I chose to read through the Bible this year using The Message. It has been a wonderful experience. I hope you've been keeping up. We're handing out new The Bible in 365 cards this Sunday. If you're reading this blog, but you are not part of our church fellowship, contact me and I'll be happy to mail you a 365 card so you can read along in 2008. In about a week I'll share with you which translation I'll be reading from next year.

Today's reading is the book of James. Eugene Peterson's introduction spoke to me and that's what I want to share with you.

When Christian believers gather in churches, everything
that can go wrong sooner or later does. Outsiders, on observing this, conclude that there is nothing to the religion business except, perhaps, business - and dishonest business at that. Insiders see it differently. Just as a hospital collects the sick under one roof and labels them as such, the church collects sinners. Many of the people outside the hospital are every bit as sick as the ones inside, but their illnesses are either undiagnosed or disguised. It's similar with sinners outside the church.

So Christian churches are not, as a rule, model communities of good behavior. They are, rather, places where human misbehavior is brought out in the open, faced, and dealt with. [1]

This brings to mind a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer I shared a few weeks ago:

You are loved just as you are; enjoy the fellowship of others who have found the same forgiveness that you're enjoying now. You are a sinner, a great desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are: He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone . . . He wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if your were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner. [2]

The age old question: Is the church a holy place for holy people, or a hospital for the spiritually sick?

It is both. The biblical writers recognized that there was a difference between the real church and the ideal church. In the Church of God, most of the time when we use the word church, we're talking about those who bow before Christ from all over the planet. [3] That's one way the word is used in the Bible. It is also used of the visible church, which consists of believers, seekers, and non-believers [4], real people with all their real problems, addictions, neuroses and sins.

Yes, non-believers should find love and acceptance here. We need to stop thinking of this as a failing - this is the beauty of the church.

[1] Eugene Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), 2201.

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1954), 111.

[3] Stanley J. Grenz, Theology for the Community of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1994), 467.

[4] Stanley J. Grenz, David Guretzki and Cherith Fee Nordling, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 68.