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Reinventing the Church

Mat 21: 12 – 17

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 01 Oct, 2006

TEMPLES SHOULD be torn down every now and then. It’s a Biblical principle. We should not, we must not stay as we are; we must change and reinvent everything from scratch.

We imagine that the temple in Jerusalem was something fixed and immoveable — until the Romans destroyed it in 70 AD. The fact is — and you know this, you just need a reminder — the fact is that the temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times. It was also cleansed more than once.

Originally, the Israelites travelled around the desert carrying a tent of meeting with them, the famous tabernacle.

It lasted until the days of Solomon.

We used to build Baptist Church buildings, and call them The Baptist Tabernacle. The church buildings in Tamworth and Newcastle were called Tabernacles, so was Burton Street, here in Sydney, and quite a few others.

Someone told me recently about being at one of these Baptist Tabernacles as part of a choir. The church wouldn’t even let the group move the chairs from the communion table

Those Baptist Tabernacles were often idols. They thought the communion table was the Holy of Holies. You can’t touch anything in there!

Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem, but the Babylonians took Israel into captivity, and the temple fell into ruin. Owls and bats lived in the ruins. Weeds overgrew the stonework.The splendid place for the worship of God turned into a heap of rubble.

Ezra and Nehemiah built a new temple when the people returned to the land, but in the end it became worn and dirty and decayed.

Herod built a splendid new temple in place of the old one, but eventually rebels kept pigs in there and the Romans destroyed the place.

There was never a permanent temple. And the temples only lasted because they were cleaned out and maintained.

For example, under Josaiah, the temple was repaired. We read,

^{2KI 22:3} In the eighteenth year of his reign, King Josiah sent the secretary, Shaphan son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, to the temple of the LORD. He said: ⁴ “Go up to Hilkiah the high priest and have him get ready the money that has been brought into the temple of the LORD, which the doorkeepers have collected from the people. ⁵ Have them entrust it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the temple. And have these men pay the workers who repair the temple of the LORD- — ⁶ the carpenters, the builders and the masons. Also have them purchase timber and dressed stone to repair the temple. ⁷ But they need not account for the money entrusted to them, because they are acting faithfully.”

^{2KI 22:8} Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the LORD.” He gave it to Shaphan, who read it.

Imagine the temple getting so putrid that people even lost the copy of the Bible that was in there! It’s no wonder that the temple had to be cleansed and the rubbish cleared out.

Then there is Jesus. He cleansed the temple. He came in and found that this time, the way to God was not blocked by piles of dirt and rubbish, Nor was the way to God blocked by closed off doors or by other ordinary physical barriers. It was blocked off by people. God’s people could not draw near because Israelites who claimed to be God’a people were buying and selling, organising money exchange and keeping caged animals there for sacrifice.

Jesus was enraged. He was savagely angry because people cut off the way to God. They believed in the economy but not in society. They wanted reputations, but cared nothing for community. So he overturned the tables and drove out the traders and their stock.

“My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations!” He shouted. “But you have made it a den of thieves!’

On Wednesday night we were talking about people who love rituals and performances, but show no sign of real faith. Bruce quoted old Principal Morling. Principal Morling said that, thanks to the Catholic practice of confession, there are fewer Catholics than Protestants in mental hospitals, but more Catholics than Protestants in gaol.

That’s probably true. But aren’t we Protestants just as capable of treating grace as something cheap? Who has a monopoply on mistreating the gospel and misapplying its truths? We Protestants fall into the same sins as anyone else, we merely do it less visibly.

Never point the finger at others without realising that we most strongly accuse those most like ourselves.

Think about the destruction of the temple because of the sins of God’s people. Consider the cleansing of the temple because of the neglect of God’s people. Think of the emptying of the temple because of the injustices and self–centredness of the people who should care for others. It all boils down to one thing. There are times when the place of God’s people needs to be torn down and restarted.

IDOLATRY

Keep that in mind, because it is so easy to fall into idolatry.

Here are just a few examples.

• We idolise our buildings. I said for years we should remove the choir stalls where the Clavinova is now, to open the front of the church up. We didn’t even have a choir anymore. But no one would let me touch the stalls.

Then the deacons got the idea of removing them, but thought I wouldn’t like to have the stalls removed, because I don’t like change!

It took me 30 seconds to find a screwdriver and 30 minutes to get those stalls down.

Is there is something in our buildings which can’t be changed? Is there is some area too holy to enter? Then we have built an idol, and it needs to be torn down.

• We idolise our Denomination. I am a Baptist by conviction. I came from a Methodist background, and have been strongly influenced by Christians from other traditions, but I still believe that a Baptist Church which works properly is better than most other churches. However, I will add that just about any church is better than a Baptist one that has gone bad.

When I edited The Australian Baptist, I suggested that we Baptists should review our attitudes and change our practices and measure everything against scripture. I upset lots of readers. They saw all criticism as an attack, maybe even an attack on God.

I want churches to come alive! I want to see us become truly radical. I always have. We will never change until we see the need to change.

If we don’t believe we can ever need change, we are idolaters. Idols are dead and they create dead worshippers.

• We idolise Protestantism. I was horrified when we had a lunch here and two guests were really tearing Catholics down. What made it worse was that we had a Catholic visitor. It was discourteous and unChristian, and I had a lot of trouble stopping them without creating a scene. I was ready to give them both a dressing down in front of everyone, I was so angry.

I am not a Catholic, but I hate anti-Catholic bigotry. Never forget that!

Some Protestants think that everything about the church was fixed up by Luther and Calvin, and any criticism of where we are now is rejection of what they achieved.

These were the Reformers who said the church must always be reformed, and must always be being reformed. They had no illusions about human perfection, no objection to the idea that “The Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word.”

But we can idolise their achievements.

When we fall into idolatry, we have to change. We have to clean out the idols and restore the true worship of God.

NEGLECT

In Josiah’s day, the temple had been neglected, and, as the temple worship was abandoned. So was the word of God.

Those who should have managed word and worship abandoned God’s house to rubbish and rats.

Neglect can be subtle, just like idolatry. It’s what is in our hearts, not what is physically there that is the real source of the problem.

This is hard for me to talk about. I know my own faults. Some messes exist because they are the fall out from a work in progress. When Tom was here, he would build a cupboard or fix a table, and the entire hall would be coated with wood shavings and sanding dust. It was horrible, and took a lot of cleaning up, but work creates mess.

Other messes occur because people have lost the will to clean, or because the job seems too big, or because, if one makes a mess, another adds to it.

I make a mess, and then I feel it is too much to fix, so I leave it, and it only gets worse. I know it, yet it happens over and over.

But the worst kinds of messes occur when people forget about God, when they go through the motions occasionally, but they have lost their link with the living Lord of all.

That was exactly what had happened with the Israelites. God’s word was so unfamiliar to them when it was found that the king tore his clothes in horror when he heard what God really expected of his people.

The key to sorting out this kind of neglect is a return to God as revealed in his word, and true repentance in response.

SELF—CENTREDNESS

A lot of the problems in today’s church arise from self–centredness, the very kind of thing that Jesus acted against.

It started innocently enough. There is nothing wrong with helping people in their worship. There is nothing wrong with payment for service. There is nothing wrong with doing these things in or near a place of worship.

For example, if we had a small shop selling Bibles for anyone who wanted to look up the readings as we go, there would be nothing at all wrong with that. But we could go another step. We could insist that only Bibles with the stamp of our bookshop could be used in our services. We could take people's Bibles and exchange them for an official copy — for a fee.

We could go even further, and everyone who came in had to come in through an arcade of bookshops. And you could pay me a stipend and then add a percentage of the take from the businesses in the foyer.

That’s pretty much how it went at the Temple. You couldn’t bring your own sacrifices; you had to buy an officially stamped goat or cow or pigeon and have that sacrificed. And the priests got their cut from all this trading, and visitors to the temple had to fight their way through the shops, and foreigners couldn’t even get in, because the area reserved for foreigners was filled up with traders. And the High Priest lived high on his cut from the shops.

They couldn’t care less about what it did to people. It was authorised. It had been done for centuries. That was all that counted.

It’s no wonder that Jesus was angry!

And I imagine he still gets angry when his people set up blockages in the foyer so that pagans can’t get in.

APPLICATION

What I want to say today is that we must review everything and subject the lot to the scrutiny of God’s word and to an honest assessment of what our actions do to the world out there.

Maybe we are idolising things we shouldn’t.

Most of today’s debates about ordination would be resolved if we all went back to the Bible. It does not teach ordination.

The Anglican theologian, Leon Morris, in his book, Ministers of God, says that it is doubtful that the New Testament teaches ordination. The Baptist Theologian, Marjorie Walkentin, in her study, Ordination, shows that the Greek word translated “ordain” is wrongly translated and wrongly interpreted.

In the New Testament, every member was a minister, and that is the theory of Baptist Churches. But, in practice, we ordain in much the same way that the traditional churches have done since a few centuries after Jesus.

We need to reinvent ministry.

I see myself as being like the coordinator of a community centre. Paul saw church leaders as being like the overseers of a council construction gang, or like the elders of a synagogue, or like waiters in a restaurant. That is what bishop, presbyter and deacon mean. Others saw them as like trainee shepherds.

The question of whether women can be ordained is irrelevant.

Maybe there is rubbish to clear away. Traditions and practices that need to change.

What about our own history? As a church, we have been very bound by our history. For many years, if you weren’t a Scot, you didn’t get elected as a deacon. Tom was the first non–Scottish secretary since the 1930s. There were many things we couldn’t do, or only did in certain ways, because that was how we always did them. And those of us who have been here for a long time have taken many of those things on board. We need to change.

One historic thing is being overly cautious with spending on important things. We have a lot of maintenance to do because we didn't prioritise it, both here and at the manse. That is rubbish that needs to be cleaned away.

Most importantly, is there anything in our attitudes, in our hearts and minds, which needs to be adjusted to ensure that people who hunger and thirst for God can get in?

For example, some Christians have gone to such extremes to push one or other interpretation of Genesis that today if you even suggest that God created everything, many people stop listening at that point, because they assume you are going to go down the fundamentalist path. Something is wrong there!

I conducted a wedding last weekend, and made sure that I explained why we Christians had the Christian prayers and the acknowledgments of God; and suggested ways that unbelievers could join in together with believers. I’d never gone to that extent before, and was amazed at how many people remarked that they had felt included for the first time in a Christian wedding.

What are we doing to the gospel? What do we need to change, to make sure that the gospel reaches our world?

What must be torn down and what must be built in its place, to be true to our God?

Let’s seek God’s radical answers, and learn to do his will. AMEN

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© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)