The questioners, the loners, the kids with behavior problems...

Brad Sullivan

2 Christmas, Year B

December 31, 2017

Emmanuel, Houston

John 1:1-18

The questioners, the loners, the kids with behavior problems...

Over the weekend, a priest friend of mine and I talking and joking together about challenges of church life, and she said, “Yeah, church would be great if it wasn’t for all the people.”  It’s a common joke about the imperfections of the Church which is the ecclesia (or gathering) of Jesus’ friends.  Jesus’ ecclesia of friends began as a rather rag tag group of also-rans, the island of misfit toys type folks who needed and wanted the love and belonging which Jesus was offering.  Being a rag tag group of folks, the church was always an imperfect bunch, and that proud tradition has continued on to this day.

As the church, the ecclesia, the gathering of Jesus’ friends we’re a group of people who follow in Jesus’ ways, except when we don’t.  We love well, giving compassion to those who really need it, to those whose lives have been shattered and need someone to sit with them among the broken pieces of their life and slowly begin sweeping them up and putting the pieces back together.  That is, except for when we don’t love well for a variety of reasons, when our own lives just aren’t up to it, or when our own brokenness prevents us from seeing the broken person in front of us as a person, and we instead just see a broken thing.

As Jesus’ ecclesia, his gathering of friends, we love God and love people above all else.  That’s our way of being.  Some friends of mine recently told me that in their efforts to love God and people above all else, they’ve been going through their house get rid of anything that they would be really upset about if it was broken by a child…or an adult.  They want their home to be a place of love, where adults and children know they are loved, and that they are loved more than the stuff in their house.  That’s a great model for the church, where we love God and love people above all else, except of course when, in our efforts to love God, we end up loving things, and we place that love of things in front of loving people.  It happens.  The church is imperfect because it is irrevocably peopled with people.

In John’s Gospel this morning, we heard that the Word of God, which is God, is also the life and light of all, and that the Word of God became human, as Jesus, and lived among us as one of us.  That was really his first mistake, wasn’t it?  The Word of God already had a perfect ecclesia going, a perfect gathering of beloved friends with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  This perfect ecclesia remained perfect until the Word became flesh and lived among us.  Then, Jesus joined us to the ecclesia of God, along with all of our imperfections.  That’s kind of the beauty of it.  If God had wanted a perfect ecclesia, then I suppose he wouldn’t have become human at all.  We wouldn’t celebrate Christmas, and there would be no baby Jesus, or adult Jesus, or even teenage angsty Jesus.  There would just be the perfect ecclesia of God, without humanity, but God didn’t want that perfect ecclesia, a perfect church.  God wanted the ecclesia of Jesus’ friends, the church, the gathering with humanity, along with all of our imperfections, even if that meant that we mucked things up a bit.  So, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

In becoming human and living among us, God showed us his love for us, not his desire for us to be perfect.  I mean, I suppose it’d be nice, but God showed that he loves us, warts and all.  He then formed the church, the ecclesia or gathering of Jesus’ friends, so that we could further share his love for people, warts and all.  Jesus wanted not a perfect ecclesia, but an ecclesia that shared his heart for people and his willingness to sacrifice personal comfort and convenience (and quite a bit more than that) for the sake of people…especially the ones no one else seemed to care that much about. 

The questioners, the loners, the kids with behavior problems.  Seek them out, invite them in, and love them more than your stuff, Jesus has taught his church, and be willing to sacrifice your personal comfort and convenience for their sake. 

The people who don’t have life figured out and have spent their life mucking it up for themselves.  The people who have life figured out and learned from a young age that life is harsh and cruel.  The people who have been rejected by their peers, rejected by society, rejected by their church or family.  Seek them out, invite them in, and love them more than your stuff, Jesus has taught his church, and be willing to sacrifice your personal comfort and convenience for their sake.

The people who aren’t like us, who make us uncomfortable, whose very existence disrupts our world, shattering the illusions we created to make our world seem safe.  The people whose need is greater than we can provide, whose loneliness and despair are deeper than we can see, and whose desire for connection and companionship is greater and more beautiful than even they are aware.  Seek them out, invite them in, and love them more than your stuff, Jesus has taught his church, and be willing to sacrifice your personal comfort and convenience for their sake.

We’re not going to fix every problem or make any lives perfect.  The lives of all people still have that one flaw in them, that all lives involve people and are therefore irrevocably messed up, messed up just like the church, the ecclesia, gathering of Jesus’ friends, and Jesus didn’t form his ecclesia of friends in order to make a perfect institution.  Jesus formed his church, his gathering of friends, in order to share with us his light, because he simply wanted us to be a part of the life of communion shared between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and so with all our imperfections, we reach out with that same light to others, and we sit with them in their imperfections, not to make them perfect, not necessarily to fix them, but simply to dwell with them, to shine some light into the darkness of their lives, and to join in communion with them, becoming friends, and joining together in the Church, ecclesia, the gathering, of Jesus’ friends.