Fixing The Church

"Cleaning the Church, like cleaning the house, is a continual necessity."

Editor’s Note: This essay also appears in The Line Issue 11.8 (August 2024); subscribe to The Line here.

Amartyma (αμαρτημα) is the Greek word for sin, used in the New Testament. Its literal meaning is to “miss the mark,” perhaps best captured by the Biblical definition that we all “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The popular definition that sin is “doing something bad” fails to encompass the dynamic nature of sin, its propulsion of life’s trajectory off the rails, not hitting the bull’s eye of the target.

As individuals, we all grapple with this enemy within. Yet it also applies, not surprisingly, to the Church herself, which is comprised entirely (except for the Head) of sinful people. The Church began on the Day of Pentecost as the living Body of Christ, infused with the Holy Spirit. The new born followers of the Christ were incorporated into her by the thousands, in a beginning as perfect as the Garden itself. They proclaimed with enthusiasm the pure Gospel of love and salvation to anyone who would listen, “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread [i.e. the Eucharist] and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need” (Acts 2:42-45). This is where the Church started, a beautiful icon of Christ himself.

Yet in only a matter of months, amartyma abounds, the mark is missed repeatedly. Some withhold sharing their possessions, and lie about it. The needy, receiving daily gifts of food from the community, dispute among themselves over an unequal distribution. The whole communal life breaks down, as sin asserts itself, and the Church goes off the rails. As congregations form throughout the Middle East, problems arise which have a very modern them: people become sectarian attaching themselves to a particular personality, others preach (or follow) heterodox views, moral failures abound, selfishness is common. This is not the whole story. There are many inspiring examples of true Christian action and teachings. But existence in the Garden is only dimly visible in the rearview mirror. Life is back to being a matter of missing the mark, individually and communally.

As the centuries have gone by, the pattern continues to repeat itself. The Roman Catholic Church clarifies this (or “spins” it) by saying the Church, being the Body of Christ, cannot ever be wrong. Protestant Churches clarify (“spin”) by agreeing that history through the centuries evolved into a Church so sinful and corrupt that the Reformation of the 16th Century was necessary to cleanse and correct the Church. They proudly proclaim themselves as Reformed Churches, with the previous flaws corrected, mission accomplished.

Only the most gullible could believe that the Church, or any church, has risen above sinning. The world around us is not slow in pointing out the modern specifics. Perhaps it is time for Christians to include communal sins along with individual ones in heading for the confessional. False witness, lying, is among the most grievous, if least repented, of sins. To assert, one way or another, that the Church is where the righteous can be found, is certainly a false statement, “perambulating in the suburbs of veracity,” as Winston Churchill used to say.

The Church, of course, is the gathered community of Christian Faithful. It is
not the institution, which only provides structure for the community. Every one of those Faithful is, in fact, a sinner. It is therefore not surprising that things go wrong in the Church. What surprises is that many Christians seem in denial about it. But neither attempts to proclaim perfection nor announcing that the problems were all fixed in the Reformation has credibility when exposed to the reality of church life.

The Church is not, as individuals are not, a finished product. As has been noted already by others, the Church must always be in the process of reforming. It is a dynamic which needs to continue as long as time itself, as long as the dynamic of sin continues.

And what is there to fix in the modern Church? Have you ever thought, as I have, how our church life compares with the actions, teachings and ethics of Jesus? We Anglicans are in apostolic order, which is to say, we are committed to continue unchanged the teachings of the apostles. The latter were mandated by Jesus to promulgate and preserve the Gospel truth. In apostolic order, that mandate is passed down to us. We are to present the teachings unchanged, in such a way that they are relevant to our current age.

Those teachings begin, not with the deep discussions of the councils, not with the hypostatic union or the filioque, important as they are. They begin with loving God and loving your neighbor, which we are told are the two defining acts for Christians. Without that love, the rest is just clanging gongs, noise with no significance, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13.

How does that play out? In one example, look at the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.”There are various explanations that it means you are forbidden to murder anyone, which exempts killing in wars, executions, euthanasia, and such. But Jesus’ explanation is radically different. He includes all killing. Beyond that, he observes that hating others, denouncing others or being angry are all forms of killing. When he is done, few if any of us escape breaking this commandment.

In another example, Jesus tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God, and worry about the rest only in the context of that priority (Matthew 6:33, Luke 12:31). Church people mostly do not seem to differ much from others in seeking first economic, national and political, social or purely selfish priorities.

There are a lot of other examples of the deviation from what Jesus taught the apostles in our modern churches. One seldom hears a non- Christian observer exclaiming “Look how those Anglicans are absolutely following the teachings and example
of Jesus!” Brothers and sisters, it would be refreshing to hear from the Faithful even the confession that we are missing the mark, our sin is distorting our Church, our message has strayed from the teachings of Jesus to proclamations of our national
greatness, or the latest target of church people (currently abortion, previously alcohol, and prior to that our manifest destiny to conquer the West and its peoples). Many follow a gospel with a god who promises his faithful followers prosperity, yet call this false gospel “Christian.”

We note with pride that we are a church of the Reformation. But we often fail to recognize the need for reformation as an ongoing process, not an historic event. If you boast that you cleaned your house in the 16th century, you can expect visitors to be appalled by the centuries of neglect since. Cleaning the church, like cleaning the house, is a continual necessity.

In so cleaning, we should remember that the standard against which we are measured is not other churches, nor the world around us, nor past practices, nor “better than some.” It is the eternally unchanged model of Jesus, love for our brothers and sisters in the family of God, love also for the unlovable, the kind of love that produces action and concrete help (see Matthew 25 for Jesus’ expectations). We, the sinners of Christ’s Body, cannot impress others by our (non-existent) righteousness. But we can focus on the “one thing needful” as both our message and guide.