A Moment
Aside ---- 9 August 2020
We often hear the complaint that Christians are "hypocrites" and don't live out what they say they profess.
Well, that’s true. It’s also true that the
followers of Christ are injured, wounded, hurt, and broken, just as the photo
on the top of the page says. The Church is a hospital, not a museum. Museums
teach about what has passed; hospitals are a place with a future. Children are
often born there. Surgery and therapy for the body are done there. It is true
that people do die in hospitals, but they have not passed without hope and
without care. One way or another, hospitals are places where people come and
go, leaving to go on with the life they have or the life they will have.
Museums are static, reminding us of what should be truly remembered, either to celebrate
or to avoid. A good museum of a disaster or a problem in history could inspire people to change the present in order to avoid
a recurrence of that disaster or problem. Museums let us know how far we’ve
come. At their best, hospitals propel us to a future.
What the wounded souls who seek healing in
the Church of Christ are looking for is a future. Most of us are more than well
aware of our failings and problems. What we seek is healing, forgiveness, and a
sense of mission of some sort. Museums don’t permit that. If the Church is a “museum
for saints”, there’s no life there. It can get musty and dusty and the
custodians are people with no interest in living like the statues or pictures
housed there. Often they just dust them off and move on to some other task.
I know that many people are scared of
hospitals and there is a fearful aspect about those buildings. Hospitals are
made to change things through healing, re-education, and often the painful
process of “setting a bone” or surgery. The Church can be like that as well.
The best Churches/congregations have a fearful aspect to them. Along with the
comfort, healing, and Good News of the love of God, there is the Good News of
the love of God that will change each and every one of us. If the love of God
is not pestering you to become more, to become better, to become trusting, to
become more of who God made you to be…
Well then, get back on your pedestal and let someone dust you off once a
week. Imperfect folks (like me) can get a model of you in the gift shop, have
lunch at the snack bar, and go out into the imperfect world and seek healing,
for ourselves and for the whole world.
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