Do We Need an Institutional Church?
“What other church is there besides institutional? There’s nobody who doesn’t have problems with the church, because there’s sin in the church. But there’s no other place to be a Christian except the church. There’s sin in the local bank. There’s sin in the grocery stores. I really don’t understand this naïve criticism of the institution. I really don’t get it. Frederick von Hugel said the institution of the church is like the bark on the tree. There’s no life in the bark. It’s dead wood. But it protects the life of the tree within. And the tree grows and grows. If you take the bark off, it’s prone to disease, dehydration, death. So, yes, the church is dead but it protects something alive. And when you try to have a church without bark, it doesn’t last long. It disappears, gets sick, and it’s prone to all kinds of disease, heresy, and narcissism.”
-Eugene Peterson
The Judged Judge
It was not what you would call the highlight of my musical career.
My mouth was dry. My leg shook uncontrollably. My cold hands trembled even as they clutched the trumpet. The three judges–professors in music departments at local colleges, I assume–sat in their folding chairs behind a table across the room. One slumped back in her chair and chewed a pencil. Another rested his elbows on the table and peered over the top of his reading glasses. The third glanced at his watch and sipped his coffee. They were waiting for me to begin.
“Start with an E flat scale”, they’d said. So, I took as deep of a breath as I could manage, and lifted the instrument to my lips. I began to play. Or–to put it more accurately–I attempted to play. But try as I might, my lips refused to vibrate. My fingers could not find the right valves. The notes would not come out right. Some sort of sound came out the bell of my trumpet. But it wasn’t an E flat scale. I mumbled a quick apology to the judges, shook my head, and tried again. Still nothing like an E flat scale. I began a third time, this time charging through the missed notes. When I finished the scale, I knew my audition was over.
I had prepared for that audition for months (years, actually). I could do an E flat (and a B flat, and an A flat) in in my sleep. But for some reason, when the judges were watching, everything fell apart.
Judgment. I don’t know any (self aware individual) who is excited by the prospect. Most people feel a pang of anxiety when they hear the word because most of us can remember I time when we were judged–and came up short.
Not smart enough.
Not fast enough.
Not rich enough.
Not good enough.
Rarely is judgment a good experience for us. All too often, judgment means rejection. And so I was not surprised at the old saints reaction when I mentioned to her that I would be preaching on the phrase, I believe…he will come to judge the living in the dead. She winced–as though she’d just grabbed hold of a live wire. The unspoken question was written across her face. How do I know that I can withstand judgment? When I have to “give an account for every careless word spoken” (Matt.12:36), when every concealed thought and act is brought out into the open (Luke 8:17) and everything is laid bare (2 Peter 3:10), how can I possibly believe that I will endure God’s scrutiny? How can I have any hope? For her, the proclamation that Jesus will come to judge does not sound like good news. It sounds like terrifying news. It probably does to many of us.
And yet, when the writers of the Heidelberg Catechism pondered this phrase (Q&A 52), they insisted that we should anticipate Christ’s coming to judge (as the old translation put it) “with uplifted heads.” We should be standing on tiptoe, straining our eyes toward the horizon, confidently awaiting his arrival. Why? Because the judge we await is “the very one who has already stood trial in my place before God.” Or as Karl Barth once put it, “Our Judge has been judged.”
Theologian Daniel Migliore observes that one of the crucial questions we must answer when pondering the meaning of the prhase he will come to judge the living and the dead is who our judge will be (the other is what the purpose of his judgment will be–but more on that Sunday morning). Too often, write Migliore, we act as if there are two different Christs: the first Christ who came to Bethlehem to show us his love and grace and then a later Christ who will come to judge and show us his wrath and vengeance. But this is simply not the case. As the angel reminds the disciples in Acts 1:10, Jesus who ascended to heaven is the same Jesus who will return. In other words, when Christ returns to judge, he will not have changed identity or purpose. He will be the same Jesus we came to know two thousand years ago–the Jesus who came in the flesh to die in our place and save us from our sins, the Jesus who endured the just judgment of God for our sin. He will be our judge.
In a famous passage at the end of Romans 8, Paul throws out what appears to be a rhetorical question to his readers. Who is he that condemns? He asks. Christ Jesus who died? More than that, who was raised to life and is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us? Paul seems to be saying it all with a bit of a smirk and a pa-shaw. Would the Jesus who died for you really condemn you? Would he suddenly change his mind and decide that he wants nothing to do for you? I don’t think so! We may hear the voice of condemnation from our parents, our teachers, our coaches, our spouses, our friends, or from ourselves. But Paul insists that we will never hear it from Jesus. Our judge was condemned for us, he says. So for us, there is now no condemnation!
I recently read of an incident in which a reporter asked the wife of Albert Einstein if she understood her husband’s famous formula, E =MC2. Mrs. Einstein replied that she did not. Then, after a pause, she added these words: But I know my husband. And that is enough. That answer, I believe, is a good start for us as we think about Jesus’ coming to judge. There are, of course, many questions that remain. We may not know where the lines will fall. We may not know the fate of every person we know and love. But we know our (judged) Judge. And that should be enough.
Cross Talk
“When we try to say that the cross means this, or that, or the other thing, we usually end up doing something analogous to playing a Beethoven symphony on a mouth-organ. We bring it down to the level of our own thinking and feeling, instead of allowing it to lift our thinking and feeling–yes, and our praying and living and loving–up to its own level.” (NT Wright, For All God’s Worth, p. 53)
