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Now I know exactly what that means (at least, I think I do) to the fellow who sings it. He's interested in more than just the routine "three songs, a prayer, the offering and a sermonette." He wants to experience something dynamic. And that's good.
Unfortunately, that song reinforces something I believe we ought to get out of our thinking.
The same goes for the phrase "going to church," or "we're building a new church."
We all know, in reality, that church is not the building we go to, nor what we do when we get there. Church is who we are; the Body of Christ, the bride of Christ, the army of the Lord, and the Lord's own building.
Yet, even though we know these things, we continue to act without the full realization of what it means to be these things.
That term, "the body of Christ," seems to me to imply two kinds of relationships.
As the Body of Christ, we are the instrument through which Christ acts on the earth today. Just as the body that was crucified was the vehicle through which He walked from place to place, the hands through which He healed, the arms that held the children, the eyes of compassion through which He saw, the mouth that uttered words of comfort, wisdom, and even of warning. We today are the only body through which He can work.
Second, as members of that body, we are interrelated in vital union with one another. Just the other day, I bumped my toe and tore the nail back into the quick. That word means "living." There was a part of my toenail that I could cut away without the least discomfort, but when it got to the "quick," I felt it. The nerves in my toe join the nerves in my leg and the nerves that go all the way to my brain. My brain said "that hurt."
"Oh, don't pay that any mind. It's not your concern. That's the toe's problem."
Fortunately, I had an old fashioned home remedy (balsam of myrrh) on hand, and it hasn't given me a bit of a problem.
Had I not promptly used my brain to tell me what to do, and my two hands to apply the healing solution, and my eyes to make sure I put it in the right spot, I would have had a painful toe. If it had gotten infected, every cell in my body would have been marshaled to defend that ugly toe.
In response to a physiological 911 call, white blood cells would have been rushed to the site to fight the infection. All of the body's emergency response system would have gone to work - to heal my toe!
That's what we are. We are HIS body. We do His work. We work to heal one another. As Paul says, when one member suffers, all of us suffer.
Sometimes, the body's defense system breaks down. Improper diet, poor habits, even the ravages of time, make it difficult to fight off attacks on the body. That is a state we call "dis -ease."
My body generally works the way it should. My liver doesn't have "a mind of its own." It can't say, "Look, I'm sick and tired of filtering the impurities out of all this blood. Let the heart take care of it for a while."
Thank God for that! But &endash; some of the "organs" of the body of Christ seem to think that way, and for that reason there is often a sickness in the body of Christ.
We are His Body. We must begin to discover what it means to be the church. It is much easier to "go to church" and to "have church" than it is to "be the church."
What a blessing to come to church, and to celebrate the presence of God. But let us remember that we are the church even when we are not in the building worshiping God.
Let the church be the church!
