I love church.
Right now, having said that, something occurred to me about some of the practices in church life, like the offering and like the Lord’s Supper. In these things we are usually doing something symbolic, in the offerings, that is not all we’re giving to God. That is all we’re giving to ‘the ministry’ whatever that might be, but the requirement of God is that we give Him our life and that includes every penny we spend. In a real way, then, the offering is a token gesture to God and there’s nowt wring with that.
With the Lord’s Supper likewise we partake in the bread and wine as symbols of the body and blood of Jesus. It is more than a symbol to some, but at the least it is meant to be symbolic of our union with Christ and with His Church.
It occurred to me, though, that sometimes we can be tokenistic with our tokens. You know what it is to be tokenistic. The company say they need a female on the team because there are too many males. Some perky bright spark wants to hire a black guy or someone else from the ethnic minorities to show how we are all into the diversity agenda. They mean well, but don’t understand fully the consequences of their actions and they are not thought through. They come across as cheap, patronising and fruitless.
So with the offering business, especially if the tithes and offering is a part of the deal, there can be that sort of thinking that seems smug and content at having done our bit for God. Whatever we’ve been able to scrimp and save up, we’ve put in the offering and of course we’ve passed the crucial ‘10% mark of holiness’ that means we’ve done our bit for God. Also, having done that bit, it really appears as though God has no say in the remaining 90% of the funds – whatever shopping, whatever other expenses, we’ll do what we like and no one should complain because we’ve done our token gesture to God.
Worse still, with the practice of The Lord’s Supper where there’s that piece of bread and little goblet of wine. That’s a Supper? That’s not even the appetiser! Symbolic of a feast? In preparation for the marriage supper of the lamb to come? That morsel and that little drop of wine?
Yet those little items do in some cases our hunger and thirst for God and true unity in knowing Jesus. We’re happy with the morsel and drop as long as it doesn’t endeavour to take over our whole life. We’re happy with the little bit for those touchy-feely emotional times, or perhaps if our conscience pricks us about some point of moral compromise. That’s the compartment we have for Jesus, and He need not bother the majority of our life.
On the larger scale let’s look at the weekly token approach to meeting with Hod’s people for a few hours … a week. We go in, do our duty, take on what’s been said, critique the sermon and praise and worship performance, but don’t do much more than that for our brothers and sisters, for mutual edification, for the proclamation of Jesus and the manifesting of His kingdom in our lifetime.
In all this we take symbols and tokens and make them tokenistic. In this we reveal how much we really love God. And it is a shame.
I love the thought of the Lord’s Supper being a part of a big meal and each part of that meal reflecting how much we enjoy building fellowship and growing the knowledge and wisdom of Jesus Christ topped off with the symbols that don’t say I’m happy with a crumb and a drop of Christ, but actually declare I am desperate to be wholly inhabited by the Body and blood of Christ and see that evident in my relations with my brothers and sisters in Christ.
I love the thought of giving generously to the cause of Christ whether it’s the sustaining of a building, or a project reaching the homeless or a mission to war torn or famine stricken areas. I love the thought that such is the desire to be generous, that there is no percentage that shows how much Jesus is adored and people are cared for.
I remain all for the power of symbols and tokens, as long as they move beyond the tokenistic and impacts the whole approach to life in Christ in Christian community.
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
dmcd
Life With CD 