Church as Agent of Transformation

Friends,

This week, someone asked me how the church can be an agent of transformation in such a divisive world. My answer: Speak and act differently from everyone else. Do the opposite of what causes division. Be the person that you want to see in the world and demand it of others.

The beginning of every communion service in the traditional version of the Prayer Book starts with this declaration:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

We can't become numb to the radicalness of Jesus's words. All the law and all of the prophets come together for one goal and purpose: Love God, Love Self, and Love neighbor. In other words, everything anyone has ever said and done in the Bible, and every law laid down therein, has one intention: to cause us to love God, ourselves, and our neighbors. It's not hyperbole; it's not pie in the sky. It is Jesus's gospel and we claim to be followers of Jesus.

In the wake of the violence we have seen across the country last week, the church is a place that rejects the vitriol and vengeance filling the airwaves and social media feeds. The church is the place that also denies the labeling of individuals as anything other than children of God.

Here, we do not characterize individuals according to the manner in which they prefer to answer political policy; we only characterize human beings as those for whom Jesus died. Only when we start there is there even a chance to fulfill Jesus' command to love God, self, and neighbor.

There are often competing visions of what life in our nation and world should look like. That is probably an understatement. At times, we may feel that a vision antithetical to Jesus's Gospel holds sway. Sometimes we will be right and sometimes we will be wrong.

The guideline is always how we treat each other. If we, or others, or political policies, treat human beings as anything other than a child of God, there we will see the evil one working to get a foothold.

How can the church be an agent of transformation? We must be the community we wish to see, in our language, in our treatment of others, and in our love for God, ourselves, and our neighbors.

May God grant us the grace to make it so,

Scott+

P.S. And one more thing: stay off social media, or at the very least, be deeply skeptical of everything you read and see there. The algorithms are against us. They are designed to promote division. I've decided that I can't be a disciple of Jesus and be on social media. But that's a different article and maybe even a class. What do you think?