Lesson #7- The Body and the Bride

Finally, Rebecca and I have been overwhelmed by the power of the church. In our individualized, ultra-mobile American culture, the church can seem on the surface to be little more than a voluntary-society. In Kenya, we have seen glimpses of how the church as the community of God can change the world.

Kenya is one of those countries that has had a long history of all sorts of organizations of every stripe trying to create positive change within the society. Billions of dollars and probably millions of people have tried to make Kenya a better place. But only one oft-overlooked community in Kenya has the specific promise of the Creator God that they will be the hands and feet of the King in His world, and that community is the church. If we look at the metaphors the New Testament uses for the church, metaphors like “people,” “family,” “bride,” and “body,” all of them are incredibly intimate and personal. The church is less like an association you join than it is like a community you inherit as a birth-right, a community which demands your highest allegiance. Our first births bring us into the world heavily committed to our biological families, to the nation we live in, and to our ethnic group. But our new birth in Christ brings us into a community that Christ says claims a greater allegiance even than these. And that is the church.

We have seen the best and the worst of the church here. We have seen pastors abuse their spiritual authority in despicable ways, and we have also seen pastors and parishioners alike literally lay down their lives for the gospel. Whether with our friend Julias, who has taken a massive pay cut to pastor a small church in the village and yet finds a way to take care of 30 orphans in an orphanage that the church (whose total tithe is probably around 300 dollars a month) somehow manages to support, or the entire fellowship at New City Nairobi, which has stood together as a witness to the love of Jesus that reconciles enemies together before God and takes care of the needs of its congregants at the deepest levels, we have seen Christ changing the world through the hands and feet of his church.

There are some things that now, in the middle of packing and saying goodbye and all the emotions of leaving, I simply cannot find words to express or explain. The experience of church here in all of its body-of-Christ fullness is one of them. I can only say that after two years of seeing the poor and vulnerable be abused by churches that failed them on the one hand, and seeing new life and hope springing forth among the poor and spiritually broken in churches that embody the kingdom on the other, that we are more committed to the church than ever before. The church in our minds and hearts can no longer simply be the place where our family chooses to go and worship on Sunday mornings; it is the community that demands our highest allegiance at every level of life. We have been given the task of embodying the kingdom: to demonstrate in word, deed, and sign what it looks like for a people pulled from every corner of the globe and from every economic status to recognize the reign of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. We are the hands and feet of the Creator. As Tim Keller said, we are the aliens and strangers in the world who nevertheless are radically for the world in our love for our enemies, our generosity to the poor and broken, our moral purity, our love for each other, our fervency for the Lord, and our proclamation of good news that is found in no other place but in Christ and in his church.

We live in a time in which more and more people are looking around at their lives and seeing the fragmentation and isolation that comes from our Western culture’s rampant pursuit of individual choice and total rejection of outside authority. People feel alone. Maybe one of the reasons why the old methods of evangelism seem to become less and less effective is that they address one’s connection with God but ignore one’s connection to the world. But the blood of Jesus not only reconciles humans with God but humans with humans. The blood of Jesus brings us together, and the feast of communion anticipates that great feast in the new heavens and the new earth in which every tear will be wiped away and people from every tongue and tribe and nation will worship the Lamb. It is in the church that we come to the Table, and take the bread and the cup, and proclaim the Christ’s saving blood “until he comes.” And it is in the church that Jesus gives the world glimpses of what his rule and reign will look like. We in the church have an immense challenge, and an incredible opportunity. And it will cost us all of who we are. But one thing we’ve learned in Kenya is that it’s worth it.

May Jesus Christ make us His hands and feet through the power of the Holy Spirit for the glory of the Father.

Michael