October 17th, 2013 Commentary on Henri Nouwen's Daily Meditation

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Daily-Meditation--The-Church--Spotless-and-Tainted.html?soid=1011221485028&aid=-pDxQdGIdiY

In case the above link to Henri Nouwen’s Daily Meditation doesn’t work:

Thursday October 17, 2013 

The Church, Spotless and Tainted

The Church is holy and sinful, spotless and tainted.  The Church is the bride of Christ, who washed her in cleansing water and took her to himself "with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless"  (Ephesians 5:26-27).  The Church too is a group of sinful, confused, anguished people constantly tempted   by the powers of lust and greed and always entangled in rivalry and competition.

When we say that the Church is a body, we refer not only to the holy and faultless body made Christ-like through baptism and Eucharist but also to the broken bodies of all the people who are its members.   Only when we keep both these ways of thinking and speaking together can we live in the Church as true followers of Jesus.

My Commentary:

It’s been about 11 years since I taught college-level art history.  When it came time in the semester to teach medieval architecture, I would talk about the many cathedrals in Europe. What was fascinating to read and discuss was that every aspect of how the cathedrals were built embodied an expression of the theology.  The Roman Catholic perspective on the architecture of the church was that it needed to literally reflect, be a dwelling of God’s here on earth.  It was literally to be a sanctuary of the other world—Kingdom of God. The English word sanctuary, which is derived from the Latin word sanctuarium, meaning a sacred place (the words sanctity, sanction and saint are all derived from the same root) is secularly defined as a place that is set apart as a refuge from danger or hardship.

Luther understood the church more as the communion of saints over the understanding of the church as the house of the Lord.  “Those who want to know Christ cannot find him by trusting in their own reason, they must go to the church, but not the church built of wood and stone, but the church which is the communion of the saints.”  Luther though, as well affirmed the institutional nature of the church suggesting that it was divinely instituted by God as a means of GRACE. These two concepts however are in tension to one another:  the church as a spiritual reality and the church as an institution.  How I have come to appreciate the Lutheran view of church is that we are all a part of the priesthood of all believers—here is where we gather in communion with one another to build the Body—grow and go together to spread the Good News!  GRACE is the structure of the church which has been created by faith.  It embodies many things but most importantly it embodies the grassroots efforts of the children of God. It is a place of interactive faith, faith in action.

And what I believe Nouwen concludes with is the notion that now more than ever we need to recapture the urgency and agency of the church to turn the tide against evil.  For Faith without naturally produced responses (works) is dead…

God Bless Your Thursdays!

Nicole Collins