So, I’m a mad scientist. And I post an advert for anyone willing to donate organs, I’ll pay good money.
You apply, because either, you’re a bit stupid, or really strapped for cash. You turn up to my surgery and I tell you what the fee is and you don’t ask any questions, but hop up on my examination table.
I pump you full of anaesthetic, and proceed to cut off all your limbs – and remove your organs, and I send them all over Auckland (I’m mad, remember). Your hands go to Browns Bay, your feet to Avondale, knees to Northcote, stomach to Takapuna, liver to Red Beach, etc.. totally mad.
In each of these locations I have a cunning mini-lab set up where I can connect your organs or limbs to high-tech electronic equipment – of my own brilliant design – and from there to high-speed fibre and Internet connections, all the way back to my hub here in Glenfield (which is, afterall, the centre of the Shore) – where I keep your brain.
When it’s all up and running, I do a test; I wake you and say, “How do you feel ?”
You say, “Fine, actually. How did the experiment go ?” – at least you think you do; your voice box is in Albany – and your mouth may well be in Birkenhead – I haven’t really decided if I do your whole face.
But you feel fine. Everything seems to be in working order. You can’t to much – but you feel okay.
In fact you can’t do anything. Your feet won’t walk; you can’t swallow, you can’t even scratch your nose (hands are in Browns Bay, remember)
Now, the vast medical knowledge I gleaned from Hollywood, tells me that as soon as you come to realize what has happened to you your brain goes into overload or melts down or you create some sort of pseudo reality to reconcile the fact that you’re reduced to a brain and electronics. Or something.
But once I explain to you what I’ve done and before shock shuts down the whole system, I ask a simple question, “Are you a body ?”
It’s rhetorical. You undoubtedly are not a body.
*****
Now do the same thing with the church. Ask the same question. Again, it’s rhetorical.
Now, please don’t get me wrong… if you know me, I absolutely love technology. Computers are brilliant. The Internet is brilliant. Zoom is brilliant. So good in fact, I give them money every year.
Meeting online is a brilliant solution to lockdowns. You can meet up with several friends from your church. You can chat, you can share; you can discuss the word. You can even pray together (I hope you do) and – if your lag isn’t too bad – sing along. You can even listen to a sermon broadcast from your pastor’s office. Fantastic stuff.
But don’t be fooled. This isn’t church. You’re not a body.
To those of you who say, “Oh, our church has grown in number because heaps of people joined online.” No. It didn’t. What grew in number was people listening to a broadcast sermon. That’s not church.
100 saints in Ephesus reading copies of Paul’s letter simultaneously in their own homes isn’t church.
5 meeting together in one place, clasping hands, or the proverbial ‘holy kiss’, breaking bread, reading, sharing and praying, is.
If your feet can’t walk and your hand can’t scratch your own nose you’re not a fully functioning body. (sincerest apologies to my disabled friends, but you know what I mean)
Imagine a football club that only met in the club-rooms, never to go outside, never kick a ball. Or a golfer with no arms. The analogies are endless… It seems laughable that they are so obvious with sports.
If you aren’t performing your core business – you’re not in business.
And if you’re not able to perform even part of your core business – you’re letting your employer/share holders down.
So thank you. Thank you lockdowns and well-meaning friends online who have mistakenly tried to defend them; this time apart has clarified – for me – some aspects of the local church’s core business that I took for granted and failed to realize. Being a body.
Don’t give away the right to perform our core business.
Thank you.
