Reflection June 3, 2108; Mark 2-23-27, 2 Corinthians 4:5-7

Who is the Church for?

The European Calvinist theologians Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck knew each other very well and for our terms they were very conservative. Kuyper was the more political of the two, serving as Dutch prime minister while Bavinck was the rational scholar. They argued about the Church. One emphasized the church as institution, the other the church as organism. In their day and age, the Church was powerful. Most people went to church, as it was around the dawn of the twentieth century.

In our day and age the church as an institution has mostly lost its power and where it has power it is often negative and divisive. The top down stuff doesn’t work anymore. People ignore the Church’s teachings for social life. It is our task to work bottom up, to create healing communities like this tone hat are living organisms where we rediscover and spread the message Christ preached, a message of love and forgiveness and inclusiveness and hope. So now we know what the Church in a nutshell is, who is it for? Is it for tradition, is it for rituals? “No,”says Jesus. “The Church is for people and so are its traditions. The Sabbath was made for humans. Humans weren’t made for the Sabbath. Jesus knows that His servants need to take care of their wellbeing. God needs them to preserve and spread the message. We may be durable clay pots as Rola explained to us (Middle Eastern kings used to keep their treasures in them), but clay pots are still easy to shatter. So we have to take care of the pots. The pots hold the treasure of God’s Word. If the pots are falling apart, we cannot hold the treasure and it will be lost. If humans will not spread the message of the Gospel, who will pass it on?

Friends, we could argue about clay pots: we can sing their praises for reliability or we can point at their durability. We could have that conversation about many materials. The same is true of humans. We could talk about our fragility, our brokenness, about how easy we shatter and fall apart or we could talk about our creativity and potential, our ability to adapt and recover and reinvent.

On one side is the work of Erika Matsuda, an artist working in Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan (NHK, June 31, 2018). She takes pottery shattered by the Kumamoto earthquake and she restores them, enhancing them with red lines and other designs depicting on the shattered earthenware the work of the restless earth in its power and beauty, explaining why the earth does what it wants, spews fire and shakes the land. She uses art not only to mend the earthenware, but also to heal the human spirit. In this sense, brokenness becomes beauty, a beauty deeper than the polished, unblemished pottery that existed before the damage. What had become worthless in monetary terms, now becomes meaningful beyond words. Nothing could be more Christian: Jesus Christ gets shattered on the cross, lynched to put it more crudely, and what emerges is of infinite beauty and healing power.

On the other side, away from brokenness is human potential. I like to hear scientists, because they are often optimistic and almost always rational. As a person who is more feeling in nature, I find that reassuring and gives perspective. Jennifer Doudna was being interviewed on Hard Talk (BBC, June 31, 2018). She is one of the scientist who discovered the power of a protein called CRISPR CAS9. It can cut through the DNA chain and insert new characteristics into a person’s or another living organism’s DNA. The potential is amazing: it could take away a person’s tendency to get a terrible disease. It could also enable prospective parents one day to pick and choose their desired child’s characteristics. It could create disease resistant crops and eradicate malaria. It can also be used as a weapon between states. Jennnifer Doudna was challenged on that. She said that we need to have international regulations, but that basically she is optimistic. So, friends, here is the question: are we fragile, cracked jars or are we beings of unlimited potential? That is what the Sabbath is for says Jesus. Renew yourself, tend to yourself and you will restore the cracked pots (not crackpots I hope) we are. Jesus counts on us to be there for Him as He is there for us. God the Creator is there for us, creating in us new reactions that can enrich the world. The Holy Spirit is there with us, making sparkling what had become dull and unreflective. God makes something beautiful out of something broken. Here we find the meaning of the Church: a place of broken and cracked people ready to be healed by God. Thanks be to God.