Dear Fellow Trekker,
This month the baton is again being passed from Colorado Springs. Our sojourn for a week in PA was most fulfilling. Job’s challenges became the challenges of all. Last month’s MEN made a good handout. God was “present and accounted for.” Thank you for your prayers.
The following Churchillian phrase came to my attention a few days ago and sparked deep reflection on a subject that has been in the “MEN newsletter subject cue” for some weeks. It is: “First we shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” Churchill made this comment to colleagues in the House of Commons after WWII had come to a close, at a time when the House was considering rebuilding its chamber following Nazi bombardment. There is great truth here that relates to the structures of life that we build, both literally and figuratively, and how beneficial they are to us.
It seems that from the beginning of time man has sought to build perfect “structures”, and for a host of reasons. For protection from the atmospheric elements, obviously desirable and effective. For preserving desired relationships, likewise desirable, but for much needed stability in society’s structure, for example, we learn repeatedly a marriage license doth not a marriage make! For practicing religion even, we build structures, but great cathedrals doth not a church make! Is the sanctuary called to be a cathedral, reaching into the heavens, or a shelter of the redeemed, reaching out into the hedgerows of life? What are structures supposed to do, anyway?
Great structures have put a roof over our heads but are not designed to feed us! Beautiful cathedrals can be a helpful aid in worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but the real work of the church likely may lie outside the church building. If the church is truly a “bee hive in reverse” (as one saint suggested) how efficient then is the beautiful, costly edifice? Grace and goodness lands even in stables, but soon leaps out. How requisite are structures anyway? History tells us most institutions/structures do not go away quickly or gracefully. Often, they simply erode over time. “Oh, we had hopes that Jesus would restore Israel.” For Jesus to say the religion of Judaism could not contain the explosive love of God was radical indeed! Has Judaism ever recovered?
The recall of the Churchillian phrase had been preceded by my own meditation of not placing “new wine in old wineskins.” Oh, I love the truth of Scripture. Matthew 9:14-17 was my focus. No, one does not put new wine in old wineskins. Structures age, leak and rot, and are no longer effective containers for which they were made. New wine is too explosive, too potent, too unpredictable!
For some reason we often trek through life feeling the “structure” provides safety, essence and all we need. If somehow we can “build” the ideal model, erect enough barns, structure the “perfect organization”, etc. we will have “arrived” in life. (HINT: Take huge leaps of imagination when you define structure in your life. Your ability to “get it” may be directly proportional to your leap.) But form is rarely substance too; the building is not the church; the house is not the home; the organization is not the organism that pulsates, vibrates, and carries out the ministry. The only place where form and substance are one is in the Trinity… but that is for another day, another MEN newsletter.
If our “leap” is enormous, a lot of questions will rise to the surface. Why does it take the typical religious organization so many years to be pronounced “dead”? Could it be we are serving and perpetuating the structure long after “life” has departed? Yes, “our buildings shape us”. But why is it so hard to admit this? And why does it not dawn upon us like the sunlight of a new day that a structure of any type has never inspired us? God alone inspires and galvanizes. But as sure as we prepare the best structure or containers or plans today, tomorrow they are “old” because God our contemporary is ever new and does not dwell in houses made with hands.
When we align Jesus with any manmade structures and traditions, we should expect tension and conflict. In Jesus’ day, how could a mere man Jesus forgive sin, how could He associate with certain types of people who were wine bibbers and gluttons, how could He heal on a Sunday? Man’s structures always struggle with the presence and break-out personality of the man Christ Jesus, the Lifegiver and Celebrant of all life.
After Jesus, “Life became a matter of “when” we would “get it”, i.e. receive Him. New wine and how we “drink” and “preserve” it, is a matter of individual taste and collective sharing in the community. The point is, His presence changes everything! “Behold, I make all things new.” The old “things” of yesterday, e.g. the wineskin of Judaism, is no longer adequate and cannot be relied upon. “One size fits all” only when it is named Jesus. When Jesus came He had to pull away, to loosen-up, to break-up the existing structure. People and structures had become “white washed sepulchers”, not prodigious, genuine life forms. Today, we are all called to become simple containers of the “new wine”, radically and passionately responding in love to Jesus alone.
Fellow trekker, let me leave you with words of encouragement from the Apostle Paul to the trekkers in Ephesus. Chapter 2:19-22. Jesus Christ is (and must therefore be) the cornerstone of every structure, not only God’s household. We are there with Him, He is with and in us! If the structures of the day have utility, let us use them, never worship them, and never allow them to obscure or dim our view of Jesus. For the true trekker always moves toward Him… ever realizing day by day, the engaging and engulfing Divine Embrace.
Your fellow trekker,
Jim Meredith