Here is the church
Here is the steeple
Open the doors
And see all the people.
The childhood finger game is one of my earliest images of the church. It takes some manual dexterity to push your index fingers into the form of the steeple, and to interlock the remaining ones so that the people are hidden under the church roof, ready to be revealed when we open our thumb doors, rather than dancing on it.
"Church" is possibly the most common word that we Christians use, second only - perhaps - to "God." We use it of the buildings where we meet to worship God. We use it for the things we do on Sundays, "going to church." We use it as a shorthand for our parishes and congregations. And we talk about the church at large, meaning Christians everywhere, or at least Episcopalians.
But in the New Testament, the main word that we translate as "church" is ecclesia. It doesn't mean the buildings, or what we do. It means literally "called out." We are the people who are called out, who are gathered together by God. We are bound together by our faith in Christ, through baptism, and we are bound together with the people with whom we gather to worship and pray and serve. We belong to one another, just as we belong to God.
And it's that belonging to God that shapes our relationship with one another as the church. Just as God as Trinity is in an eternal dance of relationship of mutual interdependence, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we as Christians are caught up into that dance with God, and in turn mirror that interdependence with one another as the church.
One of the places to which we Episcopalians turn to explain what it means to live as Christians is the baptismal covenant. But one of the things I've noticed recently is that the baptismal covenant doesn't do too well in expressing that interdependence. It's implied earlier in the Baptism service, where the congregation is asked if they will support the baptismal candidate in their life in Christ. But in the covenant itself, references are scarce. We say we believe in the church - whatever it is - in the Creed. But then we focus on our individual actions, in how we live our lives and in how we respond to the world around us. It's as if we've forgotten that in baptism we are not only joined to Christ, but are joined to those called by his name. We have a new identity in the household of God. And I wonder if we need to add a sixth question, "Will you use your God given gifts for the glory of God and the upbuilding of the church?"
And perhaps next time I play the church finger game with my nephew, I'll lock my fingers together the "wrong" way. Maybe dancing on the roof is exactly where the church, where we, need to be.
