The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
October 18, 2009
Vol. 12 no. 40

Everything But...

Some people make a career out of criticizing the church. It’s rather easy to do since we all assume that the church is the haven of perfect saints. Once you commit yourself to the church and live in it for a while, the ideal of perfection seems laughable. The church is anything but perfect, and that’s why it’s perfect!

An easy target for critics, inside or outside the church, tends to be our love of hierarchy, of who’s on first, who’s on second and third, and who has already made it to home plate - and who is stuck out in left field. Of course, the church is far from alone with this love, as it tends to be a human infatuation long before churches came into being. In the first century AD when the Gospel was being played out in the backwater of the Roman Empire, an emperor or other provincial leaders would count themselves very fortunate if they left office without being assassinated. Democracy was a faint ideal of Greek civilization, but seldom practiced. In the church, we tend to eat one another up, but normally we don’t assassinate the preacher! There are some things to thank God for!!

The disciples are us, at our best and at our worst. Sometimes they show us how to live out the Good News; other times the Gospel is a good way to promote one’s self-interests. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, have figured out that this Jesus Company can be a lot more profitable than their old job of catching fish. Becoming “fishers of people” was more akin to the old saw of someone who “prayed on Sunday and preyed on his fellow human being the rest of the week.” They wanted the number one and two jobs in the glory of the kingdom, forget about the others. Jesus told them that here leadership starts from the bottom.