The Church is the People

Picture a church basement classroom.  Small children sitting side by side cross-legged on a mat, looking up at a teacher as she squats precariously on the edge of a much too small child's chair.  She instructs them to hold their hands up in front of them, interlacing their fingers together, index fingers touching to form a steeple, thumbs forming the doors and they sing; the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is the people.  They open their thumbs and wiggle their fingers and instil in their minds the visual representation of how the people they meet on Sunday are the integral part of church, not the building.  In that moment the church become a relationship instead of an institution.

The church is the people.

"David was allowed to keep Bathsheba."  Our pastor says when he is asked to step down in the wake of the discovery of his affair.  He is David in this story, I suppose.  She must be Bathsheba, the willing and compliant version of Bathsheba I first learned about.  Not Bathsheba, the widowed rape victim I am now acquainted with. 

The church is the people.

I'm in youth group, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin.  She is petite and adorable and it seems that the entire wheel turns on the axis of her.  I look up the word petite and it reads: "(of a woman) having a small and attractively dainty build." It's right there in black and white.  Attractively dainty.  Petite = attractive and I am nothing of the sort.  I feel cumbersome and unwanted.  I complain about the expectation my parents have for me to lose weight and my youth pastor says, "maybe they just want you to be a real blonde bombshell". 

The church is the people.

"You are like a stick of gum.  When you have sex it's like being chewed up.  Who is going to want an old chewed up piece of gum?" I'm no longer a person but a stick of unchewed gum.  My only purpose is to be sweet and desirable but insubstantial and disposable.  I should be wanted but not enjoyed and though I have never been tasted I begin to fear that there is no one that likes my particular flavour. 

The church is the people,

And all the people I see on that stage are men.  God our Father, Abba, daddy.  Male and feMALE He created them.  We are complimentary, different but equal.  It's not their fault that God wants us silent, compliant, subservient.  It doesn't mean that women are worthless, they are simply worth less.  God is not a woman, haven't you read your Bible?  He is the Father, He is the Son, He is the Holy Spirit.  Jesus referred to God as His Father, and that's good enough for me.  Don't pay attention to the fact that the Bible was written by men, translated by men, interpreted by men.  Don't listen when they tell you that in the original language the words for the Holy Spirit were all in the feminine form.  That means nothing. 

The church is the people.

The people are all parts of the body of Christ.  Every part is necessary, integral to the smooth functioning of a healthy church, but is the body of Christ male or female?  What parts do we play?  Are there breasts on this body, to nurture new life and sustain the needs of future generations?  Is there a womb where that seed was planted and protected?  Are the hips wide to bare the weight of the responsibility of carrying this life to term? 

The church is the people.

Those people are men.  More importantly white, middle class, straight, men.  The ultimate example of what we are to strive for.  If that ideal is impossible we must simply struggle under our lot in life until all things are made new.  This yoke is not easy, this burden is not light.  The church hurts and they are hurting.  The wound has been bound but it's festering under its wrapping.

The church is the people.

"The Bible is clear." They say, but only when the easiest explanation suits their fancy.  The blind eyes of the body of Christ are turned away from the ones they cut and push towards the pit.  They push their fingers into their ears and hum when when Jesus says, "come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden".  When they think of the church they think of the long standing theology and tradition.  Something outside themselves, something designed by God.  They're half right.  The church is designed by God.  We are the bride of Christ, the bride is a woman.  For better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

The church is the people.