My bracket is set and I’m ready to start defending my Stanglin Family March Madness Bracket Racket title. I’ve got Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech winning only one game each. I’ve picked Houston, again, to win the national championship. My Final Four is Houston, Duke (gag), Arizona, and Iowa State. The winner gets a celebratory dinner at his/her place of choice and his/her bracket proudly displayed on the refrigerator for a full year.

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We’ve been hammering home the point this week that if anybody is going to meet Jesus today, they’re going to meet him through the Church, the Body of Christ. That’s how our Lord designed it. We are his eyes and mouth and ears, we are his hands and feet, his physical presence in this world. We live our lives as individual disciples and together as his followers in imitation of him so people around us can experience Jesus, so they can see him for who he really is.

Except…

I know the Church. I know the Church and all its weaknesses. I am one of the Church’s weaknesses. I sometimes can be a reason people don’t see Jesus. To some extent, all of us are capable of behaving in ways that might hide the Body of Christ from others or, at worst, behaving in ways that are the opposite of Jesus’ ways.

Because of that, not everybody has a great experience with church. Some people have been hurt by the Church. Some people have been rejected by the Church, God help us. Some people don’t feel supported by the church or encouraged, they don’t feel like they’re a part. Instead of meeting Jesus at church, instead of finding God’s love and forgiveness and acceptance and his fellowship, they experience loneliness at church. Or rejection. Or pain.

As a result, there are people who believe in Jesus and love Jesus and want to follow Jesus, but they don’t want any part of Church. They see the Church or they experience the Church and there’s no way they can believe such a sorry collection of sinners can be related to Jesus.

The Church can be boring. It can be self-centered and self-righteous. It can be hypocritical. It can be worldly. Very worldly. I could go on. The Church has a lot of weaknesses, yes. But the Bible says we’re seeing things right now through a dark glass. We only see a poor reflection of the reality, like looking at a cracked and clouded mirror. The Bible says we’re hoping for what we don’t see yet. And, you know, for all its brokenness and failures, the Church still looks pretty good when she’s all dressed up to worship God on Sunday. Or when she’s fist-bumping elementary students outside their school on Monday. Or feeding homeless people at Family Promise on Tuesday.

The point is that, despite all the problems, based on the words of Jesus in the Bible and our own experiences for over two-thousand years, the poor old Church knows, for better or for worse, this is the form by which the risen Christ has chosen to be present in the world. We are the Body of Christ.

So, if you’re going to have a real relationship with Jesus, you must be connected to his Body. You don’t discover Jesus by escaping his community, but by joining it. You don’t grow closer to God by seeking him by yourself, but by entering the life of his Church, by leaning into and embracing the ordinary patterns of worship, repentance, prayer, knowledge, community, Christian practice, and mission that have formed God’s people for centuries.

We do not meet Christ as isolated individuals. We meet him as devoted members of his Body. We are saved together, we are healed together, we are restored and strengthened and shaped together. When you read the earliest Christian writers, you notice that when they wrote about knowing Christ personally, it was about being united to his Body, standing shoulder to shoulder with the community he founded and submitting to the shared Scriptures and sacraments and saints. The early Christians did not describe salvation as “Me and Jesus,” but as “Us in Christ.” Baptism did not place you in a private booth with God, it plunged you into a people. The communion meal did not evoke private internal feelings about Jesus, it joined your life to the lives of all the other believers at the table.

If you’re looking for a personal relationship with Jesus, you must be where he is. If you’re looking for more in your relationship with Christ, you must be where Jesus always promised to be. In the Scriptures. In the prayers. In the supper. In the worship. In the communion of saints. In the life of his Body. And, as every member of his Body has always discovered, the closer we draw to the Church, the closer Christ draws to us.

Peace,
Allan