Wednesday, April 03, 2019

Where did I put that church? Article 19/39

XIX. OF THE CHURCH
THE visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.

As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith.

We move on into a series of Articles on the church – its doctrine, function, ministry, order and language.

It is clear from the Articles to date that Cranmer has replaced ecclesiology with Christology. For him, we are only who we are, and it follows that churches are only what they are, in Christ.

O'Donovan has a lovely title for his chapter on Article 19. He calls it 'The Disappearance of the Invisible Church'. For the Article talks of the visible church as if there is an invisible one too, yet it is never mentioned. Where'd it go?

Over many years of ministry I have been told on many occasions by people who don't go to church that you don't need to go to church to be a Christian. I think we are somewhat in hock to language here. We have, unfortunately, ended up using the same word for the gathered people and the place where we gather. I have some fun when I tell people that my church has no building of its own, for it doesn't. We meet in a school. We rent it and it meets all our physical needs.

No. What we need people to work out is how to be church. Those who call themselves Christian yet make no attempt to gather are depriving others of their gifts and skills. They are being selfish, not liberated. I am not throwing my all in with weekly, Sunday gatherings. We can be more imaginative than that.

Institutional churches are proper churches and yet every single expression of the institutional church, being a human response to the goodness of God, has erred. Cranmer listed Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome. We must add 'and so have we' whatever our denominational expression.

The one true church is the catholic (meaning worldwide, because of the lower case c) church. All of us erring institutions are part of that yet we are not, in any one place a complete representation of it. It is that sense in which it is invisible; it cannot be seen all at once, complete and whole, from any one place.

For reformation is a constant task as we compare our expression of church with Scripture and sit it under the authority of Christ as a bride waiting for her husband (other metaphors are available).

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