Playing Monopoly Wrong All These Years

How long has it been since you played Monopoly?  Long time, right?  Why?  Well, it takes too long for one thing.  But it turns out people have been playing Monopoly wrong.  The rules of the game as it was originally written say that when a person lands on a property, the player can buy it; but if the player doesn't buy it, the banker auctions it off to the highest bidder among the other players.   Did you know that?  Me either.

Well, I've come to the realization that I've been "playing" church wrong all these years, too.  The picture of people filing into an auditorium to watch clerics dressed up in funny clothes give a one-way lecture  to members of their organization (and hopefully a few visitors from which to proselytize) has little or nothing to do with the picture of Christianity presented in the New Testament.  You remember the New Testament, right?  It's that old, dusty collection of first century documents that a lot of Churches say is irrelevant to the world of today.  The fact is: experience shows that what is fast becoming irrelevant are those religious clubs who have abandoned the Bible for humanitarianism, collectivism, or something else.

There is another reformation happening in our time.  What some call the "emergent church" is seriously questioning the way we do church and asking who changed the rules?  Read the New Testament, those witnesses closest to Jesus and the apostles.  Believers met in each other's homes, usually in secret.  Communion wasn't open to everyone who gave a tip-o'-the-hat to Jesus.  Communion was for those in that particular congregation who discerned the Body of Christ in each other (I Corinthians 11) and were committed to one another in covenant love and loyalty to provide and serve at all costs.  Christianity was a dialogue between believers and unbelievers.  There was no division between clergy and laity; there were apostles, yes, but there were also gifted teachers and prophets and helpers and translators -- everyone had a ministry to perform.

What a far cry from today's program-driven congregations begging people to get "involved."  How different were the apostles and teachers of New Testament times who traveled from meeting to meeting to encourage and teach and did not settle down to build little political kingdoms of piety.  These itinerants worked with their own hands and did not siphon away from offerings money for salaries.

I've been doing church wrong all these years; well, at least not the way it was originally planned.  When someone tells you these traditions of muttered liturgy and sacramentalism go back 2,000 years, don't believe them.  These ideas originate with the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.  That's when Christianity went public; donned the robes of spectacle. Dialogue ceased when questions were reasoned treason to the Emperor.   Community became a geographical "parish" rather than a gift of the Holy Spirit.  Titles became signets of honor and privilege rather than invitations to servanthood.  Believers stopped dying for their faith and made others die for theirs.  Sacraments took on the character of Roman street life.  Did you know there was no police force in Rome.  Families had to cooperate with each other to provide protection and revenge.  Unfortunately, the Roman Church inherited much of this ma familia (from which we get the word mafia) heritage.  Sacraments became ways we could tell who was in and who was out.

As I traveled the Mediterranean this past month and visited the Empire's churches in Constantinople (Istanbul) and Rome I saw everywhere pictures and statues of the cult of the Virgin with Jesus reduced to a helpless baby on his mother's knee.  Saints galore but rarely the Savior; relics but little concern for righteousness.  The fertility cults that once dominated the religious life of that part of the world simply changed the artwork; Artemis of Ephesus and Diana of Rome became the Virgin.

Yes, the first Christians had a temple to go to for spectacle and tradition, but God removed even that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all churches are bad any more than it was bad to play Monopoly the way we played it.  It's that we ignored the written guidelines of those who created the game and substituted a different kind of play that ultimately made the game unplayable.

Human traditions are inevitable and can be helpful.  All of us are born into families already constituted, each with its rules and authorities.  Even the house church does not live from itself, but it is nourished by a different stream.  The blood of the martyrs flows to our own day as Christians face persecution and death in places where there are no Constantinians, but only house churches with pastors teaching the Word and believers forming survival coops.  And where Contantinian worship has prevailed in the West, churches have become museums; and those American mega-churches so often teach a gospel foreign to all but marketing gurus and success-driven sycophants.

I thank God that he continues to teach and correct me and call me continually to the sufficiency of Christ alone by grace alone through the Scriptures alone.  I'm thankful that in recent weeks Jesus has let me not only see but experience first hand the contrast of these two ways of doing church.  It's so easy to be a Constantinian.  It provides a venue for every preacher's extroversion.  It's job security when the priest controls the means of grace; it's reinforced by centuries of tradition made complicated and obtuse enough that pesky commoners can't penetrate its mysteries without years of study and help.

May God bless those churches that continue to teach his Word and who are attempting to break out of the grip of the Constantians to start small groups and other intimate opportunities for the Gospel.

OK, I can't afford Boardwalk.  Who will start the bidding?