No.189: Woe to the Church

God. Family. Church.
Her order of precedence,
I was told.
Thought the statement was bold.
A theology full of holes.
Then I thought: oh.
No.
Whoa.
Woe.

To the church.
To the dictionary’s definition of the word.
To the concept of religion over the verb that is God’s work 
through time and earth.

To the church that allows a member 
to experience this kind of spiritual division. 
Woe to a church that makes itself felt more as a building 
than as a home 
to those who have chosen to enter the fullness of Heaven’s family.
Woe to folk that call themselves the body of Christ 
but don’t look quite like God.

The church is not a place of holy props.
It is not the place to “feel” His presence.
It is not a place.
It is a reflection, a homecoming, a sound, a voice, 
the seventy, five hundred, five thousand faces that make up the congregation, 
the body of the One who makes family out of broken enemies 
and eternal heirs of foreign nations — 
woe.

Woe to bad theology, yes.
But woe to every church whose actions 
would let a cell of the Messiah’s body forget, 
even for a second,
that the church 
is the reason
Jesus Christ was sent.

Cover Photo by Derek Story on Unsplash