A Word to Those Judging the Church

I enjoy the little story tucked away in Acts 12:12-17. It appears between King Herod’s tirade (Acts 12:1-11) against the church and his death for blasphemy (Acts 12:18-24). Oddly, it’s a humorous little story. Peter, having been miraculously freed from prison complete with city gates opening on their own, now stands at the house where the church is gathered and the door remains closed. Rhoda initially answered his knock, recognized his voice, but failed to open the door. Instead, she went into the interior of the house and told the rest of the disciples that Peter, for whom they were praying, was at the door. They promptly informed her that she was out of her mind, and so she did what most of us would do. She doubled down, insisting on her sanity.  Eventually the disciples relented and allowed that what she heard was the voice of Peter’s angel, but it surely was not the man himself.  The story is hilarious. It’s silly.

The Church’s Limp

It would do us some good to remember that the church has not escaped this sort of silliness.  As a presbyterian, I attend church courts and at the beginning of those meetings the court discusses how it will dispose of the clerk’s agenda. I remember a meeting wherein an elder made a motion to do something out of the ordinary to save time. Another elder stood up to contest his motion. After the dust settled we had wasted thirty minutes, and Peter was still standing at the door! I still remember a relatively new member of the court exasperatedly blurting out, “If I ran my business like this, I’d be bankrupt!” Yes, the church limps. This is true despite one’s denominational affiliation.  But this is when we must remember that the church is God’s wife and not our own. And before we judge God’s bride it might be wise to remember that we are that bride.   

The Church Lives

We need also to remember that even though the church sometimes limps it also lives. The story in Acts twelve ends with Herod’s voice being silenced and God’s word increasing. God defended his bride. But we should not think about this text in the abstract.  When Luke tells us that God’s word increased, he is not describing something mystical.  Compare Acts 12:24 with Acts 6:7. Whereas Acts 12 says that the word of God multiplied, Acts 6 tells us that the number of disciples multiplied. Acts 6 makes Acts 12 concrete. Gospel growth means church growth. The church is living. It’s growing. But not just numerically, it is being sanctified. Individual members are learning to live as a spiritual family. That’s not always easy.

But this is important to keep in mind when we are frustrated with the church’s silliness because our frustration is normally not abstract. Our frustration is very concrete because it very often involves people. C. S. Lewis warned of this concrete frustration in the Screwtape Letters. The demon, Screwtape, was coaching his nephew, a junior demon on how to derail a new Christian’s faith.  His advice was simple. Get the man to focus on concrete manifestations of silliness like squeaky boots or odd clothes.  

Perhaps if Lewis had written a counterpart to the Screwtape Letters he might have written about Gabriel’s encouragement to this new believer. He might have urged him to reflect on how his responses to squeaky boots and odd clothes reveal the sinful condition of his own heart. Or perhaps the angel would have reminded him of how a parent teaches a little child to walk. He doesn’t ridicule or discard the little one, he teaches and encourages him.  The frustration in these teaching moments is held in check by the parent’s overwhelming love for the child. Perhaps that’s the point. Does your love for the people who are the church exceed your frustration for the silliness of squeaky boots and odd clothes? It is better to love your brother than to stand in judgment over him.

The Church Looks (in the right direction)

There are a number of things in Acts 12 that display the church’s limp. For example, it is an irony that Peter did not believe that the angel leading him out of prison was real and the church did not believe that Peter was real! Yet, both the church and Peter believed in the supernatural and the best manifestation of that is the Church’s earnest prayer (Acts 12:5). Now, this alone teaches us a lesson or two about how to deal with silliness in the church. For example, when your eyes are on the Lord, they are not on silliness. I sometimes show my students a video called “A Selective Attention Test.” It is a video of a group of people in white and black shirts tossing two basketballs.  The class is supposed to count how many times the people in white shirts pass the ball. After watching the video and guessing how many times the white shirts passed the ball, I ask how many of them saw the gorilla. Inevitably, many of them never saw the man in the gorilla suit that emerged from the one side of the screen only to disappear out the other side.  Why could they not see the gorilla when it was so obvious? Because they were focused on the ball. Friends, if we would just focus on Christ rather than on the silliness we might not even see the silliness. That would be a model of maturity.

Brothers and sisters, where are your eyes? When you sit in church or Bible study or at a fellowship meal where is your attention? Is it on silliness?  Or are you focused on Christ? I don’t need to tell you where they ought to be. The answer is more obvious than a dancing gorilla.