The church is the community of the persons who have welcomed Jesus as their Lord and Savior. This is a more complex definition that it seems. First because welcoming Jesus as Lord or master is not about an emotional moment but about a life-long relationship. This relationship involves naturally listening and obeying. Jesus teaches us that the one who loves him is the one who obeys him. That response of obedience is at the heart of any true relationship of love in our world. The mother that does not obey to the hungry cry of her baby cannot claim to love her child. In the same way, the children who don't learn to listen and do what their parents tell them out of love for them will not learn well to love.
This obedience is at the heart of the gospel - the good news - because it will allow God to lead us to be delivered from the quicksand of sin, something we could never do out of our own strength. This is the Good News: God gave his only Son, who humbled himself in becoming human and showing us how to find again this goal of humanity: a real intimacy with God that also implies a real intimacy with our neighbor. He died for our sins, responding in love to the violence, opening for each sinner a path of hope and transformation. When Jesus was asked what is really at the heart of the teaching of God (the Torah, most often translated in English as law, means more a teaching and guidance than a written command on a paper or tablet) he simply emphasized loving God with all our heart, soul and strength as well as our neighbor as ourselves.
The apostle Paul often describes the Church as the body of Christ, Christ being the head of the Church. This image allows to combine the importance of welcoming Jesus as Lord - the head, the one who gives directions that we follow, and the kind of interactions that we are called to experience between believers. It involves two-directional relationships, healthy communication, where we embody this love that we learn at the feet of Jesus.
Learning to listen to Jesus is parallel to learning to listen to our neighbor. So often we forget how important it is to listen if we want to love. Many in this world will claim that what they do is out of love, yet they confuse an idea of love with the real response to the other that love is. It is not because we repeat that we act for the good of the other one that it is the case. It is true, parents should not obey to the whims of their children. Yet, as children learn to listen to their parents, the parents also learn to listen to their children. For instance, a mother needs to learn to discern what each cry of her child means, so that she also learns to respond appropriately to each different cry. This bi-directional listening is at the heart of the relationships we are called to live in the Church of Christ. As we learn to listen to God and discover that God then listens always more to us (read more on this in the post on atonement), we are invited to learn to listen to our brother or sister and encourage them to listen to us. This is more an art that a technique that can be mastered in a short time, it is a way of life. This listening which leads to action (obedience) is what builds the body of Christ in love, this is also the very foundation needed for the edification of this body.
This picture shows that the Church is not a building make with dead stones but a temple made of living believers, who welcome Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Each person has people under them, representing those who have prayed for them, taught them, encouraged them, helped them. There are also persons at their level, it is those with whom they learn to propagate these teachings of love. Then, there are those above them, for whom they pray, lead to Jesus, teach and encourage. The empty space visible on the left side represent the place that you have to take in the Church, so that you benefit from all the help of this living body of God's love, but also minister with others God's love in this world and help others to come in this living and loving fellowship with God and with others.
This bidirectional listening also helps us to get out of the barren alternation between a very hierachical and a very horizontal view of the Church. Both are needed: the ones more mature in the intimacy with God and with their neighbor, through their practical knowledge and experience, are called to help others develop this art of listening and loving. The goal of the Church is not hierarchy but harmony. The purpose of hierarchy in the Church is to reach a real intimacy and harmony. As this intimacy develops, the hierarchiCal element loses of its importance, like in the friendship that develops between obedient children that learn to love their parents.
If we put the emphasis on hierarchy as a constant pattern to maintain, we would risk to keep Church members as immature children.
On the other side, if we do not show the importance of hierarchy - of the fact that learning to be part of the body of Christ involves obedience and learning from others that are more mature, we would risk to become a group of buddies that are confusing a real intimacy with God, bathed in obedience and dying to self, with a comfortable fellowship where love is rare and does not reach out to many in this world. The foundation of the hierarchy in the Church is the fact that we welcome Jesus as Lord, as the head of the body we are part of. As this head listens through all the signals that come to the body, it also gives orders through the nervous system. These orders are given for the good of the body, honoring the humble parts like the feet and helping all to work together. If a limb would not listen to the impulsions of the head, it would not be able to function harmoniously with the others. Here lies that both the potential amazing beauty of the Church and its biggest challenge. If we confuse obedience to a living Lord with following a set of rules, even very good rules, we cannot hope to see the body of Christ move with grace and harmony in this world. This loving obedience, this listening faith, is what enables the Church to really be the body of Christ on earth. The potential is enormous, yet we are often pitiful. May the Lord Jesus help us, as we learn to listen and obey him, as we learn to listen to each other and grow in love, so that we as the Church are not seen as a dysfunctional body unable to accomplish much, with different limbs acting without coherence and efficiency, but rather as a well trained body that can accomplish much in this world that is starving for real love.
The Church is like a school of God's love, this love flowing from from the Father and Jesus to all the body through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that many in this world can discover what true love is.
