If you could go to any place in the world at any time in history, where and when would it be? Pictures of different places and different times in books, travel brochures, and on the internet often look inviting. How nice it would be to “get away from it all,” as the phrase goes. Most of us know, however, that doing so is not as easy as it sounds. Besides the problems of where and when to go, we also need to decide who will take care of things while we are gone. Who will watch over our dwelling, feed the pets (if we have them), pay the bills when they come due, make sure that our offerings are made at church, and so forth? Even with all that sorted, think of all that will need to be done when we return; the mail to sort, the calls to return, the late payments to negotiate, to name a few.
If “getting away from it all” is not possible, then getting away from some of it may be the solution. Weekend excursions and “staycations” are very popular. They involve less time away, less expense, and less hassle upon return. Perhaps the best way to minimize the problems of “getting away from it all” is not to get away at all. That idea means that it is very important to make the place where we live someplace special. The same applies for our church home.
Every home or every family has a history of good and bad times, dynamics, and relations. In all the sociology and psychology of families, rarely discussed is the role and place of sin. Whereas the family, and thus the home, is often depicted as a or the foundation of society, a bulwark of security, reality is often much different. If Adam and Eve were created in the image of God, then their progeny and all of humanity since then have been born in sin. Our fallenness and brokenness are not only something in which we are conceived, but they are also something in which we begin our days in our families or in other circumstances. Even with our best efforts, families often find themselves in difficult circumstances created not just by chance but by and due to themselves. The results are what psychologists and sociologists study and what the church often poorly understands and handles not only pastorally but also theologically.
The same applies in churches as families. Although we are reborn through baptism, dying to our sinful selves and being raised to a new life in Christ, we bring ourselves to church in the sinful flesh of our temporal birth. That flesh brings with it not only its own sin but the sin into which we were born and raised in our own families. Because of this sin, church family life can at times be fraught with dysfunctional dynamics and distress, and occasionally self-destruction and death.
In the midst of our human sin, however, stands the reason for our gathering together as a church family adopted as sons and daughters to receive an inheritance not our own. This person is, of course, Jesus Christ. His father is our father who sent his son, Jesus, to take our sin and death upon himself in exchange for his righteousness and the gift of eternal life. In other words, when we gather around Jesus in his word, in baptism, and in his supper, we come to let him take our sin away so that in his presence as part of his body we become someplace special. Take time to reflect on how Jesus Christ by grace alone makes sinners like us someplace special and, in turn, how being someplace special can be part of our congregation’s life and mission for families also looking for a special place to be their church home.
