Folk Theology: Living Stones

What happens when you take the platform away?

For five days I fed a house full of people, 38 in total, and I made breakfast in my pajamas, with leftover makeup and messy hair. Where I live, I don't go upstairs without a shower and a face ready for the public. In that house I didn't give it a thought. The adults ranged from 19 to their seventies with 5 kids under four years old, and no one was trying to impress, and no one needed me to be something other than me.

Nobody pulled on me. I could just be in the room. I met people in layers, one at a time, and I found I could enjoy every layer that revealed itself.

Most of us live in layers. On a typical Sunday, only one of ours is invited. But the deepest need of every human being is to be known, all the way down and through. David said, "Lord, you have searched me and known me" (Psalm 139:1).

I wasn't the answer in that house and I wasn't the problem. I was part of the equation, and I felt a quiet, steady freedom I hadn't felt in a long time.

For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I could simply be a somebody in the room.

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). I experienced that freedom. It was shocking at first; unexpected. I was surrounded by the wiles of young life and none of it was threatening my sensibilities. In those layers, I found the brilliance of a creator, and I experienced what it means to be the body; the Church.

Why does that feel so rare?

I'm a pastor, and I've spent years in the mix of the Church. Somewhere along the way I forgot what it feels like to have the allowance to simply belong. I suspect I'm not the only one, in the seats or at the front. That's not anyone's fault. It's the system we all fall into.

Though it’s been revealed as errant, we're still most comfortable as consumers. Seats face front, someone performs, and we rate it on the way out. There's no meal, little joining of hearts, some apathy and some jostling for position. But this isn't a movie theater, and there's no popcorn.

Most Sundays run on this machinery: butts in seats, tithes and offerings, three fast songs, three slow ones, a teaching, and away we go. None of those things are wrong on its own. But when they become the measure, attendance turns into the scoreboard, giving turns into the fuel, and worship turns into a set list. It all pales next to what we're actually invited in to, which is life on life. I don't want to keep feeding that machine, advertising it, or propping it up.

The week was for and about our daughter's wedding. In the charge I gave the couple, I said that love at its truest isn't two people standing side by side, facing the same direction, staying separate. That's companionship, and it's good, but it's not quite marriage. Real love is more like a dance, where they give way to each other and make room, and neither one disappears. Both stay fully themselves, and together they become something that didn't exist before either opened their arms.

I think that's what a body is. And a row of seats, all facing the same direction, is much closer to the first picture than the second. The latter requires a freedom that releases us from the bondage of self doubt to become part of the whole.

Look at what the early believers did. They ate together from house to house (Acts 2:46). They gathered to stir one another toward love and good works (Hebrews 10:24–25). When they came together, each one had something to bring (1 Corinthians 14:26). Paul cares about order in that chapter as much as participation, but the assumption underneath it is plain: nobody came to watch.

I'm not saying we should go back. The early church was messy, and "all things in common" is easier said than done. Looking back is for understanding, not imitation. And the shape changed for reasons that made sense. Rome handed the church a building, a salary and a seat at the table in the fourth century. America turned it into a market, with churches competing for people and preachers acting a bit like entrepreneurs. Nobody was a villain. Every layer solved a real problem, and every layer moved one person to the center and everyone else toward the audience.

What would it look like to put the machinery down?

This series has been circling one image from Isaiah 2:4: swords into plows. Imperial hardware becomes garden tools. In the way we do church, the hardware is the platform, the building and the audience. The garden tools are a table, a house, a shared meal, and every person in the room carrying something.

Peter calls our life in Jesus "living stones" being built into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5). You can't build with spectators. You build with stone that are fitted together.

I've been turning a few things over since I came home. I don't have them figured out.

What if church was a table before it was a service; and everyday of the week instead of one?

What if every person walked in knowing they had something to bring, a song, a word, a question, a casserole, and the gathering was built from all of it (1 Corinthians 14:26)? What if no one had to be "on," and the person at the front could show up in pajamas and still be just one stone among many?

What if each of us shepherded our own soul with Jesus, so that coming together wasn't about refilling from one tired tank, but about pooling what we'd each been given? What if we carried one another's burdens and our own load, and neither felt like a weight (Galatians 6:2, 6:5)?

What if our yeses were slow and honest, so that a yes meant yes and a no was safe to say (Matthew 5:37)? What if nobody needed to placate anyone?

What if "I came, I'm tired, and I'm still here" counted as a stone? What if the building was never the point, and the house, the table and the road were enough?

What if we did what Jesus did on that beach after the resurrection, and fed one another first? "Come and have breakfast" (John 21:12). And during or thereafter asked the question, “Do you love me?”

I think a church that dropped the folk theology for good would look a lot like those five days in Colorado: no stage, no scoreboard, and everyone free to be fully themselves.

Maybe that's the place to start. Eat a meal with someone this week, with no agenda and nothing to fix, and see what you bring.