What is the Sign?

When I was a kid, we had different clothes for church and for the rest of our lives. Sometimes there were school clothes that we had to keep separate from everyday clothes, but even that got a little fuzzy. But church clothes were distinct. Oh, once in a great while if we were going to some fancy gathering of some sort, then we were told to wear church clothes. But since my dad was a pastor, even those fancy things were really church things, just during the week. Or a party with church people. So, it was still church, in a way.

The funny thing about church clothes is that they were more than just clothes. Yes, they were nicer looking and worn less often. And yes, we took the time to polish our church shoes on Saturday nights. But I knew even as a fairly young child that when mom told me to wear church clothes, she was asking for more than just what I put on my body. “Church clothes” didn’t just look a certain way, they were worn a certain way. She was asking me to put on my church attitude. She was drawing attention to the fact that certain things were expected of me in this outfit. And I don’t just mean to keep it clean. Or maybe I do mean that. Keep it clean in thought and word and attitude. Keep it clean in how we treat one another. Keep it clean in what we say about people behind their backs. Keep it clean.

That is the baby that got thrown out with the bathwater, I’m afraid. When we went away from church clothes, did we go away from church attitudes? And we have gone away from church clothes. I remember hearing a choir director tell her young folks to wear church clothes to a concert that they were performing somewhere. And then she had to describe church clothes. Most of them were used to dressing for church pretty much like they always dressed. Those young folks had never even heard the phrase, “church clothes.”

I know, I sound like some old geezer who remembers how things were back in my day. I’m not really complaining, just observing. In fact, I think that maybe it is a good thing that we don’t have church clothes anymore. At least, it is a good thing if we got rid of them because we believe that we are always in our church clothes and our church attitudes.

I’m pretty sure that Jesus didn’t want us to compartmentalize our lives into church and non-church. I’m pretty sure that Jesus wants us to live every day as though we were in the presence of God - because we are. And that we live every day as though we are loving our neighbor as ourselves - because we are.

Yet we need reminders. We need to take a moment and take off the clothes of this world with all the expectations that go with that outfit and put on our church clothes again. This process of reminding, of taking the time to reset our thinking and acting is the answer to the question: “Why do people need the church?”

Matthew is the only gospel writer who uses the word,” church.” And it appears in only two passages—here and in chapter 16 where he tells Peter that he will be the foundation of the church. That means it is pretty significant that the word appears, and we ought to pay attention. On the other hand, the word “church” appears seventy-two times in the epistles (if you count Revelation as an epistle - and all the occurrences of the word are in the first three chapters, which are the letters to the seven churches. Oh, and the book of Acts, which is the companion piece to the letters - or the acting out of the conversations in the letters). That means that Paul and the other letter writers are very concerned with helping us be the church that we are called to be. So, there were lots of choices there.

Here in the Gospel, it is the function of the church to be a force for reconciliation. You could argue that, from a gospel perspective, it is the only function of the church. We are in the business of putting things together, of healing the breaches between people, of overcoming that which keeps us apart. It is about making sure that no one feels like an outsider.

“Wait a minute”, you might say, “there is a call to ‘outsider-ness’ in this passage.” We have been taught to believe that we are to give reconciliation our best shot, to be sure, but that if it doesn’t work, then we can boot folks out. That is what verse 17 is saying, isn’t it? Is it? Verse 17 says that if the one who has caused the offense refuses to be reconciled, then treat the person “as a Gentile and a tax collector.” “Boo, hiss,” we say, “toss them out.” Except, wait a minute, how did Jesus treat tax collectors? He put one on his team. How did Jesus treat Gentiles? He preached to them; he invited them. Yes, there was an incident or two where he seems to be a bit harsh to a Gentile, but then after a reminder, he turns and welcomes.

In other words, despite centuries of church history, I don’t think these words give permission to cut anyone off. Instead, we treat them, the sinners, the breakers of the covenant, with love and invitation. We are always, always trying to heal what is broken. We might have to change tactics in dealing with those who refuse to be a part of the community. Jesus treated those inside the community much differently from those outside. And in fact, he was worse with those inside! Worse, as in harder on; worse as in having higher expectations; worse as in being ready to call them out and point out their failings. The outsider was encouraged and invited, challenged to be sure, but with love and gentleness.

So, when Jesus says to treat them like outsiders, he wasn’t saying to turn your back on them. He was telling us to change tactics. And all along, he was saying we ought to be doing this together. This reconciliation thing is a team effort, not an individual exercise. It is what we are about.

Wait a minute. Is the function of the church reconciliation? Or is the function of the church to worship God? Yes. Duh. And no, I don’t mean that we really have two functions. There is only one. It is in our reconciling that we worship God. It is in our worship of God that we are healing brokenness, we are putting people back together with God and with one another.

Did you realize that the invitation to the Communion liturgy says, “Christ invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another”? Loving Christ (worship) - repenting of sin (reconciling with God) and living in peace (reconciling with one another) are all part of the same thing - worship and reconciliation.

And we are to live this worship/reconciliation outwardly, in an invitational way. The church is a reminder to the world that we are all in need of a savior. And the church is the evidence that living in the “being saved” community is a more holistic, more reconciling, more joyous way to live.

Why do people need the church? Because we forget to put on our church clothes. Or wait, maybe it isn’t church clothes, but church dinner. At least if you read the text from Exodus, you’ll see there is a verse that references clothes, but the rest of the verses are about eating. Or maybe not about eating, but about how we eat. Are we getting etiquette lessons here in the Hebrew Scriptures? Sort of. If etiquette means “a prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of ceremony, as at a court or in official or other formal observances” (according to dictionary.com), then yes. We’re getting etiquette lessons, not so that we don’t commit a social faux pas, however. No, these lessons are so that we understand what it is that we are doing, and why. It is so that even our eating is mindful.

Yes, the text is establishing a ritual practice that came to be called Passover. But underneath the specifics of this ritual is the calling to see our whole lives as beholden to God. We are called to see everything we do as an act of worship. How we dress and how we eat are important to our faith. In this era of ecological awareness, we are invited to pay attention to the impact our way of life has on all of creation. We are encouraged to see ourselves as participants in a larger drama, a more profound story than just what is immediately in front of our eyes.

There is another level as well. We are invited to participate in these rituals, to wear these clothes and eat in this way, not just to make sure we are aware of our impact on the world and those around us, not just to make sure we are aware of God’s presence and call upon our lives in everything that we do, but we are also called to do these things so that others might see God through us. We are the sign that God is God and God is still at work in the world. We are the sign that what we say about God shapes how we live in the world and how we treat those around us. We are the sign.