If you live in a large, heavily populated metropolitan area like I do – Atlanta, Georgia, home to roughly 6.5 million people – you may be accustomed to listening to the morning news and hearing a story or two about fires. It often makes me wonder, “Why do I listen to the morning news?” Stories of multiple families who have lost most, if not all, of their earthly possessions because someone in their apartment complex used a grill on the patio and paid no attention to how close it was to the structure of the building, or left a pot on a stove that was unattended and erupted in fire. Sometimes it is a business, with different reasons for a fire. Other times, it is a single-family home. But always, it is a story of loss.
A few weeks ago, while listening to the early morning news in Atlanta, it was a church. The church building was completely consumed by a fire that aggressively spread through a two-story church building that meant it was a total loss. My first thought was, “I hope they have adequate insurance.” It was on a Monday morning, and I started thinking about the people who might have attended worship on the previous day. I thought about the pastor whose job suddenly became more challenging.
But then the reporter said something that startled me out of my quasi-state of slumber as I was trying to decide whether to get up now or hit the snooze button one more time. He said: “It was an abandoned church in southwest Atlanta where homeless people were thought to be camping out.”
For me, using “abandoned” as an adjective to describe “church” was akin to the screeching sound of a teacher writing on an old-fashioned blackboard. Saying “abandoned church” is more of an oxymoron than saying “small tsunami.” Really — has Jesus abandoned the church, His body?
I don’t expect a reporter in a major media market like Atlanta to think theologically about his or her vocabulary. But I am disturbed by how many followers of Jesus might have heard that phrase and thought nothing of it. That is especially troublesome in light of the fact that the building that was destroyed by fire was in a neighborhood where many evangelicals would dismiss such an incident as “par for the course.”
You may be thinking, “It’s December; where is the Christmas message here?” Glad you asked. It is here and then some.
By the time of the birth of Jesus, Jewish leaders still sensed that despite no longer being in Babylon, the Exile had not yet ended. It may be fair to say they had an “abandoned church” idea about God. “How could the Romans rule us as they do” becomes “How can a church in a poor neighborhood burn down?”
In some ways, the Gospel of Matthew may have been written to people with those very concerns and questions. Most scholars think Matthew was written to early Jewish believers in Jesus. The constant “this was said in the prophets” theme certainly suggests that.
By the time the writer of Hebrews pens the pages of the amazing, complicated epistle we know as Hebrews, it seems clear to me that believers may be wondering about “the abandoned church.”
I don’t know about you. But here is what I know about me. The world we live in is complicated. To say that I understand it all would make me a liar of the first order. But I trust Jesus, the baby whose birth we are celebrating.
Here’s what Scripture says:
- “Ánd they shall name him ‘Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” (Matthew 1:23)
- “And behold, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age.’”(Matthew 28: 20)
For some early believers, the only story of Jesus they had began with “God is with us” and ended with “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The gospel stories of Mark, Luke, and John may have a different point of emphasis. For that I am eternally grateful. But in light of the world in which I currently find myself, I can only say, “Thank God for a story of Emmanuel, who is with me until the end of the age.”
For a variety of reasons, our culture may “abandon the church.” But if Scripture is trustworthy, God will never abandon the church.
For me, that sounds like, “I know whom I have believed in and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I handed over to him until that Day.” (2 Timothy 2:12)
That is worth a hearty “Merry Christmas!”
Wye Huxford 