This coming Sunday at University Lutheran, we’re going to be installing new members. These are folks that have been with us for different amounts of time, but definitely since our last new member celebration. The way it normally happens is that I notice that someone has been coming to worship pretty regularly. When I notice that, I’ll usually send an email saying that we as the local church would like to invite them to be members. Often times the question comes back, “Thanks for the offer, but what does that mean?”
It’s a good question. You can be a member of all sorts of things. I’m a member of my gym. I’m a member of my family. I’m a member of a few subscription services on my television. I’m members of other things too, maybe you are as well. But church membership, that’s a little different than those things – at least in some ways. In some ways, it is an organizational membership, but there is a bigger, more important reality at work as well.
The language of church “membership” comes primarily from Paul’s writing – primarily to the Romans and the Corinthians. In those books, he describes those churches (and the individuals in them) as being “melos” of the Body of Christ, “melos” being the word for something like “limb” or “appendage”. So in Paul’s imaginative and Spirit inspired language, he is inviting us to consider the whole Church on earth as being Christ’s Body while He reigns in heaven – that when Christ ascended into heaven bodily, He transferred the responsibility of His bodily presence from His own fully human body to His own fully human Church. From heaven, He “reigns” or commands the actions of His Body, just like I command the actions of my fingers on the keyboard as I type this.
So our language of “membership” is language that shouldn’t speak as much to our rights, like I have the “rights” to use my gym or my subscription service because I pay for it, as it should speak to our relationship to Christ – being made one with Him, a part of His Body that should willingly receive His mission, His reign, His ruling. We are His “fingers” or His “toes”. Unfortunately, I can only imagine how frustrating my fingers would be if they were Christians. Christians tend to do their own thing, to disobey the commands sent to them – in the framework of my keyboard, Christians ajoiajdoga;jkdoadynandfydoiafdj;jda.
But thankfully Christ brings His forgiveness to His Church. He realigns us with His will in that forgiveness. He separates us the sin that makes us malfunction and brings us back into line with Himself. When He does this, when our membership is fully aligned with Him, we find ourselves amazed. We’re amazed because we know that fingers can’t think. Fingers on their own would just type out gobbledygook, but fingers led by a Head – those fingers can do things that a finger by itself could never do.
So as we look at our membership, there is something amazing there that we can see. We can see our bodies and minds, as finite as they are, used by an infinite God for the sake of His Kingdom and His Will. And it is amazing the story we will write with Him as the head and us as the members.