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WHAT’S ON SECOND

by doug jackson

second baptist church

www.2bc.org 

 

Harold Frederic, in his novel The Damnation of Theron Ware, creates a conversation between The Reverend Mr. Ware, a devout young Methodist, and Dr. Ledsmar, an atheistic physician, over the relative views of grace taken by Catholics and evangelicals. The question arises when Ware finds that the local priest has gone to hear confessions from lapsed drunkards. In answer to the doctor’s query, the minister explains that habitual boozers in his congregation take a different path. "If a man got as bad as all that, he wouldn’t come near the church at all. He’d simply drop out, and there would be an end to it."

 

The old infidel rejoins, "If you don’t mind my saying so - of course I view you all impartially from the outside - but it seems logical that a church should exist for those who need its help, and not for those who by their own profession are so good already that it is they who help the church. Now, you turn a man out of your church who behaves badly: that must be on the theory that his remaining in would injure the church, and that in turn involves the idea that it is the excellent character of the parishioner which imparts virtue to the church. The Catholics’ conception, you see, is quite the converse. Such virtue as they keep in stock is on tap, so to speak, here in the church itself, and the parishioners come and get some for themselves according to their need for it."

 

I think the old Chillingworth has summed things up nicely. Of course, I would argue from the New Testament that Rome errs in arrogating to the pope and his pyramid a monopoly on grace. At the same time, I feel compelled to examine the individualist view taken by those of us in the free church. While the Catholics, perhaps, see the Kingdom as a soup kitchen where beggars come to receive what they cannot obtain for themselves, we have too often made it an isolated meal, a sort of self-contained TV dinner where one eats what he has and starves if he runs out.

 

Perhaps the corrective here is the image of that mainstay of Baptist church polity, the potluck. At such a gathering, everyone brings the food and everyone eats the food, but no one’s share of the provender is based on his own contribution, and no one really knows who brought what. My tray of baloney sandwiches is my ticket to someone else’s smoked brisket; indeed, even sans sandwiches, the beef is mine for the taking.

 

When the Corinthians gathered for their love-feasts (1 Corinthians 11.17-34), the wealthy members came first and ate best, leaving the down-market membership both hungry and embarrassed. Paul’s remedy was to put an end to such institutional smorgasbords. Of course, where love is anemic, law must support, but love remains the ideal. The better situation would be one where everyone had an equal shot at the trough, and the neediest headed up the procession.

 

The church, then, the gathered body of believers, is not the authorized distributor of grace, which leads to institutional abuse, but neither is it the showcase of grace where the upright display their superiority. It is the great spiritual potluck, where everyone is needed, no one neglected, and no one indispensable.

 

So come to church to bring grace, and come to church to get grace. Don’t keep score as to how much you give and how much you take. Simply rejoice when it is your time to provide, and rejoice more when it is your time to receive.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

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