[Mcgregorpage] McGregorPage 662, Easter 7, 5/24/09

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Easter 7 – May 24, 2009


Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
Psalm 1
1 John 5:9-13
John 17:6-19

The “Three-Storied Universe”

I remember, as a teen, watching Rev. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen on television explain the Roman Catholic view of the relation between the church and the world.  It was the “three-storied universe.”  On the ground floor was humanity.  On the second floor was the church, and on the third floor was heaven.  The role of the church, he explained pointing to a visual aid on an easel, was to reach down and pull people up from the first floor to the second floor and eventually to the third floor.  It was a way of thinking about the church “in the world but not of the world”.  

Jesus talks this way in his high priestly prayer, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.”  (John 17:14)

Jesus had transformed the disciples.  Before they met him they belonged to the world.  Now, they do not belong to the world. They are aliens.  Jesus has alienated the disciples to the world just as he was alien to the world.  He is going to the Father, and that will complete the “three-story universe”: the disciples on the second floor, God and Jesus on the third floor and the world on the first floor.

I don’t think
 John intends for us to think the disciples are being left in the lurch by Jesus.  I believe he intends us to meditate on the profound transformation that has elevated the disciples to the level on which Jesus lived in the world.  This is where the church should always live, on the level of Jesus earthly life.

 
In my lifetime I have seen the church progressively divest itself of the alien nature Jesus imparted to it.  The rationale has been to make the church relevant to modern people.  So, Roman Catholics traded the Latin mass for English, and Protestant preachers tried to demonstrate they were human like everyone else.  Worship has become like a Las Vegas show, a parade of entertainment.  In our desperation to keep the world in our fold, we have become no different than the world.  We have lost our alien status, and we don’t even know it.  We will realize it when the world says to the church, “You have nothing we need because all you have is of the world.”

God dressed up Aaron to set him apart from the world.  He was to live on the second story, to intercede between God and the people of God.  The church of Jesus Christ is the heir of this priesthood. All believers are to the world what Aaron was to the tribes of Israel (Exodus 28:1-4, 9-10, 29-30).

It calls for a different dress: “And you shall speak to all who have ability, whom I have endowed with skill, that they make Aaron's vestments to consecrate him for my priesthood.=2
0 These are the vestments that they shall make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, a checkered tunic, a turban, and a sash.”  (Exodus 28:3-4)

It calls for a different walk:  "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers; but their delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law they meditate day and night.”  (Psalm 1:1-2)

It calls for a different drummer: “Then they prayed and said, ‘Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’” (Acts 1:24-25)

It calls for a different way of being: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.  I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life."

The salvation of the world will come from outside the world. People instinctively know this.  When the church mimics the world, people will find someone else to point them beyond the world, but it will be someone who doesn’t really have eternal life. Therefore, exhort your people to accept their priesthood as the work of Christ in them, and because of that transformation to accept an authentic alienation from this world which is passing away. 

John Dominic Crossan in “God and Empire” asserts 
that “the world” Jesus refers to is not the human race or the planet but rather the Roman Empire or any empire – the world as we know it. He, a Roman Catholic, doesn’t describe a “three storied universe” but rather understands the image of our meeting Christ in the air as an advance welcoming party for Christ as he comes to earth to reign here – “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Crossan counsels alienation from empire and dependence on Christ as the church’s radical alternative to civilization.


May these thoughts strengthen you. 
 
An Open Letter to Fellow Pastors 
>From Roland McGregor, United Methodist Pastor 
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