This new year will be filled with firsts for many of us. I, for one, have never worked or worshipped in a church under construction. As a teen, my family’s church built a new building on an undeveloped piece of land, but there is a world of difference between building a new building on fresh land and replacing existing buildings directly next to renovated buildings, all while continuing to function as a church!
What we are embarking on is a journey rooted in the deep faith that we are helping to build up God’s kingdom right here, right now.
That last idea—helping to build up God’s kingdom—is not intended to be poetic or trite. It’s meant to yoke us to an idea that is not common in our culture. In our 21st-century American life, it’s most common to seek comfort and stability, to seek the predictability that helps us stay calm. Honestly, life has plenty of unknowns as it is, and the world seems to constantly teeter on instability, so why not seek stability at home? The hope and the wish that we can find a stable, unwavering rock upon which to stand makes great sense, but that’s simply not the life of discipleship Jesus calls us into.
In my Wednesday Bible study, we’re studying the Gospel of John together. Although the gospel writer describes Jesus as using the warm term “friend” with his followers, John is rich with stories of Jesus challenging them to step outside their comfort zones. Certainly, the call to follow Jesus is based on the idea that those called make a radical transformation to leave behind the life they knew. Today, we may think of following Jesus as a simple idea, but Jesus certainly didn’t.
Throughout the gospel, Jesus’s descriptions of his disciples move toward a push to change more and more. In John 1, his followers are called seekers. In the next chapter, they are identified as disciples or learners. By the thirteenth chapter, Jesus calls his followers servants or coworkers before shifting a few chapters later where Jesus says,
“I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father (John 15:15).”
Jesus moves his followers in significant ways, preparing them for a totally new level of relationship with God. And Jesus’s encouragement and transformative influence has a clear purpose: When Jesus’s earthly ministry ends, his followers are the ones who will remain to do God’s work in the world. Jesus’s followers—disciples like you and me—are the ones that must “go and bear fruit, fruit that will last (15:16),” because sending disciples into the world is how God works out His transformative love.
Make no mistake—this can be scary! There’s a reason very few people actually chose to follow Jesus during his earthly ministry. All things considered, recruiting a few dozen disciples isn’t terribly successful. And yet, those disciples did what they could do to change the lives of those around them and began a ripple effect that continues to this day with you and with me. We have inherited the strong tradition of Christian discipleship and we have individually been called by God to bear fruit.
At Saint Michael, we are leaning into God’s call in a very tangible way. Over the past few years, we have faithfully allocated most of a significant income stream to positively impact the community outside our walls, and we have committed to one another to make sure the space inside our walls is set up to support our community for generations to come. This is no small moment in the history of our church, and our collective witness is already inspiring others around the world.
By doing this work—by embarking on such a significant period of transformation—we may be tempted to allow the frustration of the work to get to us, but I encourage you to hold on. God is working on us and through us in amazing ways, and whenever God does meaningful work, there’s a lot of disruption. That disruption is God working on us from the inside so that we can bear a greater witness on the outside.
Consider one of our great twentieth-century theologians, C. S. Lewis, and what he wrote in Mere Christianity about the impact of God’s work:
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently, He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”1
Lewis offers such a powerfully simple way of understanding the impact of discipleship. When we commit ourselves to following Christ, we submit ourselves to the transformative power of God’s Spirit. The transformation never happens on our terms or on our schedule. Discipleship transformation is not comfortable or convenient. Yet the transformation that we undergo when we commit ourselves to a life of faith is why we were created.
God’s love is immense. It’s a love that never fails and never ends. For those of us who call Saint Michael home, we are entering a period of constructive transformation that will remake us with renewed strength to bear God’s fruit in the world in ways we can only begin to imagine. As we enter the holy seasons of Lent and Easter, the work of God on us and through us continues with renewed energy. We are being transformed as individuals and as a faith family. Our fidelity to God and to one another, and the commitment of our whole selves, is what will make the transformation worthwhile. It’s truly the purpose of our lives to help build up God’s kingdom together, and I can’t wait to see what God does with us next.
1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: MacMillan Co., 1960, p. 160.
**This article was written by the Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Girata and was featured in the 2024 Spring Archangel.
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