What is the Church?
by the Ven. Lyman Harding
Rector of Trinity Church
Archdeacon of Saint John
Long ago St. Cyprian of Carthage emphasized the importance of the Church in the life of every Christian with the astounding assertion:
No one can claim God as Father who has not the Church as his mother.
An overstatement?
When the claims made for the Church -- claims firmly based in Scripture -- by the Catechism are examined, this hardly seems the case. The Church, we are told (BCP page 552) is The family of God, the body of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Each of these images underlines and defines our status as members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, established in Baptism.
The body and its members is a basic image for the Church which St. Paul world out most fully in 1 Corinthians 12, when he concludes that Christian people are: the body of Christ, and individually members of it. Each part has a particular work and function -- apostles, prophets, teachers, healers, those with gifts of power, assistance, leadership, tongues (verses 27-28). All of God's gifts in nature and grace are needed -- so that the body may function, and quite literally, 'be Christ' in every generation.
The church is an organic whole -- a body in which each member has a proper role, and all are interdependent. If one member suffers, all suffer together ... The failures, weaknesses and sins of each Christian hinder the Church from growing ... up into Christ. He is the head, and on him the whole body depends. Bonded and knit together by every constituent joint, the whole frame grows through the due activity of each part, and builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16, NEB)
As 'the family of God', we know ourselves as the children of God, the younger brothers and sisters of our Lord, whom Paul calls the firstborn within a large family (Romans 8:29). We are those whom God has made his children by adoption and grace, And in this family, all members share an intimate relationship with God as Father -- and with each other, as we work together to reflect the glory and accomplish the will and purpose of the Father in the world. The image is organic, growing and active.
The Church is the temple of the Holy Spirit -- a people in whose lives God's presence and power are clearly perceptible. St. Paul asks (1 Corinthians 3:16): Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? A temple is both a dwelling place and a visible witness which speaks to the surrounding community -- a means of communication. So growth, life and activity are again dominant ideas. Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be the holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5)
Body, family, temple -- organic, living, growing images which remind us that as the people of God we have a purpose -- that, indeed, we, the Church are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making His appeal through us (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Cyprian's claim for the Church is no exaggeration!