Ekklesia: A Proving Ground

2007

Tamara: It’s always kind of hard because you don’t learn in a vacuum. You don’t learn a lot of those things yourself. There are real people that you really do hurt. And sometimes you feel like you should be able to just go on, but it’s not fair, because you really did hurt people. It’s just hard, you know?

Mark: It’s the Gospel! That’s just the Gospel. Do you know why the “pillar and foundation of the truth” is the Ekklesia, the church? Because if we all sit in the same room, we can hear God’s voice better, and we can know what’s true? If we’re all together in the church, we can hear God better? Ok, that’s true. But I’m convinced that’s not the main reason that the Ekklesia, the church, is the pillar and foundation of the truth. It’s a proving ground. You have people you can trust, that you can hurt, and they’re still going to love you! They’re going to work with you. And they’re going to return the favor someday, and you’re going to work with them. The “pillar and foundation of the truth” means that we’ve got someplace to stand while we’re working all this stuff out.

People in the world don’t have that. People in the religious world don’t have that. They betray somebody, they get stabbed in the back for it. They make a mistake, they get gossiped about. They feel ashamed of themselves. They run away and go join something else. There’s no loyalty. There’s no trust. There’s no perseverance. There’s no honesty. There’s no commitment. It’s just a series of betrayals and using one another. Singing songs about it all, but everyone living independent, disconnected lives. There’s no proving ground. There’s no ability for me to learn the lessons I need to learn, because by the time I’m starting to get it in focus, somebody’s just punched me in the face or stabbed me in the back, and I lose track of what it was I was supposed to be learning.

So sure, where two or three are gathered, Jesus is in our midst, and the pillar and foundation of the truth is the Ekklesia, because together we can hear God’s voice better. You say something, and you say something, and somebody else says, “Oh, man, I get it.” Acts 15, right? “It seems good to us and to the Holy Spirit that...” it was a process of hearing God together, “wisdom in the multitude of counselors.” That’s all right and true. But I’m convinced the primary meaning of that, in terms of what it has to do with me and you, is that the Ekklesia is the pillar and foundation of the truth, because you’re my best chance of learning truth. I’m going to be too distracted. It’s like the boxer who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Well, that’s the whole world! They’re running from getting punched in the mouth to getting punched in the mouth to getting punched in the mouth. They don’t even have time to figure out what they’re supposed to be doing with their life. They can’t learn anything. “I wanted to learn humility, but I don’t have time, because by the time I tell you what I’m struggling with, you’re gossiping to ten other people about it. Somehow I lost track of what it was I was trying to learn.”

It happens all the time. We get letters all the time from people, saying things like, “I overcame homosexuality two years ago, and I can’t find one person that I can share my heart with and tell them what my struggles are before they whisk their children away from me. I can’t find a Christian anywhere on the planet to walk with me and help me. What’s the use of being honest? What’s the use of being vulnerable, when I truly want to live for Jesus with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and nobody even wants to trust me for a moment to help me to do that?” There’s a case in point. A real person—I could tell you their name—sent a very recent letter saying exactly that. The pillar and foundation of the truth is the Ekklesia, because they are people who really want to deal with their own hearts and lives, and because they have been forgiven much they love much, and because they’ve grown in compassion and sensitivity and wisdom because they see the same garbage in their own life in whatever other form it may take. They have time to realize that somebody else’s sin in not worse than their sin. So, we can work this out, because if you can help me work out my pride, I can help you work out whatever your thing is. Because they’re not any different in nature. The pillar and foundation of truth is Ekklesia, because we’re not busy getting punched in the nose all the time. We can actually have a plan to be more like Jesus and work it out together. But that only works if you love much when you’re forgiven much, and it causes you to run back to John rather Han beat yourself up and hide in a hole. If everybody’s doing that—loving much because they’ve been forgiven much—then you have some definition, perhaps, of what a foundation is, what Ekklesia is.