Taking Our Church To The Moon?

My noise-cancelling headphones make cutting the grass a bit easier for me. While pushing our battery-powered mower up and down the hills in our yard I shuffle the broad range of music accumulated over the years and stored on my phone. My playlist is eclectic and includes classical, opera, country, jazz, swing, pop, gospel, and rock. (I haven’t yet acquired a taste for hip-hop. Sorry to those otherwise inclined.)

Because my digital music has been added to for so long and includes LP’s and cassettes that I converted, the “shuffle” function allows me to run across songs I had all but forgotten. In fact, on a number of occasions I have been struck by lyrics that speak to me now in a way different than when I first heard them. That was the case this morning while I was doing yard maintenance.

The tune that filtered in through my headphones was a short song on Sara Goves’ 2005 album Add to the Beauty. “To the Moon” lasts only about a minute and a half. It came out fifteen years ago in a different time socially and politically. I can’t remember listening to it much in the intervening years. Yet I was hit by its current relevance.

The lyrics are as follows:

I fear the prophetic truth of this song. The political and social reactions ascribed by journalists to my “tribe” of white, evangelical Christians over the past several years deeply concerns me. I even look at my own behavior and habits of thought and am not happy. It would seem, most of us, even those of us who claim the name of Christ, don’t really like mixing with those who don’t agree with us.

Rather than reaching out in love and friendship to those very different from us (as clearly Jesus did), we are much more prone to batten down the hatches and only talk with those who are like us. When others espouse differing views or worldviews, we feel threatened and either seek to force them to conform to our perspective, or to stay away and leave us alone.

But do we really want to move our church to the moon?

I am convinced that neither fight nor flight is on God’s agenda for his bride. The example he set for us is described in the gospels. As Paul tells us in Philippians 2, we are to have the same attitude as Jesus, God incarnate, had. Rather than staying away from rebellious, un-holy people, Paul summarizes the gospel by telling us (as paraphrased by Eugene Peterson)

He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. (Phil. 2:6-8, The Message)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+2&version=MSG

The gospel recorded by John tells us in the first chapter that though he was the Creator-God, he was rejected by his own creation. So what does he do? He becomes human and lives among us so we could all see the grace and truth we were missing. Not that everyone would accept that truth, even expressed by the infinitely loving Son of God. But nevertheless, He came.

If we are to have the “same attitude that was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5), perhaps it’s not such a good idea to take our church to the moon. True, we wouldn’t have to deal with people who disagree with us. But on the moon, would we really be able to call ourselves, “Christ-followers”?