The fact and the fantasy. . .

We live in an age of the disembodied self.  The gender of the body can be in conflict with the gender of the self -- whatever that means.  It is the invention of a self which is resident not in the body but in the feelings that are then the true self.  As dangerous as this is to the individual person, it is even more dangerous to Christian theology.  The disembodied Jesus lives outside His body of flesh and His body the Church and ends up in the fantasy of the mind.  The Lord through whom all things were made and to whom all things are directed becomes a mere imagined reality.  Just as He lives only in the imagination, He acts only upon the imagined reality.

The spiritual but not religious idea is largely a disembodiment of Jesus from His flesh, from His body the Church, and from our flesh.  We need a God without a body to have a religion whose concern is not the body -- and certainly not death.  This God has as His chief concern our feelings.  This is the God who asks not for repentance or conversion but for faith which has become mere emotion.  To love this God and to have this God love you but without the need to change or conform yourself to Him is the fantasy of modern religion parading as Christianity.  The love in which this God lives is not strong enough to suffer or die but is the weak love who can only echo your thoughts or affirm your feelings.  The love given back to this God is equally fragile and frail -- not at all study enough to compel self-denial or sacrifice.  But that is how things have become.

The distance between the person and the Church is a reflection of this God disembodied and relegated to the emotion called faith.  The Church becomes a mere optional part of faith and one which is neither essential nor particularly useful to believing.  In this imagined reality, online worship is the same as in person and perhaps even better because it is easier to focus on the feeling without the inconvenience or distraction of dealing with other people.  It becomes a high liturgical act to put on a nicer set of pajamas as you recline on the couch with your cup of organic fair trade coffee while watching worship on your screen.  Everyone knows the screen is not real but it is real enough to make you laugh or prompt a tear and that is the only reality that matters.

Everyone of us has had a conversation in which someone opined that their God would not ask them to give up something they found pleasurable or require that they deny a part of themselves they believe to the most real self.  I once posted something on Facebook lauding a family with many small children and a very pregnant wife and mother who still were in worship the Sunday before, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the following Sunday (even after the birth of their child).  After I asked the rest of us what our excuse was, I was excoriated by those who could not stomach the idea that their God would require or even care about such a mundane thing as church attendance.

For these people the Church has become a mere association of like-minded individuals who feel the need for what happens there and who get to choose a congregation on the basis of what they like to happen on Sunday morning.  That entity bears no resemblance to the Church established by Christ by His death and resurrection or to the living temple spoken of by Sts. Paul and Peter.  The Church is not a voluntary group of people who share the same idea of God and who wish to serve this God.  The Church is Christ’s body, visible in means of grace by which he is known and how He works to impart the fruits of His redeeming work to the world.  How on earth could Jesus say "Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, you do it to me” unless the Church is a real body and not an imagined disembodied reality?  When the crucified and risen Lord asked “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He was talking about His body the Church which Saul was persecuting and not some theoretical enemy.  In the very same way, we encounter the living Christ not on our terms or where we choose but on His terms and where He reveals Himself.  That requires communion with His mystical body, the Church.  You cannot know Jesus and be a stranger to His Church.  Just as we are known by our bodies -- our face, height, weight, and a host of personal and bodily characteristics, Christ is known through His Body the Church.  Our Lord Jesus does not live in the imagined reality we might call church but in the concrete reality where His Word and Sacraments make Him known and render unto us the fullness of His saving gifts and blessings.

Nearly all heresy seems to be Gnostic -- the denial of the fact for the fantasy of the feeling and imagination.  It is as if the only thing that matters is if God cares for you and not how He has manifested His steadfast love and mercy.  In the same way, what matters to God becomes merely the imagination of our feelings and the concrete of how then shall we live as His children.  I am forever amazed at the people who want the world to know Jesus but who presume that becoming Lutheran is a sectarian idea that is somehow unworthy of our Lord.  Really?  Is there a difference between knowing Jesus and living under Him in His Kingdom now and forever?  Maybe there is but it is pretty clear that we are to know Him where He has placed Himself and the means of grace through which He imparts His gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation.  To say that there is no other name under heaven and on earth by which any will be saved is not to raise up an idea but to point to the font where living water washes clean and to the keys where sins are forgiven and to the Scripture speaking with God's voice and doing what God has said He will do and to the altar where the body and blood once sacrificed are given to us in bread and wine as the food of heaven.  If you want to know Jesus, find a church where this happens faithfully and often.  Apart from such a church, how can you know Jesus is anything more than a fantasy?