Ahoy, me lovelies and hearties in Christ. Last evening, under the great expanse of heaven, I laid down upon the main deck and ruminated on a puzzling question: Why be everyone wanting to sail back into the choppy waters of the early church?
Everytime I haul myself up to a pew at a lecture, me peg leg snapping the stones of the church, me very appearance causing the older lovelies to faint dead away, I sit and listen to the wise men and women of our age invoke the early church as a model for us lost souls today.
I guess they not be reading Paul. Corinth be a fine city and I did a lot of fine sinning there before me conversion -- you know what they say, "What happens in Corinth, stays in Corinth" -- but that church be uglier than me mother-in-law in the morning, God bless her dreary soul. Sex scandals, people gorgin' themselves at the table while others be hungered, factions worse than a mutiny. This be what we want the church to be?
Galatia, now there be a church without conflict! Beware the knife, me mateys! Philippi? Are Euodia and Syntyche getting along yet? The persecutions be done yet?
The early church, she be as dangerous as a sea monster, a charybdis eating Christians alive.
I fear that we be using the early church as a tabula rasa, a slate to paint our wildest dreams of faithfulness upon, a utopia that is but a poor reflection of the Kingdom of God. Give me, instead, the rock and pitch of a congregation that struggles to be faithful, that knows its salvation be somehow caught up in its brokenness.
Give me the church now. Hoist the mainsail. We sail toward the future tonight and further -- to the eschaton!
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