It’s all about Jesus
The church introduced me to Jesus when I was quite young. I didn’t live in a particularly Christian society, but on Sundays I was there when believers gathered to be forgiven, listened to the word and joined in prayer. Every week Jesus was waiting for me there. When I was old enough to go to communion there he was again, ready to greet me.
My regular participation in divine service as a young baptised person taught me to be patient with adult believers and their wordy, long-winded churchly ways. They were the ones who organised all this so that young people like me could meet Jesus. Eventually I passed through Sunday school, youth groups, camps and confirmation, but mostly it was Jesus, waiting for me there on Sundays.
By the time I was 15 I had been in seven Lutheran congregations, as my family moved on army postings. Each was small and most were new. They shared a similar worship structure. In the early 1970s we all learned new (page 6) LCA liturgy, which most of our congregations now use rarely, if at all. At the time it was a powerful teaching tool for an isolated teenager who wanted to learn more about the church’s faith in Jesus.
That was also the time of the ‘Jesus’ movement. The slogan was ‘One way Jesus’. We put stickers on our guitars and school cases. We were modern day disciples. I guess now we might call it ‘renewal’. After I left school I finally decided to get deeper into this Jesus the church had introduced me to and so I went off to become a pastor.
When I arrived at the seminary, I discovered that my faith, born in small congregations far removed from Lutheran strongholds, had left me ignorant of the nuances, subtleties, and traditions of the Lutheran Church of Australia. So over the years I have had to learn them, often through making mistakes. It has not always been easy for me to see Jesus at the centre of all that stuff, but worship has kept me in the church. There, where Jesus met me in my youth, he continues to meet me today.
So I still believe that the church is ‘all about Jesus’, simplistic as that might sound to some. He is everything that is worthwhile about us – including all those who worship in the church and serve God with their gifts.
In New Testament times Jesus always invited ordinary people to be his disciples. Through them he did extraordinary things.
Today, behind all our accumulated history, tradition and jargon, that hasn’t changed. We are still ordinary people, astonished that Jesus should call us, unworthy as we are, to follow him.
Maybe one day, when all the fuss and bother of this life is over, we will see God’s church as it really is. But for now, as his motley, sainted band, wherever we are we will come together each week and he will meet us and serve us. Then we will go out to serve him as best we can with whatever gifts we have. And as we serve, through all our joys and our mistakes, for as long as it takes, Jesus will go on teaching us what it is to follow him.
