Divine and dusty

The late South African theologian David Bosch once wrote: 'We now recognize that the church is an inseparable union of the divine and dusty.' What a challenging thought! It reminds me of the phrase from the apostle Paul, 'We have this treasure in earthen vessels.' People who criticize the church because of its hypocrisy, its failure to live up to its own standards of faithfulness, ethics and morality, its inappropriate tendency to side with the "powers that be" rather than the "least of these," -- well, such criticisms are often on target. But they are simply an acknowledgement of the fact that the community of faith is composed of human beings. The church is always going to be "dusty" in that sense. People who "church hop" looking for the perfect congregation are also doomed to disappointment. Some groups may be more to their liking than others, but none will meet their idealized vision of what a church "ought" to be. No matter how grand or simple, nor matter how large or small, the church is dusty.

But that's only part of the story. The church is also divine, in the sense that it is of divine origin, and in the sense that mysteriously it is the Body of Christ in the world. God calls the church into existence, pronounces Christ the Head of the church, empowers the church's witness by the Holy Spirit. God's mission directs the church. There is no other enterprise, organization, nation or group so called, empowered and dedicated. The church is a glimpse of the Reign of God -- but its a dusty glimpse, a glimpse through a dusty glass (again to reference St. Paul).

When you think about it, the Incarnation itself is both divine and dusty. Jesus Christ, God's Son, was -- when he walked the paths of Palestine -- fully human and fully divine. His divinity was clothed in humanity; his humanity was a vessel for his divinity. Some people, then and now, had trouble with Christ's divinity. Some people, then and now, are troubled my his humanity. But because he was human, he knows are circumstances -- as the Psalmist puts it, God knows that we are dust. And because of his divinity, he offers us grace as our Redeemer and Lord.