It is easy to poke fun at the institution of the church. There is perhaps no easier “whipping boy” than the church. It is easy to see why. It is a place inhabited by people who are “vowed” on the front end that they are sinners badly needing to be rescued from a condition of sin with which they were born and which they have honed into practice by just the process of living. As far as I know, the only other organization that is like that is AA. Which has, by the way, a good track record of recruiting and redeeming people who are honest enough to admit they have a weakness that they can’t deal with by themselves.

From the outside looking in it looks like madness and lunacy. Why would anyone admit: “First of all we had to quit playing God.” (AA) Or, “Do you acknowledge yourselves to sinners in the sight of God and without hope for your salvation except in His Sovereign mercy?” (Vow #1 of The Evangelical Presbyterian Church) The picture I see just glancing at the magazines when checking out at Walgreen’s, Wal-Mart or Kroger suggests a world far different than I encounter at the church. The portrait of humanity I see there is airbrushed, toned, flossed, and seemingly perfect without a care in the world. Why would I opt for finding answers in a group that openly admits failure rather than seeking help from the people who appear to be all together? Again the church seems at the edge of lunacy. Is it madness to follow Jesus? Is it a crutch to assemble in community with so many self-professed people who have an inability to solve life’s most difficult problems? Or is it sanity itself?

If the world is not radically fallen and the human heart totally inclined to evil, then yes, the church and AA for that matter are simply for people who are radically masochistic and filled with self-loathing. However if the world is an incredibly fallen place, and we are born with deceitful hearts as the Bible says, then not only is the church a good idea, it is the only sane place left. It is like the fable of the emperor who had no clothes. The only sane person in the story was the young boy who dared to look at everyone around him and then look at the king and proclaim, “You’re buck naked!” The boy was embracing reality as it was, not as he wished it would be and as everyone else tried to make it. I don’t like it that I am fallen and prone to sin. I don’t like it that my confession is best summed up in the old hymn, “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” But, that’s me. I can pretend I am good. I can brush, floss and tone my body more, but will that really get at the deep needs and longs of my heart. Will that really make me happy? If I buy the product being sold in the magazine racks by the rich and the famous will this make me more human?

The irony is that, the church does have a formula that “fits” reality. It starts with an admission that I have a broken relationship with God and need help. It involves asking for forgiveness from God and from other people—constantly. It involves putting people who admit they are not all together—together in community to “be there” to help each other in their pilgrimage of life. The church admits it is a messy place, because given the nature of humanity, that is “just the way things are.” This week I read in Philip Yancy’s book Rumors of Another World what a recovering alcoholic said about AA. It might as well been said about the church, because AA stole this one from the church playbook. “I have to publicly declare ‘I am an alcoholic’ whenever I introduce myself to a group. It is a statement of failure, of helplessness, and surrender. Take a room of a dozen or so people, all of who admit helplessness and failure, and it’s pretty easy to see how God then presents himself in that group.” Given the fallen nature of the world, is that lunacy? Or is the real lunacy, folk who refuse to admit what is true of them and live in a world of denial? Who has lost their mind the world or the church? Who is in denial about “the way things are?” The reason I need the church is to keep me sane. I need people who will not tell me everything is copasetic when it is not. I need people weekly to sharpen my perceptions of what is really true, good and beautiful. I desperately need to hear all the time; I have value, not because of what I do, but because of what was done for me. This is what I need; this is why the church feels like home to me.

Frederick Buechner in his book, The Faces of Jesus says it so well; I will let him have the last word. “If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The world says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says, Drive carefully—the life you save may be your own—and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The world says, Get, and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world’s sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is laboring less under the cross than under a delusion. ‘We are fools for Christ’s sake,’ Paul says, faith says—the faith that ultimately the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, the lunacy of Jesus saner than the grim sanity of the world.” (Punctuation Buechner’s)