Fix your eyes on Jesus and not on the church

Have you noticed how when you "talk church" to Christians you don't know, you've immediately built a wall between you? But if you "talk Jesus" -- if you fix your eyes on Him -- you're united? The Samaritan woman who talked to Jesus at the well (John 4) fell into the "talk church" trap. Jesus was talking about "living water" -- Himself -- and she didn't know what to make of it except that it must be related to organized religion. So she brashly waded in: "Our [Samaritan] fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." See how when we "talk church," we put labels on each other and we're immediately divisive? "You Jews, we Samaritans." "You're charismatic, we're not." "You're Lutheran, we're Baptist." "You worship on Sunday, we worship on Saturday." "You raise your hands, we never do that." "You're independent, we're denominational." "You're formal, we're informal." "You ordain women, we don't allow that." And on and on. No church is good enough to be on a level with Jesus. No "denominational distinctives" are important enough to overshadow Him. No cause, no creed, no baptism, no party, no ministry, no customs, no rules, no doctrine, no doctrine teacher, no movement, no movement leader, no local pastor, no vision, no specialty -- no aspect of Christianity, whatever it is and however good it may be, can be on a par with the firstness of Jesus. Ray was asked one Sunday to preach at a church in San Diego, no far from where we live. He and Nels and I got the brilliant idea of going for the weekend and incorporating the preaching into a little mini-vacation. Settled in our motel on Saturday, we bought a newspaper and discovered that Sunday afternoon the San Diego Symphony Orchestra was going to be giving a free concert on the campus of the University of California at San Diego. It sounded great. So after Ray preached, we dropped by a cafeteria for some lunch and then headed for the campus. We hauled a blanket out of the trunk of the car, and spread it on the grass in the sunshine -- along with thousands of others. Some had obviously come, as we had, from church; the guys peeled off their coats and ties, and the gals kicked off their heels . . . Some had just as obviously come from the beach; they had on their cut-offs and thongs or their bikinis and bare feet . . . Some got out their beer bottles . . . But when the orchestra began playing, nobody thought any more about how each other looked or what each other did. We were all concentrating beyond ourselves; we were all caught up in the same beauty. For Christian unity in the midst of Christian variety, fix your eyes on Jesus. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prayer: O Lord, we Christians tend to get confused in the midst of diversity! Like Peter on the Mountain of Transfiguration, we start to build three tabernacles, or more. Father, to make my heart broad, keep my vision narrowed. Help me to look up and see no one except Jesus (Matthew 17:8). In His matchless name, amen.