We live in a time when there's a lot of anti-institutionalism in the air. "I love Jesus but I hate the church" is a theme that keeps reappearing with variations in many settings.
So it is interesting to note that Jesus, who in abridged form is quite popular with the non-church crowd, was not anti-institutional. Jesus said, "Follow me," and then regularly led his followers into the two primary religious institutional structures of his day: the synagogue and the temple. Neither institution was without its inadequacies, faults, and failures. The temple especially was shot through with corruption, venality, injustice, discrimination.
The temple was immense and beautiful. Jesus didn't seem to be impressed. All the same he didn't boycott the place. He didn't avoid either synagogue or temple. He regularly joined the prayers of in the small-town synagogues scattered around Galilee. He made regular pilgrimages with thousands of his countrymen at the appointed times of festival worship to the Jerusalem temple.
Those who followed Jesus, followed him into those buildings, those religious institutions. After his ascension they continued to frequent both temple and synagogue. Given the stories that the four Gospel writers have written for us, it doesn't seem likely that, if Jesus showed up today and we were invited to follow him, we would find ourselves taking a Sunday morning stroll out of the city: away from asphalted parking lots, away from church buildings filled with people more interested in gossip than gospel.
We sometimes say, thoughtlessly I think, that the church is not a building. It's people. I'm not so sure. Synagogue and temples, cathedrals, chapels, and storefront meeting halls provide continuity in a place and community for Jesus to work his will among people. Following Jesus means following him into sacred buildings that have a lot of sinners in them, some of them very conspicuous sinners. Jesus doesn't seem to mind.
A spirituality that has no institutional structure or support very soon becomes self-indulgent and subjective and one-generational.
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