Seventh in a series of teachings exploring the Confession of Faith from a Mennonite Perspective.
Will Fitzgerald, given at Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship, 2006-03-11
What do Mennonites think about the Church?
If you lived in 16th century Switzerland, and you asked someone what the church was, probably one of two things would happen. First, you might be thrown in jail for asking such impertinent questions. If that didn’t happen, and the person was willing to answer our question, he or she would likely point to a building and say, “There is the church.” If you asked who were members of that church, he or she would probably look at you funny and say, “Why, everyone! You get baptized at birth, confirmed at such and such a day, you get married there, and buried there. Everyone, from birth to death, is a member of the church.”
But some people were questioning this. They’d point out that some priests and bishops treated their position like any other position of power, exercising it for their own benefit. They might point to the largely illiterate peasant class whose beliefs were more like superstition than true religion. They’d ask who little babies and young children could be members of a church without being able to choose that membership. If everyone is in the church, then maybe no one was—-or the definition was wrong.
So, they opened their Bibles and noted that the Greek word for ‘church’ was ‘ekklesia,’ the assembly, built out of two words basically meaning ‘the called out.’ So the church was not everyone in society, but just those who are called out of society to form a new community. No one is born into the church; you have to respond to the call.
These people, our spiritual ancestors who created the ideas and structures which we’d eventually call ‘the Mennonites’ are sometimes called ‘the Radical Reformation’ because they want to change or reform the church right down to the roots.
The last book of the Bible is called, “The Revelation,” and it records a series of messages, dreams and visions given to a man named John by Jesus Christ himself. John was living at the time on the small island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, perhaps having been imprisoned or stranded there.
John stands. Behind him he hears a voice as loud as a trumpet. He turns and sees Jesus Christ in glory and wonderful to behold, standing among seven lamp stands. The seven lamp stands represent seven specific churches in what is now western Turkey, but seven is such a special, holy and perfect number in Scripture that it’s hard to believe that Jesus Christ did not also mean the entire church.
Then Jesus says something interesting: He tells John to take dictation, to write down individual letters to each of the seven churches. In these short letters, Jesus Christ reveals a bit about himself, praises some things in the church, criticizes others, and offers promises of good things to those who remain faithful to him.
I want to examine one short criticism that Jesus Christ makes of one of the churches, Ephesus. He says, “I have this against you, that you have forsaken your first love.”
Ah, first love. Who doesn’t remember the first time they fell in love, or their first crush on someone? But it seems unlikely that Jesus Christ is complaining that the Christians weren’t remembering their childhood crushes.
As is well known, the language of the New Testament, Koine Greek, has several words that are translated as “love.” One word (which does not, in fact, occur in the New Testament directly) is “eros,” or maybe what we would call passion, or sexual desire. Of course, it’s the word we get our word “erotic” from. If Jesus Christ had meant our first crush, he probably would have used “eros,” but he didn’t.
Another word translated as “love” is the word “phileto,” often described as “brotherly love” (as in “Philadelphia,” the city of brotherly love). This is more like the love that tow friends have for each other; it’s more like “like” than passion. CS Lewis gives a good analogy: “eros” is two lovers gazing into each others’ eyes; “phileto” are two friends side by side looking at a shared interest. And if Jesus Christ wanted to criticize the Ephesians for forgetting their friends, he probably would have used “phileto,” but he didn’t.
The word he did use was “agape,” which is sometimes translated as “charity,” although what we mean by charity is only a part of what the Greek word “agape” means. When Paul writes, “If I don’t have love, I am nothing” and “Only faith, hope and love endure, and the greatest of these is love,” he uses “agape.” When 1 John is translated, “God is love, and he who loves God is of God,” the word being translated is “agape.” When John the evangelist says God so loved the world, he describes “agape” love. Most importantly, when Jesus teaches that the first commandments are to love one another as ourselves, and to love God with our entire being, he uses “agape.”
“Agape” is the love we owe and give to God and our neighbor, a selfless love which seeks the best for others without particular thought to how it benefits ourselves. But what does Jesus Christ mean when he says that he is disappointed that the Ephesians have lost their first agape-love? I think there are several possibilities, all of which commend themselves.
“First love” might mean “the love we had at the beginning.” This is somewhat what we mean when we say so-and-so was our first love. And I think this is the traditional interpretation of the criticism. It’s certainly what I’ve heard before. “You’ve lost that first passion you had for God! Your lukewarm in your desire for following God! Rekindle your passion and desire to follow him!”
I’m all for passionate obedience and worship, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus Christ means here. We’ve seen already that the word “agape” isn’t the word you’d first chose to describe passionate love anyway.
My friend Rick DiMicco is San Francisco put it this way. When he was a child, he was very loving towards the people around him. For example, he lived in a rigidly segregated area; this block was Italian or Irish, that block was black, and so on; and people weren’t supposed to cross the line. But Rick would, befriending some of the black kinds on the next block. There was a purity in his capacity to love, he says. But his father and others around him taught him to be otherwise: rather than to be open to those around him, he learned to be closed. Rather than befriend others, he learned to fight. His “first love,” that purer capacity to love, was besmirched.
And so, Jesus Christ might be saying something like this here. At first, the Ephesians were acting out their love for God and one another in a purer and more open way, but eventually things got in the way and polluted it. So this is not so much as a call to renewed passion for God and others as much as a call for renewed action.
A second possible meaning for “first love” is “that thing that you love the most,” something like a Texan saying that Texas is “first in her heart.” If this is what Jesus Christ means when he criticizes the Ephesians for forsaking their first love, he is criticizing them for giving up on their primary love.
Because Jesus taught that God and our fellow human beings are to be the primary object of our love, this means giving up on God and others. Perhaps we no longer trust God to act on our behalf, or we doubt God’s presence in our lives. Perhaps we have grown weary of the people around us, for they are as frail and faulty as ourselves. We’d just as soon not pay them any more mind and we let them go their own way. Maybe “they” are our leaders in the church, or our children, or our parents, or people in the next department at work. But Jesus Christ calls us to not give up on others or God, if we don’t want to face his disapproval.
A third possibility for “first love” is “the thing we first choose to put our love towards.” In baseball, there are four bases, and they’re all important in their way, but if you hit the ball, it’s important to run to first base first; otherwise you’ll—-well, otherwise, people will laugh at you.
An image that comes to mind is the first thing you pay attention to when you wake up in the morning. Jesus Christ calls us to place God and others first before we get around to other things. So perhaps a little worship and prayer for others, a kind act on behalf of the people around us, and so on, should antedate our attention to work or school or getting to the gym or (heaven forbid) getting our coffee in the morning. Another image that comes to mind is a ‘to-do’ list: #1, Love God. #2. Love my neighbor. #3. Pick up milk and dry cleaning. Jesus Christ isn’t happy, perhaps, when we forget to put love first on our lists.
A final possibility for “first love:” our first love is “that which most deserves our love and honor.” We call the wife of the president the “first lady” not because she got in line first, but because she is married to the president and thus worthy of honor by extension. I hate to sound like a broken record here, but who is worthier of our love and honor that our neighbor and God?
God is the creator of our world and redeemer of our lives—-surely God is worthy of being our first love because of this. We watch people getting Academy Awards for best actor or actress, and sometimes we call this show them some love. Surely God is much more worthy of our love; God who created the heavens and the earth! And what honor God has shown us by becoming one of us, a baby born in a manger, living our way of life and dying in our way of death, and thereby raising us up to potential glory. Surely our neighbor is worthy of our “first love,” too.
So, one way to describe the church, especially the church in mission, are those who are called out of the world to love God and love neighbors as ourselves. Any structures we put into place, any disciplines or sacraments we take p should be there to achieve these primary goals. Let me conclude by challenging you to consider whether are any senses in which you have forsaken your first love, remember that God’s first love is God’s church. God will work on our behalf to make us better lovers of God and lovers of our neighbors.
Are there ways you have lost your original capacity to love? Has your love been sullied by mixed motives?
Have you turned to other loves—-love of money, love of self, love of country, love of entertainment—instead of to God and neighbor?
When you first get up in the morning, or when you are deciding what to do, are there ways “loving God” and “loving your neighbor” can be further up the list?
Are there ways you can help excite your love for others and God by recalling the honor due them?
Let’s spend a few minutes in silence. If there is anything you feel God is leading you to say, please do so, and I’ll close in prayer.
(I’m happy to also note that this teaching was inspired by a Tuesday night Bible study at the Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco, especially by Dale Gish’s teaching, and comments made by Rich DiMicco and Debbie Gish).