The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his091/gaggle.lzh/GAGGLE.TXT

Text File | 1991-06-30 | 4KB | 81 lines

INS:A Gaggle of geese and the Body of Christ  by Calvin Culver

   OR

   REFLECTIONS ON THE COMMUNITY OF THE SPIRIT

   By Calvin Culver

   As I was walked to work recently I heard above me a sound which, for
the past several months, has been absent from our skies - the honking
of geese flying overhead. I stopped to watch as their formation flew by
over me when it occurred to me that we could take a lesson from these
birds on the nature of discipleship. What, one may ask, does a flock of
birds have to do with the Body of Christ? Let me start by asking this:
why do geese fly in a V-formation? Well, as most people probably know,
such a formation helps tremendously to decrease drag due to air
resistance. This, especially on long migratory flights, enables the
geese to travel long distances before tiring. Apart and by himself, a
lone goose could probably never fly the long route from summer home to
winter haven and back again. Together, however, a flock of geese can
accomplish what is impossible for one alone.

   At the head of the formation is, of course, the leader. Though I
know not the ways of geese, how they select their leaders, I would
speculate that the chosen is one who is strong enough to take the brunt
of the headwind while his fellows ride his draft, and in addition is
perhaps one who has traveled the road before. He rides at the head
while his flock follows, and guides them along the long and difficult
journey.

   Such then is the nature of our journeys in Christ; we seek not to
follow Christ alone, irrespective of our brothers and our leaders, for
then what would we have but a horde of geese all jostling and shoving,
trying to assume the position immediately behind the leader. Instead,
Paul wrote, "Follow me as I follow Christ."

   We may also see something of the nature of the Church here. For, as
I looked at the geese flying overhead I saw, not thirty-five or so
geese in the sky, but a diamond formation, moving in unison. To be
sure, there were individual geese in the formation but what I saw was,
above all, a flock. This, I believe, illustrates a facet of the nature
of the Church. We - modern, Western man - see the society around us
through our individualistic metaphysic; that is, the nature of society
is that it is nothing more, nor less, than a collection of individuals.
Concepts of such things as societal consciousness or one's
responsibility to society are next to unknown, having been replaced by
concepts of the sovereignty of the individual.

   Yet this was not always so. Medieval thought, for example, tended to
elevate society above individual, and it was almost axiomatically held
that an individual could not be fully realized without acceptance and
fulfillment of that niche to which society had assigned him. This could
be called an extreme form of societal, as opposed to individualistic,
metaphysic.

   The nature of the Church, I believe, lies somewhere in between these
extremes - in a sort of communal nature. It is certainly more than a
mere collection of individual Christians, yet neither do the
individualities of its members get subsumed in its whole. Still, there
is something of a communal nature to the Church that we, with our
Western individualism, have failed to recognize. Thus, for example, it
seems to me that, as the Roman Catholic church has declared, there is
no salvation outside the Church. Not, indeed, in a narrow sense which
would define the Catholic - or any other - church as the one true
Church, but in that God mediates his salvation through the body of
Christ. Hence, the logical order of events at one's conversion is that
he is first joined to the Church and then bestowed with salvation. No
one is truly saved who is not a member of the Church.

   Again, it is in this sense that Scripture declares that we are the
temple of the Holy Spirit. That is, the Body of Christ is the temple in
which the Spirit of Christ has chosen to dwell. And again, when
declaring that "the kingdom of God is within (among) you", Scripture
announces that it is within the Body that God has established his rule.
It is our responsibility, as members of that Body, to demonstrate to
the world what is the nature of that kingdom. And it is within this
framework, as members of the true Flock, that we are called to follow
one another, as each of us seeks to follow Christ.

   Computers for Christ - Chicago