Exhortation: The Church as Strange and Ordinary

Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Church is strange and ordinary. She is strange because she offers a unique message. “She is strange because she is the creation of the Father through the Word and Spirit, the community of those who have been united by the Spirit with the Son, and therefore brought into eternal community of the Trinity. She is strange because her headquarters is not in a man-made space, but in the holy space of heaven, so that when you say we are going to Church on Sunday what you are actually saying is you are going to heaven. The Church is strange because it is a city without walls or boundary lines bringing together Jews and Gentiles, slave and free, male and female; you cannot say the same thing about any society.

But the church is also ordinary. She is made up of human beings. She is made up of crying infants, male and female, sanctified, wheat and chaff.  The Church is ordinary because she tells stories, she communes, she feasts, eats, and drinks. She partakes of the natural habits of human history, but she does so in the context of her divine origin, and in the simplicity of a common people.

We need to grasp the strangeness of the Church’s mission and ordinariness of her mission.[1] This is why this is an institution that cannot be defeated and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. So, let us come into the courts of this strange, but yet ordinary body of worshippers called the Church, and lift up her King for this is why we were created and why we live.

Prayer: Our great and Triune God, you have called us to assemble this morning as a strange, but yet ordinary people. Fill us with your joy, and establish us in your peace, and cause us to come into your gates with thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.