Jesus didn’t come to start a church. He came to show God’s love for the whole world. He came to heal and to teach and to save. And, as he did that, he gathered a crowd. They were changed by that encounter. And when Jesus said, “Hey, you want to come along and help?” they followed him. They were the church. Long before there were church buildings or seminaries to train pastors or even a book with the story of Jesus written down in it, they were the church.
The church is people. And, today, the church is us. We are the church when we get together to celebrate and to mourn, to worship and to learn and to serve. But we are also the church when we are at home, at work, at school, having coffee with the neighbor, doing our shopping, paying our taxes, marking the ballot. We are the church wherever we go. It is our job, in all those places, to share the good news of God’s love in everything we say and everything we do.
This message is excerpted from “Like the first evangelists” by Kelly Fryer, a 2007 resource of the Women of the ELCA. Today we commemorate Olavus Petri, priest, 1552; Laurentius Petri, Bishop of Uppsala, 1573; renewers of the church.
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