Once again, for the next week or so I will be using selections from "The Strength of Love" in which M.L. King focuses on this parable: "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him."
After writing about the growth of the church in the Soviet Union, King writes
This numerical growth should not be overemphasized. We must not be tempted to confuse spiritual power and large numbers. Jumboism, as someone called it, is an utterly fallacious standard for measuring positive power. An increase in quantity does not automatically bring an increase in quality. A larger membership does not necessarily represent a correspondingly increase in ethical commitment, millions of people do feel that the church provides an answer to the deep confusion that encompasses their lives. It is still the one familiar landmark where the weary traveler by midnight comes. It is the one house which stand where it has always stood, the house to which the man traveling at midnight either comes or refuses to come. Some decide not to come. But the many who come and knock are desperately seeking a little bread to tide them over.
I don't want to take swipes at large churches - so please yell at me if I do. What I really want to say today is a bit about who we are as church. There is an element of being vulnerable when we make ourselves available to those who come at midnight - under the cover of dark - in an atmosphere that makes many anxious. The church is a place that will open its doors for there is such a need for life and a need to be feed. But when our doors our open to those who come out at midnight, others may be anxious about being associated with a place and a people who - though afraid - still open the doors and take the risk to be available. Then again, the life of a congregation can be one in which the doors are open and a welcome is available and life is led on a vulnerable edge...and then...others come. A light shines even at midnight when we are willing to be as our Lord was all along the way to the cross - living as though the Reign of God is breaking in and present as a place for the weary and worn and lost and least to find rest...along with the rich and famous and well-placed who also need rest. There is no shame in being a small or large church when the doors are open and the needs of the world are being addressed.
Connection: Even the doors of our hearts are not always open when someone comes at midnight and asks for us to be present. It is a place to start within the next breath of our lives.
Lord of all time, you call us into the living presence of your Reign and invite us to be fed by your grace and become for others a source of such graciousness as we hear others knocking at the doors of our lives within the church. Continue to make us bold and hold open the door. Amen.
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