The Doctor and the Apostle. Jeffrey A. Nelson

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СКАЧАТЬ making of tents provided a context for his ministry, but also very much his livelihood. In 1 Thessalonians, he was very concerned with not wanting to burden this community with an extra stretching of their resources, so he earned his own way instead.

      The other part of the strategy of Paul and others toward proclaiming their message about Jesus would have been the conversion of entire households. In numerous places in his letters, Paul refers to the heads of households or to the church within a person’s house, showing that the home was an early core building block for the Jesus Movement. In 1 Corinthians 1, Paul mentions Chloe’s “people,” who would have been members of her house, as well as baptizing the household of Stephanas. In Romans 16, he sends greetings to the households of Aristobulus and Narcissus, among other believers. In Philippians 4:22, he mentions the household of Caesar. The letter to Philemon includes a greeting to the church in his house in verse 2.

The house would not just have been the basic family unit, as we are accustomed to thinking of it today. It also would have included extended family, slaves, hired workers, and sometimes fellow tradespeople who were staying with them.2 As the head of the house went, so too would everyone else staying under the roof.

      This had numerous implications for the early church. First, it gave its evangelistic mission a certain character and focus, as proclaiming to the head of the house would have an effect on everyone else for whom they were responsible. Second, it helped the early church organize itself and care for one another just by giving an extra dimension and reason for the people already looking after each other to continue doing so in a new way. And finally, it would entail these house churches becoming networked with one another for purposes such as occasional larger gatherings of worship, teaching, and fellowship, and supporting one another as others had need. This was not the only strategy employed by Paul and others, but it was an essential one.

      Paul’s sense of call to proclaim Jesus to the Gentiles involved quite a bit of travel to different and diverse communities around a large region of the world. It pushed and expanded boundaries that had been set by the establishment. It had a certain renegade aspect to it in the eyes of those who preferred a narrower and more rigid approach and focus. Its organization was more portable, structured by a network of houses and individuals rather than a larger regulatory meeting space that oversaw its members more closely.

      For Paul, the church is a living thing, with a nimble quality and many moving parts to it than could possibly be controlled. Its soul was the power and grace of God, which many humans have tried to fence in to their own frustration. But its soul is also the people themselves: those who received the good news about Jesus and would contribute to its ongoing life in the world, allowing it to give its hearers what they need rather than what we’d prefer.

      The Church Is Not a Building

      In his book Eager to Love, Richard Rohr explores the faith and life of Francis of Assisi, who among other things had a reputation for his connection to and appreciation of God’s creation. As Francis was a monk, the name for his room in the monastery was known as a “cell.” Not to be confused with the cell one may picture related to incarceration, this was simply a modest room where one would sleep, pray, read, and write away from community worship, meals, and chores.

Francis saw all of nature as sacred and as a setting in which to experience God’s presence. For him, one did not need to be in his cell or even in a church to find a connection to God. In fact, he thought it more likely to find that connection out in the world. Rohr quotes him as saying, “Wherever we are, wherever we go, we bring our cell with us. Our brother body is our cell and our soul is the hermit living in the cell. If our soul does not live in peace and solitude within this cell, of what avail is it to live in a man-made cell?”3

      Francis invited people to change their concept of encountering God, and one way he did that is by redefining some of the terms by which one considers such things. He changed the definition of a cell from that of a physical room to one’s body, in which one’s soul resides. Likewise, he changed the definition of a monastery from that of a single building to all of creation. We carry our cell with us at all times within the great cathedral of all that God has made, and thus we are constantly presented with the opportunity to receive what God is trying to share with us through it.

      For some, it might be quite a radical notion to move from the traditional definitions of church. For many Christians, the word “church” may call to mind a few different things. First, one may use it to describe a Sunday morning worship gathering. When one says they are “going to church,” they typically mean an event held at a certain time of the week where one may sing, pray, and hear a sermon. This leads us to the second image of church that may come to mind for many, that being a particular building to which one travels to experience this event and others related to the life of a congregation that meets there.

      Activities and buildings like these carry with them the possibility of impactful experiences and hold deep meaning for millions of people. But in addition to those, Francis invited people to think even bigger: church can be anywhere and happen at any time, because in a sense Christian believers are always carrying it with them.

      The TARDIS is an integral part of The Doctor’s adventures. It makes traveling to different times and worlds possible, and not much would happen without it. But The Doctor and their companions rarely remain inside it. After all, what fun is it to go to all these interesting and exciting places if they never actually leave the ship to experience them?

      And even once they leave the physical TARDIS, they still carry it with them. An ongoing connection to it allows them to understand the beings that they encounter, and sometimes allows them to breathe and be protected, among other abilities. In that sense, The Doctor and others never really leave it behind.

      For Paul, the word “church” could have had a number of possible meanings. It could have referred to the house in which a particular converted family resided, but it also could have meant the extended network of groups and individuals that spanned an entire city. He used it to refer to communities of various sizes, and communities within communities. For Paul, churches ebbed and flowed, expanded and contracted, and moved about the populace whether together for worship and prayer or scattered in daily work or the tasks of service and evangelism.

      Both Paul and The Doctor were travelers, going from place to place to check in on or help people as best they could. For either of them, to stay in one spot was to be less effective than they’d like. Their visions were of a larger world or universe that needed what they could give, even beyond the preferences of those who wanted them to submit to more structure and regulation. The Doctor saw Time Lord technology as holding great potential to do good for others and had to defy his superiors to do it. Paul had a personal experience of God that directed him outside the specified bounds of the Jesus Movement to expand its reach, first to the Jerusalem leaders’ chagrin and then to their acceptance.

      Many may be so used to thinking about the church as being an activity or a place. One may tend to think of it as having walls, either in the physical sense of a structure with a steeple and stained glass, or in the sense of having defined criteria for who gets to be part of it and who doesn’t. One may prefer these walls because they enjoy participating in keeping them raised against a world that they want to repel. Many others have experienced what it’s like to have a wall placed in their path as they are denied inclusion and acceptance.

      The Doctor and Paul see the pitfalls of such walls and actively explore a calling to make them much more permeable. A TARDIS is for traveling, and for leaving in order to see to others’ needs. A church is for inviting more people in to find hope and healing, and for easing burdens rather than adding to them. They are both for active use for the benefit of others, rather than keeping to oneself.

      As Francis suggests, our view of how God is present in the world and especially in the lives of hurting people changes when we consider that СКАЧАТЬ