Pilgrim Soldier

I’ve mentioned a few times recently that I’m reading “God in All Things” by Gerard W Hughes at the moment. It seems to be taking me an extraordinarily long time due to various reasons. However, there are some great bits in it and I read this the other day:

Ideally, the Church is a pilgrim people, blissfully happy in their indifference to wealth and possession, unworried by the insecurity of all systems and institutions because they know they have no abiding city here. They are en route, a learning people, always ready to admit their errors in the fac of truth, welcoming the truth where it is found, and knowing that it can be found among all peoples, whether Christian or not.

What a marvellous Church that would be! … [but] it is as though the pilgrim [Church has] … accumulated too many possessions on the way, found the weight too heavy to carry and so settled down to look after and protect the overloaded rucksack. The pilgim Church became the settled Church, the static Church. The pilgrim people, unable to cope with marauding bands, settled down to protect themselves, threw up stockades, then high walls. The pilgrim Church became the parade ground Church, the beleaguered garrison of Christ the King. Within its high walls the loyal troops performed their outmoded arms drill and manoeurves in the parade ground, assured that as long as they kept up the drill and obeyed orders without question, they could be use of ultimate victory”
(Gerard W Hughes, In Search of a Way (first edition), pp 125-6 in Hughes, God of All Things, pp 141-2

After I read it, I read it out to Zoe and commented that it would be incredibly easy to replace the words “Pilgrim Church” with “The Salvation Army”. I reckon that it is probably just as easy to do the same thing with whatever denomination we attend, or even with our local church’s name.

In my mind, this is something that we have to be constantly aware of. It can be easy to shut up shop when the going gets tough. We can end up being more interested in being separate from the world, than we are in it. In Jesus’ prayer before he is arrested, he prays that his followers will be not be taken out of the world (John 17:15-19).

Hiding ourselves away in our church buildings is the equivalent of hiding our light under a bushel. Unless we are outside the walls of our church buildings, only little hints of the light are going to escape in the world. However, if we are out in our communities, then the light we shine out will be impossible to miss.