When I was in high school I belonged to a group of kids, male and female. We did everything together. We dated each other. We were a Clique.
I remember those days well and those kids I hung out with. If you were in, you were in, if you were out, you were talked about and looked down on as not as good as US.
Becoming part of that Clique was tough. Very tough. And if you left we really talked about you then. We thought we were better than the others. Superior. Exclusive.
We had a meeting place, just inside the east door of the high school. We would stand and do the cliquey things that we just knew made us who we were. WE were the IN Crowd.
We weren't really all that friendly to those who wanted to come in. OH, on the surface we were, we could be nice, but you weren't included.
I got a picture of that Clique and the Church this morning. The Church of Jesus is often just like High School: We have assembled ourselves into cliques. And we act just like those 16 year old kids I hung out with. We do all the same things.
I won't rehearse it, but you know it's true. Read how we were.....and see if it's true.
What is worse is we make it harder and harder to join. We use liturgy, form, secret chants and talk about how it used to be (implied, before the other clique members got here). We long for the good old days when only those few were among us. And how it used to be.
Sometimes we even purposely impose forms of cliquedom to keep people at a distance. Membership is a clique idea. If I fellowship with you, if I partake in sacraments with you, if I serve with you, if I minister with you, if I love you and am faithful to you even in giving, then I am a member. No Jet's or Shark's Clique ritual makes me less or more.
How much UNLIKE the Church Jesus loves is a clique.
If I could go back to those days I would tell those kids to cut it out. NOW, prophetically, I am telling the church, quit acting like a clique. The rest of the world sees you for what you are when you do.
This morning, at least for me, IT STOPS!
1 comment:
Hmmm...so anybody ready to step outside of that insulated shell called Clique-dom and do like Jesus did? Eat with the "ain'ts", visit, laugh and talk with the "least of these," go back to (or start for the first time with ) friendship evangelism. My how novel and quaint! To actually be a friend to somebody who ain't "cool," much less "all that and a bag of chips."
Levi the tax collector, Zacheaus, Mary Magdalene, smelly fisherman...
and stinking self righteousness... all have the same thing in common.
They all need Jesus' touch to deliver them and set them free and raise them up to be something far better than what they are.
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