Andy Griess
Yeah, absolutely. Line number two says that "everybody's life is perfect except for yours". I think that's what comes out of church, people pretending they got it all together. It leaves people coming in with this idea that everybody's got it figured out. And so it says, "You keep your messes and your wounds and your secrets safe behind closed doors."
Bruce Peterson
That's right. So the idea is if I come to church believing that everyone's telling me the truth and I'm going to church to find help because I have problems, but I get there and they're all saying they're fine, then somehow God has forgotten about me. They have power I don't have, they have blessings I don't have, somehow there's a gap between me and God because clearly if you're doing fine, you're healthy, you're wealthy, you are blessed, your children obey you every time, you have perfect self discipline...
Andy Griess
This must be a place for people who have it all together.
Bruce Peterson
...or God has lost me somehow. So that's terribly detrimental. Again, James says to confess your sin to one another because love covers a multitude of sins. Love like church should be a place where we acknowledge that we're sojourners. Paul says, "Listen, I know you want to give up. I know your tears. And I'm telling you, hang in there, suffer with me. Do the long haul." Paul himself says "I haven't arrived yet, but I have to get up every day and forget yesterday and press on to what God has called me for." Like, this is hard. Living by faith is hard. The world does a great job trying to suck us in. And if it's a war, there must be a battle. Like God describes it, our battle is not against flesh and blood. But again, if there's a real battle and none of us are struggling, then it's not even a battle.
Andy Griess
And this is one of the key reasons why the church is so important - because if every one of us has to start off that huge battle with just whatever we've got, it's overwhelming.
Bruce Peterson
It's overwhelming.
Andy Griess
When I do pre-marriage counseling, when I'm getting a couple ready for marriage, I'm gonna tell them marriage is the hardest thing that you've ever done, but you're not the first person that's had to go through all of that. This church is filled with people who've been married 20 years, 35 years, 60 years. And if you're a part of this body and you're getting to know these people and your lives are connected and you're raising kids together, somebody here has gone through that and failed, and they can tell you why they failed or did it successfully. And they can tell you what the keys to success were. But being connected to a group that isn't just pretending, we've got it all together, that's open and sharing, that's the thing.
Bruce Peterson
Honest, open and growing, that's our theme, right? But getting people to actually do it is much trickier than putting it on the wall.
Andy Griess
In the question that was sent to us, they keyed in on the second verse which says "There's a sign on the door that says come as you are, but I doubt it. Because if we live like that was true, every Sunday morning pew would be crowded. But didn't you say the church should look more like a hospital, a safe place for the sick, the center and the scared and the prodigals like me."
Bruce Peterson
And that's going to come out of passages like this. Jesus in Matthew 9:10-12 says this: "While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' On hearing this, Jesus said 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. But go and learn what this means - I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners'." So out of that idea comes this idea that churches should be hospitals. How do you react to that?
Andy Griess
It comes from this idea that Jesus said, "I came for those who are sick." And I take that to mean - we're all sick.
Bruce Peterson
Yeah, that's right.
Andy Griess
He came for those who are willing to recognize that they are sick.
Bruce Peterson
When he says "I'm not here for the righteous". He means the self-righteous.
Andy Griess
If you consider yourself to be righteous, you don't need any help, you're going to stay where you are for the rest of your life - Jesus has no help for them. His help is for those who recognize that they're sick, that's why you go to a hospital. And the church was founded with people who recognize that they're sick. They found that Jesus had the answer. He's forgiven their sins, His spirit now lives in them, they've been given new life. They have now a mission to be the light of the world to take the message of Jesus to the world. They're to go to the rest of the sick and say, listen, if you recognize you have needs Jesus is the answer. We found him. We're learning to be what he called us to be. And we want you to join us wherever you're at. Jump right in and let's go. So it should be in some sense, a functional hospital.
Bruce Peterson
A functional hospital, that's the key. So the full range of a hospital is not just an emergency room, right? Our message isn't just, "Hey, Jesus forgives sin, so just sit in the pews, be as sinful as you want with no expectation of health, you're here simply for forgiveness." I think that's wrong, the church isn't just an emergency room. A hospital's not just an emergency room. You have the emergency room, and people who need real help should feel totally welcome, that's where they can go for help. Then you go from the emergency room to a care room, you get your own room maybe on floor two and three. And then four, you go to rehab. The goal is to leave the hospital healthy or at least relatively healthy, right? It's the whole gamut. So yeah, you should have people who aren't judged. You should be able to come in because you don't know the message of grace and what God's love can do for a person. At the same time we're all patients, but we're all also doctors, we need to help and we should have an expectation of growth, and we are the light of the world. So we can't stay people who need an emergency room. We have to move all the way to people who are just coming for a little rehab and we're leaving healthier to go reach our world.
Andy Griess
And just to kind of wrap things up: if the church is going to be that kind of a hospital, the goal of everybody should be, "I'm gonna take what Jesus has done for me, and I need people in this town to know that if they're broken and sick they don't have to stay there. There's a place where they can come." And so the people that have been healed are the ones who reach the rest.
Bruce Peterson
That's right. In this whole song. I think Matthew West is pushing the church to be real. Be sojourners, don't be fake. If we all own our issues, then we can demonstrate a real process and real progress, and then we can actually be real help to those who need it. So people who need help - all of us, but some desperately - should be able to come sit in our pews, get our healing, get our help, because we have all gotten help. We should offer help instead of judgment, and we should have a "in" door and "out" door. You come in sick and you leave a little healthier. And if we do that for the course of our life, we'll make a huge difference.
Andy Griess
And I think the reason this song kind of conveys a sense of sadness is because the world knows this is what the church should be. It should be our vision as the church that we want to be the light that Jesus intends us to be.
