Somebody's Knocking at the Door

"Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me."                       Revelation 3:20

There is nothing that irritates me more than to be locked out of my house.  I used to come home, arms full of groceries or whatever and unable to get my key in the lock. I would be outside the door struggling to get in while my family sat on the other side of the door, mesmerized by the T.V. and unwilling to get up and let me in.

The above verse from Revelation has been stuck in my head all day today as I have been contemplating Christ's church, my role as a pastor, and my place as a disciple. I am spending the season of Lent seeking transformation as a Christian. My desire is to do some "holy" remembering and return to the same passionate, high energy, on fire Christian I was when I first committed my life to Christ and when I first went into the ministry. I want to be hot!! In a strictly Christian sense of the word :)

I grew up with this verse being one that was required memorization for us. It was often used to teach us about salvation. Jesus is waiting, they would say. "He's knocking on the door of your heart, waiting for you to let him in." I remember being puzzled by it as a child. After all, if Jesus was a Holy Ghost then why did he have to knock - can't ghosts just walk through doors?  Ah, youth.

Now, here I am all grown up and pastor of my own congregation and I am thrown back to this verse all over again. In my youth it was a verse of great hope - because who didn't feel better knowing that Jesus wanted to live in my heart! But now, it is a verse that brings great anxiety to me. Imagine how startled I was the first time I learned that this verse was not about personal salvation at all - instead it is a kind of condemnation of the church!

In the opening chapters of Revelation, John is told to write his vision to the churches and in chapter 2 and 3 he speaks to them about their successes and failures as a church.  The last one is particularly scathing.  He declares the church to be lukewarm and desires to simply spit it out.  Not hard to imagine, we all know lukewarm water is distasteful.  Suddenly another image from my childhood passes before me. A picture that I believe both grandparents had in their homes of Jesus standing at the front door of a very English looking cottage, knocking.  But Revelation makes it clear - the house that Jesus has been shut out of and is desperately seeking to get back into is his own - the church!

I'm wondering if all of us as pastors should have an artist commissioned to come out and paint a picture of the churches we currently serve, with a special addition - Jesus, standing at our locked doors knocking, asking to come in.  With a heavy heart I realize that while I see some wonderful things in our churches I don't know of many who are hot and on fire for Jesus. I don't know of many church where every member is a passionate witness for God and where visitors are frequent and new members abound every week.  Too often I find churches that are lukewarm - not dead and cold yet, but just doing enough to get by and be called "church."

I fear that we have become so caught up in the institution of church and the "we've always done it this way" traditions of faith - that Jesus left the building and no one even noticed. In this season of Lent I hope we can all sit in our church and listen closely to what we hear.  Do we hear Jesus clearly inside the walls? Or can we hear only the distant tapping on the sanctuary door?

And will we sit there - mesmerized by whatever 'entertainment' is before us or will we get up and let him in?