Apr | 19 | Are We Just Morons With A Message?

Key Word:- REAL

Title:- Are We Just Morons With A Message?

Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavour, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.
 
I remember when the tall young Southern preacher touched on the text above. It was so good it needs repeating. Apparently, the Greek word for ‘losing flavour’ is from where we get our English word, ‘MORON.’ The word means insipid, stupid, dull, dumb, and moronic! And you know friends, when the church loses its saltiness, that’s just how she appears to the world, MORONIC! Jesus seems to intimate, that there is no solution to this problem at all! When the salt has become good for nothing; once the flavour has gone, what can you do but throw it out?

We imagine loss of flavour to be due primarily to some severe moral transgression, or especially maybe, to some doctrinal heresy. For sure, either of these can be catastrophic for the church and I am afraid to say, both are increasingly common. However, I’m not sure that’s what Jesus meant? There’s something far more endemic here which we have to deal with, for doctrinal dispute means nothing to the world, they are not interested and frankly, moral failure comes as no surprise to them as they are often more ‘honest’ about their sins and failures than most Christians are about theirs! Don’t misunderstand me here; I am not downplaying the wrongness and impact of either problem, I just think there is something worse, some might say far, far worse, for when the world tastes us, it finds us unbelievably, BLAND! Lukewarm blandness is the present curse of the Laodicean church.

A flavourless church is a church which is like a body without nerves, without feeling, without passion, without expression and therefore, it is a church without a present voice, her own distinct, clear as crystal voice, all coloured like a pomegranate, fragrant as fresias warmed by the sun on the kitchen windowsill, smelt on a late Friday afternoon; as unforgettable as Dutch liquorice and Cuban coffee.

This bland, voiceless kind of church however, as inoffensive as a well- dressed toddler; can only offer lessons in politeness, diplomas in acceptance and degrees in mediocrity. This moronic, flavourless, voiceless church is above all, respectable. This moronic church though, appears to have it all together and the members of this church are neat, clean-cut, financially viable, and have all their teeth smilingly enamelled. If they have a story, it is encased in the past tense. They certainly have no struggles now, have no victories, have no weeping defeats, have no joy of journey, no, they are in every understanding of the word, senseless and so are subsequently, voiceless, bland and tasteless!

The world however, has stories in the present tense, and struggles of every kind. It’s tastebuds are primed and dancing. So, when the world dares to taste this kind of voiceless church it finds it bland, as expected. When it looks with investigation, it finds it featureless, when it listens it finds it to be but clanging cymbals, full of a people so irrelevant to them and to what they need, that these poor voiceless, but all together churches appear to the watching world as just a bunch of ‘Morons with a Message’ and a less than mediocre message at that!

What’s your church like today? Full of five-flavour lifesavers or just neatly packaged boxes of doctrinally correct, dried up oatmeal that is good for nothing except to be thrown out? What’s your church like today? Full of five-flavour lifesavers or just frothy unfermented new wine, all smulched up with silly love songs that are good for nothing except to be thrown out? If it is either of these, then I have no word of encouragement for you, except that you get out before the housewife of the Holy Spirit throws you out of the window and into the street to be trampled under foot. He, who has ears to hear, let him hear!

Listen: - ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ …… Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’ Luke 14:21-24

Pray: - Real God, in all my troubles, really be seen in me today! When I am touched and tasted, may I be found full of Your goodness, yes, let me at least rejoice in the knowledge that the flavour of Christ my Saviour is found in all my troubles, in Jesus name I pray, Amen.