Peter and Paul

It is AD 30. Passover has come and gone and a small but troublesome religious group was put down and dispersed. Rabbi Gamaliel had argued against it, but had been overruled by the stricter leaders in the Temple community. One of Gamaliel’s young students, a young man in his early twenties, was convinced by Caiaphas’s certainty and strong defence of the faith. He watched and learned from their tough approach. Perhaps, thought Saul, this could be the life for me. As a Benjamite, being a priest was never going to be an option, but working for these people to defend the one holy God from all these strange people who turn up with alternative movements, that would be a life worth living. A life devoted to serving the one true God.

Meanwhile, the dispersed group had reassembled in Galilee, home to many of them. One member of the group, a fisherman, married with young children, in his later twenties or early thirties, was reassessing his life. He had a trade, but for a while had begun to think he’d be leaving that trade behind in order to work permanently for the man he knew to be the Son of God, Jesus the Christ. A life devoted to serving the Son of the one true God. But he’d messed up. When things went wrong at Passover, Peter had failed. He denied Jesus, ran, hid, put his own life before Jesus’. Whatever Jesus might have suggested about Peter becoming ‘the rock on which I will build my church’, that wasn’t going to happen now. And he had mouths to feed.

John’s gospel suggests that Peter’s return to fishing wasn’t a success. A long night on the Sea of Tiberius yielded nothing, until Jesus intervened. Jesus had apparently already been fishing, or been to the market, because he was cooking fish when Peter and his friends met him on the beach. Breakfast preceded the conversation that put Peter’s life back on track. Jesus gave Peter the chance to say the words that wiped out the denials: I love you. I love you. I love you. And he responded by restating the calling: Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. Jesus was telling Peter that whatever his doubts were, whatever he’d done, he was called to what we’d see now as the role of a bishop, overseeing and caring for the people of God. No more fishing then.

Peter returned to Jerusalem, with young John, Jesus’ brother James and many of the disciples. Others of the disciples and apostles began to spread out, taking the word of God around the world, but for now, Peter, John and James stayed in Jerusalem and became known as ‘the pillars of the church’. Jerusalem was a risky place to be. Caiaphas and Annas’s enforcers were determined to stamp out the Jesus movement. Peter would likely have heard of one of the lead enforcers, young Saul, if only by reputation. And it probably wasn’t long before Peter heard the story of what happened to Saul on the way to Damascus.

Saul, so certain about his beliefs, would not have been won over by the sort of gentle encounter that settled Peter in his calling. For Saul, Jesus met him in his full glory, offering not breakfast and gentle talk, but old-fashioned, old testament style lights in the sky, voices from heaven and blindness after the conversation that could only be cured when obedience to God’s demands was fulfilled. Saul was young, determined and quick-thinking and Jesus met him as such, calling him to share his new insights across the known world. Saul started this immediately, despite at this stage not fully understanding what he was talking about, preaching first in Damascus and then in Jerusalem, where Peter will surely have heard the strange story. In both cases, Saul’s energy in preaching about Jesus was as strong as it had been in persecuting him, and the result was a huge risk to his own life. Perhaps – we shall never know – Peter was involved in organising the group of believers in Jerusalem who took Saul into their care and sent the young man home to safety with his own family in Tarsus, persuading him that – at least for now – he should curb his loud preaching, which was putting him and others in danger.

Saul stayed in Tarsus for a while, presumably during this time reverting to his Roman name, Paul. He probably took up the family trade, tent-making, and worked with his father in his workshop in Tarsus. At some point he travelled to Arabia, following the common practice of people who had encountered God and needed time to pray and reflect – going to the desert. He followed the example of John the Baptist and many prophets before him, and indeed of Jesus himself. Paul doesn’t tell us how long he spent on this extended retreat, but it changed and matured him, and gave him time to really study the scriptures, seeing how Jesus is present right from the beginning of Genesis, and to work out what he, Paul, believed. He went back to Tarsus and settled down.

There is probably a gap of about ten years between the dramatic conversion experience and the day when Barnabus fetched Saul and asked him to come on a mission to Antioch with him. When God calls us, however instant and dramatic the call and conversion might be, he always gives us time to fully prepare ourselves, to learn and to become ready for the work ahead. Peter had years listening to Jesus and then gradually learning more as he and the other apostles began settling the church in Jerusalem. Paul had years too, spent very differently, but equally important. Once Paul got started, his was to be a life of travelling, staying in places for between a few weeks in some cases, and a couple of years in others, sharing the good news, calling local people in leadership, and then leaving them to get on with being the local church. Paul and Barnabus were apostle evangelists, travelling, teaching, starting new things, moving on.

Peter had a different call. Surely, he shared the good news too, and hearing from him must have been incredibly exciting – he was one of Jesus’ best friends, so his story was as direct and correct as you could get. But when he travelled, it wasn’t to found new churches but to encourage and support existing ones. People like Paul and Barnabus got things started, and Peter followed to strengthen, bless and support the young church communities. And sometimes to correct things that were not happening as they should.

Peter was a man who avoided conflict at all costs, even if that meant retreating from a stated position and looking weak. He would doubt his own mind when faced with arguments from people who were good at offering a strong argument and being determined and unmoving about their positions. James, Jesus’ brother, appears to be the kind of strongly spoken person who could persuade someone like Peter to step back from a position he’d taken. Paul was going to have a similar effect – leading Peter to find himself caught between the two opposing views that Paul and James took.

That happened in Antioch, when Peter’s belief that it was OK to eat with Gentiles, and that they should be included fully in the Jesus movement, a belief that Paul held strongly and unmovably, was challenged by James, who cited Jewish law. Peter got caught between the two, and Paul felt his behaviour was weak. Being caught between those two strong personalities must have been pretty stressful for Peter. The conflict led to the council of Jerusalem, at which the inclusion of Gentiles was agreed, and a set of rules was drawn up – a compromise position which probably pleased only Peter. Paul was given the title ‘Apostle to the Gentiles’, and from that point on his life was one of constant movement on his mission to share the good news and to care for the poor (in the form of a collection for the church in Jerusalem).

Perhaps Paul and Peter wrote to each other after that. Paul had stayed with Peter during the council, so they’d had time to get to know each other well. Peter wrote in one of his surviving letters that Paul’s letters were confusing and easily distorted, but that Paul was wise. We can say with certainty that they had contact and knew each other’s movements. Peter went to Corinth after Paul had been there, again to encourage and support the young Jesus movement in the town, and Paul mentions this in 1 Corinthians. Paul also mentions, in the course of an argument with the Corinthians about whether leaders like Peter or Paul should be financially supported by the local church, that when Peter travelled, his wife was with him. Presumably by the time Peter was a travelling apostle-bishop (in the way we’d see a bishop – the word as used at the time applied to local leaders, more like our parish priests), their children were independent and so she was free to join and support him in his missionary work.

We don’t know how extensive Peter’s travels were. Our evidence for their lives comes from their letters and from Luke’s account in the book of Acts. Acts was almost certainly written as part of the defence case for Paul when he was tried in Rome. That is why so much of the work of the early apostles – Thomas, for example – isn’t there. It wasn’t relevant to Paul’s case, and Luke didn’t know Thomas. Luke was a travelling companion and fellow missionary with Paul in his later years, and shared a house with him in Rome. It is likely that Peter had come to Rome before Paul – he certainly wasn’t in Jerusalem during the dramatic days of Paul’s arrest, so he must have been visiting churches in Europe and probably heading in that direction. Jerusalem became a very unsafe place to be, and it is unlikely that Peter returned there.

In the house that Paul and Luke shared in Rome – you can make out parts of the first century structure amongst the later additions and adaptations – there is a 16^th century sculpture representing Paul and Peter in conversation, and Luke writing down their words.

We can date Paul’s house arrest in Rome to the early 60’s AD, so the traditional images that show Paul and Peter as old men don’t give us a really accurate image to imagine them from. Even at this point in their lives Paul would have been in his mid to late fifties, Peter maybe a little older. The likelihood is that Paul didn’t live beyond his 60^th birthday, Peter probably not much older than that. So not old men. And don’t imagine Paul with long hair, despite images, including the sculpture I’ve mentioned, showing long hair. Paul despised long hair on men and said so very firmly. So imagine for yourself the scene that the sculptor wanted you to depict. There, in that little Roman house, two men in their late fifties, remembering, telling each other things that filled in the gaps, considering together the words of Jesus, and all they had learned over their years of leadership. And Luke, listening, writing it down, making notes that informed his gospel and his book about the early church.

Peter settled in Rome, and lived the life of the apostle-bishop supporting the Jesus movement. After his death in the persecutions that followed the great fire of Rome, Peter was spoken of by the people of Rome as the first apostle-bishop of their experience, and the father of their church. They hid and guarded his remains and years later, when Christianity was the state religion, they retrieved then and built the first basilica of St Peter around them.

Paul didn’t settle. Rome was only ever a stopping off point on the way to a new mission ground in Spain. We can only speculate that he got to Spain – but the people of Tarragosa insist that he did. It seems he also revisited some old haunts, before finally returning to Rome, perhaps to support the church in the days of persecution. And Paul got caught up in the persecution too. His remains, like Peter’s, were hidden and guarded by Christians who recognised him as a great apostle-evangelist, and who reflected on the words he had written to the Roman church in almost his last surviving letter. Those remains, like Peter’s, were moved and a great basilica built in his honour.

And so these two men, whose lives were entwined by their devotion to serving Jesus and their different but connected callings, are still remembered together in Rome, and on their shared patronal day, and in churches like this one. Here we hold together the apostle-bishop, with his doubts, and his avoidance of conflict, and his encouraging, loving ways, and the apostle-evangelist, confident, loving and argument, wise but sometimes very confusing. Some like to suggest that Peter started the church in Rome and Paul the church everywhere else. We’d do well to listen to Paul’s wisdom on this: Jesus started the church everywhere. Jesus is the foundation and the cornerstone. The church that Jesus starred wouldn’t have got going and established, in Jerusalem, Corinth, Rome or anywhere else, without both Peter and Paul, and the others that Jesus called to the task. Both men, called so differently, so different in character and background, and different in their calling and task in the church, both men were essential to the beginning of the Jesus movement. They weren’t the only essential men, and we do well to remember that others, like James, or Thomas, or Barnabus, or Philip, did equally important work in those early days.

And every one of them would remind us that some things don’t change: while the church has a collection of leaders – among them bishops and evangelists – it remains as it has always been, the church of Jesus. Founded on Jesus, supported by Jesus, following Jesus. Seeking the will of Jesus and trying to do it. Loving Jesus. Living lives devoted to serving the Son of the one true God. We are a Jesus movement, not a Peter or a Paul movement. If we remember that, and live it out today, then Peter and Paul have well fulfilled their calling.

Partying when the parents are away

1/8 July                    1 Corinthians 4-5

                                                           

Mum and Dad are having an evening out. They’ve left a friend to sit in the house with their teenage children, but the young people have the sitter twisted around their little fingers – those sitters just don’t have the rights or authority over their teenage charges that Mum or Dad would have. And this is too good an opportunity to miss. Mum and Dad are out – we’re having a party!

Many a tv soap, sitcom, coming of age movie, teen novel or even advert has included this scenario. The results vary. Yellow Pages got the French polisher out in time to ensure that Mum and Dad never found out. More often, the parents walk in on the party, with predictable results.

Paul, writing to the Corinthians, is the Dad in the scenario. He’s had a call – perhaps from the outraged next door neighbours. Your kids have ignored the sitters and now they are having a very wild party. Do something about it!

First, Paul has to remind the Corinthians that he is the dad, and that he does have authority. They have been treating him, and other people who’ve been in leadership in the town, with disdain. They’ve treated him as if he were a babysitter – and in the Roman period a babysitter was likely to be a household slave, and so of less importance in the household than the children he is trying to care for. But I’m not the sitter, said Paul. I’m the father – the head of the household – that’s my place as an apostle.

The Corinthians imagined that they could judge the worth of Paul as an apostle, as if he were a slave in the household. Imagine if a modern Anglican congregation decides that they won’t have the bishop to visit, because they don’t like the way he tells stories in his sermons. That would of course be inappropriate. The bishop has authority in his or her diocese, and has the right to come and talk to a congregation, whether or not they like his storytelling style. The same was true for Paul, in his opinion, and he felt that in suggesting otherwise, the Corinthians were getting puffed up – a phrase he uses a lot. It’s often translated as arrogant in the translation we hear in church.

And the worst of it was, that while they were behaving in this puffed up way towards Paul, the Corinthians were behaving pretty badly themselves. Yes, Paul admitted, he had faults. Everyone has faults, and they will, quite rightly, be judged by God. There must be judgement, our faults must be corrected, and the day we each have to face that will be very uncomfortable indeed. But it seemed that the Corinthians were pointing out the speck in Paul’s eye while ignoring the plank in their own. And it was a very big plank.

Now, Paul had written to the Corinthians about this particular plank on a previous occasion. He had outlined the problem: there was a particular case of sexual immorality which the church was not only ignoring, but even seemed to be boasting of their tolerance and liberality in permitting it. In this case, the immorality involved both adultery and incest – a man living with his stepmother. Paul had explained that such sin could not be tolerated by Christians, and that they could not mix with people who sinned in this way, but his letter had not been fully understood. Rejecting his authority to speak on the matter, the Corinthians had objected that if they could not mix with sinners, then the only way to avoid them would be either to die or to move to another planet. The world is full of immorality, it’s unavoidable. You can almost hear the teenager from the movie saying ‘duh’ or see her rolling her eyes in despair at the daftness of what is being asked of her.

So Paul corrected their misunderstanding. Yes, the world is full of sin, and we don’t have the option of moving to another world. But that’s not what I meant, said Paul. What I meant is that people call themselves Christians, and yet who commit sin in this way, knowingly, are no longer welcome in the church. They should be thrown out. I am telling you, he said, to meet together and to throw out the man who is living with his stepmother, and because I believe that is what you should do, I’ll be with you in spirit when you do it.

That’s tough. It means doing something really uncomfortable. Something that will, without question be very unpopular with some people. But it is necessary. Paul expected the Corinthians to act on his instruction – and not only with regard to the man living with his stepmother and other sexually immoral people, but to anyone who thought they could be a part of the church and yet still be a thief, or live greedily at the expense of others, or continue to worship idols, or be deliberately rude and belittling of other Christians, or be a drunkard. Any such people must be cast out.

Now, let’s be clear. Paul was not advocating intolerance. We are all sinners and we are all relying on Jesus for the grace that saves us from our sin. Paul’s whole theology is a theology of the cross, of the astonishing gift of forgiveness that comes to us as a gift from Jesus. Because of that gift of forgiveness which saves us, given to us by the Son of God, we call Jesus ‘Lord’. Jesus, the Son of God, is our King, our Lord – and that isn’t just a title or a phrase without further implication. If we call Jesus Lord, then we are saying that we submit to Jesus’ authority, that from this point onwards we live according to Jesus’ principles. These principles are found in scripture and are the basis for all our behaviour and choices. Thus a thief who calls Jesus Lord is forgiven, and receives eternal life with Jesus. But that new Christian must cease to be a thief, because robbery is unacceptable for a follower of Jesus – God’s commandments forbid it. If the man who was a thief really means it when he calls Jesus Lord, he will never steal again. Indeed he will try to make good the hurt he caused in his previous life of thieving. But what if the thief reasons differently, and thinks that because God forgives us, that he can continue to steal? As soon as he takes something that does not belong to him, he is as good as announcing that he does not believe Jesus to be Lord after all. Because he is not obeying Jesus’ principles, he is not living according to God’s law of love, rather he is choosing a human way of selfishness. Every time he steals, Jesus is not his Lord. To steal and then to join other Christians in worship is hypocrisy, a lie, and it must be challenged. The Christian community must say to him: change – really change this time – or go.

Over the years, much of the Christian church has become as soft and confused on this subject as the Corinthians were. The distinction between a tolerant, forgiving welcome for all, and the obligation to live according to God’s holy law for those who have accepted and proclaimed Jesus as Lord, has become blurred. We tell ourselves that tolerance and love are the same thing. But sometimes tolerance isn’t love, its lazy. Sometimes tolerance is a way of avoiding the unpleasantness of saying hard things, or of being seen to act in a way that the community around us would not like. And occasionally tolerance is code for not wanting to challenge the community leader, if she or he is the person who is failing to live out the life of one who lives what they proclaim: Jesus is Lord.

The results of that failure can be horrendous. In Corinth, a horrible sinful situation was being tolerated in a way that reflected very badly on the whole Christian community. At the present time we can see it in the investigations into sexual abuse in the church. In living memory, leaders in the church have committed acts, or turned a blind eye to others committing acts, that deny Jesus’ lordship. Jesus was clear about sex having a place only in a monogamous marriage. He was also clear that to hurt a child was the worst of sins – better to have a millstone tied around your neck and be dropped into the sea than to hurt a child. And yet abuse has happened in church schools and camps, in church choirs and confirmation classes, in convents and private homes. It has been perpetrated by choirmasters, nuns, children’s leaders, churchwardens, vicars, even bishops. And others have seen it happening and said and done nothing. It is shameful. It is sinful. It stains every one of us. And every time it happened, every time a leader let it by without passing, the act denied that Jesus is Lord. Anyone who has been involved in such behaviour and does not repent, utterly and unchangeably, does not have a place in the community of people whose bottom line is ‘Jesus is Lord’.

As a whole church, we are in the same shamefaced position that the Corinthians were in over that poorly judged relationship. Just as the people of Corinth could be justified in thinking that Christianity was immoral and not to be trusted, so the people of our world today might feel the same. As they read the papers or listen to the news and hear the stories coming out from the inquiry into sexual abuse in institutions in this country, including many shameful stories from our churches, they can justifiably wonder just what it means to be a Christian. And it means this: we reject such appalling sin. And any sinner who does not repent can not be a part of the church.

St Paul made it very clear to the Corinthians that he expected them to get into line on this. Sort it out he said, before I get there, because I want to arrive smiling, not threatening you with a big stick. Imagine again, if you like, our teenage party throwers. Someone told Dad and he has phoned them. I’m on my way home now, says Dad. You’ve got time to sort it out – in fact, I’m sending uncle Tim to give you a hand. Clean up! I want to find the house clean and tidy and empty of party guests when I get back. If I do, all will be well, but if I find it’s still a mess and that you’re not sorry, well, you’ll be in trouble.

Perhaps, when we look at ourselves and the way we live today, we need to imagine that phone call happening now. Imagine a hotline from heaven, and Paul calling us, and saying, I’m coming, and I really want to be pleased when I get there… make sure I am. However hard the sorting out is. As a church that means getting to grips with issues like sexual abuse and really, properly changing and challenging each other. What does it mean for each of us, who are listening today? Can we all say ‘Jesus is Lord’ and not undermine that declaration by our actions when we’re not in church? And if not, can we find the courage to sort ourselves out, and to remove all that falls short of our declaration? Would Paul be able to greet us with a smile, or will he need his big stick?

A divided church

17/24 June                    1 Corinthians 3

World cup fever has broken out again, and people choose their sides. The real fans get even more picky in their support, naming players and coaches that they follow. It happens in all sports and indeed in every sphere of life. Children at school consider which teacher is the one they like best. Music fans express preferences for particular bands or composers. You’ll even find vicars discussing their preferred theologians. We take sides and follow personalities, styles or opinions that appeal to us. Sometimes the sides we take lead us into disagreement and even into conflict with others. The way that others with differing views express themselves can feel oppressive or threatening. I recall attending a rugby match not long ago and sitting among a group of fans of the opposing team. Normally that is a pleasure at rugby matches, but this group of away fans were vocally aggressive towards my team and to the fans supporting my team. Which meant me. In the end the experience was so unpleasant that I left the game early, feeling pretty ruffled and very disappointed, because that just wasn’t how watching rugby is supposed to be.

That ruffled and disappointed feeling is magnified considerably when a lack of unity and an outbreak of bad behaviour towards others turns up in a church. The church of Christ is the body of Christ. Jesus has only one body, so if parts of the body start turning on each other, that’s a sign of very poor health. Jesus prayed for his body, his followers, to be united - to be one – in the same way that Jesus and the Father are one. That is a profound, deep, inseparable unity. We are called as Christians to pray for that depth of unity, and it follows that we are to work for unity amongst ourselves. To work to ensure that the body of Christ is a healthy body, with all the parts working together for the good of the whole.

So when Paul heard that the people in the church in Corinth were arguing among themselves, he was deeply disappointed. And to make matters worse, the church members were setting up Paul, his old friend Peter and his new friend Apollos as if they were the cause of the divisions. When the Corinthians argued and created party groups under the notional leadership of Paul, Peter and Apollos, none of the three of them were even in town. So as Paul wrote to them, he wanted the Corinthians to stop taking the names of the apostles in vain and to look properly at their own behaviour. And as he wrote, he effectively said to them: you are behaving childishly. You are blaming Paul, Apollos, Peter and even Jesus for your divisions. Grow up and consider who is really important!

Paul gave examples. He compared the Corinthians to plants in a garden. Neither he nor Apollos was responsible for their growth. They were a pair of gardeners working for God, who makes the plants grow. Then he compares the Corinthians to a building site -specifically, given the materials he describes, the Temple in Jerusalem. Paul is a worker on the site, the Corinthians are the building, the Temple. But Jesus is the foundation, and like the Temple in Jerusalem, God – in the form of the Holy Spirit – lives in the Temple. The Temple is God’s home, and so it is holy. And yet the same people who are the home of God, the Temple or church of God, spoil it by arguing and behaving selfishly, perhaps forgetting that God is there. And so the Temple is spoiled, and that spoiling is self-inflicted.

The church in Corinth consisted of a number of groups meeting in people’s homes who occasionally came together as a larger group for special occasions. Even on those occasions they were still meeting in a private home, possibly that of Titius Justus next to the synagogue, as they did when Paul was in town. One of the house churches met at Gaius’s house. Another met at Phoebe’s in Cenchrae. There were probably a couple of others too. When they all came together there were probably no more than forty or fifty people -no more than could fit into a largish house. So Paul was writing to a group of people that was a bit smaller than the Living Brook Benefice’s total of regular worshippers.

There’s not as much difference between that first century church and this twenty-first century church as you might imagine. Living Brook too is full of human beings who forget that each of us is a temple of God. We too forget that since we are the body of Christ we should work hard for unity instead of nursing the disagreements we have with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We too damage the church, and make it ugly and unattractive to others, by allowing our opinions to become more important than the shared vision. We too forget that the foundation is Jesus,that the growth comes from Jesus. We too get caught up in who we follow:

 ‘I’m in the pro-pews party’.

‘I’m in the anti-pews party’.      

‘I’m in the ‘fill our church with children’ party’.

‘I’m in the ‘church is not a place for children’ party’.

‘I’m in the ‘every service should be a communion led by the vicar’ party’.

‘I’m in the ‘only lay-led services lead to growth’ party’.

Worst of all, even those who proclaim that they follow me, or some other member of the clergy. My heart sinks.

We live in the same danger as the Corinthians church. We risk putting our own ideas and assumptions ahead of God’s wisdom. We risk putting our disagreements with others in our churches ahead of what God wants to do, and then we get in God’s way. And all too often we disguise our behaviour by labelling it as following some respected person, whether it’s the Rector or some other leader.

There is only one person we should be following, now as then, and that is Jesus. And if following Jesus feels like a foolish option compared to the way that you would do it, well so be it. If what is best for the health of Jesus’s body isn’t the way you wanted to go, and doesn’t feel like the option you preferred, that’s the way that God’s wisdom goes. Sometimes it looks foolish compared to the world’s opinions. Sometimes it looks foolish compared to our own opinions.

If I took a long hard look at my own prospects from a worldly wisdom point of view – what I earn, where I have to live, the moves I have had to make, dragging my poor family with me – well, I could have done much better for myself and for them in a number of the other career paths I could have tried. Perhaps the same is true for you. And whoever thought being crucified was a good idea? Seriously? But the truth is, that particular crucifixion was the best thing that ever happened for us. And that for me and for my family no other option was acceptable or joyful, however much more I might have earned, or however much more time off I might have had. Our foolishness in the eyes of the world is God’s wisdom and it is very, very good.

So why do we allow our foolishness, our take on things, to get in the way of God’s wisdom within the church so often? Why do we allow our disagreements to colour the way that our churches feel, and to prevent the churches from flourishing? The Corinthian churches, by their behaviour, broke Paul’s heart. He loved them so much, and wanted to see them united in love, not broken by pointless squabbles. I want the same for Living Brook. A church that puts unity ahead of our own ideas. A church that puts love for one another ahead of self. A church that sets aside ego, and pride, and worldly self-esteem, in order to listen to Jesus. To follow Jesus. To seek the will of Jesus. To do the will of Jesus, together.

So let’s keep our taking of sides to the team we follow in the world cup, or the tennis player we want to win Wimbledon – and keep it out of the church.