How Can the Church Behave Better?

Here is today's Lenten meditation from The Rev. Dr. Michael Battle's series:

"Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one." --John 17: 7-11

It is interesting to reflect upon what we mean by the church today. Some people believe the church is something you go to, others believe it is a building, still others imagine a denomination,
while others conclude that it is something that happens on Sunday morning.

I think though, a better definition for us to work toward in being the church is this: the community of all persons whose spirituality reflects their experience of God's reign which, in turn, they make present in the world. In other words, the church reflects God's experience in the world. I like it. The church is God's experience. Becoming God's experience in the world will continually entail a process of becoming more and more like God . . . of behaving more and
more like God. How do we know how God behaves? God has made it easier on us to answer this question because God gave us Jesus. We practice better behavior as the church when we follow Jesus' way, truth and life.

Let us pray,
Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his
resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.