Sermon:
Does Jesus Want a Church?
According
to the sign out on our front lawn, this church has been centred on Christ for
over 200 years.
Leaving
aside the question of what that particular phraseology might mean to people
outside the church, and whether it means anything good to them – which might be
a whole other sermon, and without intending at all to be facetious in saying it
this way, I think Jesus would probably like that we have been – centred on
Christ for over 200 years.
Because
when we read of Jesus in the Gospels, we see him right from the start gathering
people around him to follow in the way of the Christ, and grow into it
themselves. Karl Barth more than once
remarked that the Gospels and all the New Testament, in fact, really are not
about Jesus, but about Jesus and his disciples together as the body of Christ.
Jesus
never saw himself as redeeming the world and living out God’s good purpose all
by himself; it was, by its very definition, a community affair. Teaching, healing, feeding, raising to new
life were things that he shared and drew others into, and gifts that he also
drew out of others. Even the cross –
although it’s something he had to undergo alone, as we all do at the end, was
not something he saw as his vocation alone.
Always Jesus imagined and taught the cross as something we all pick up
and embrace in our own time and way – as we learn it from him, as we make him
and his way the heart-centre of our life, for 200 years and counting.
So, I
mean it when I say that Jesus is glad we are here as a church centred on him
and his way for the sake of the world we live in, in our time.
And I
hope you paid attention to that sentence, because I wrote it quite deliberately
in the order I did.
The
first part, where it begins: Jesus is glad …
The
last part, where it ends up, the point of it all: …for the sake of the world we
live in, in our time.
And
the middle part, the medium and the means by which the beginning and the end
are brought together: …we are here as a church centred on him and his way …
Sometimes
we forget that we are meant to be in the middle – to be the mediator, the
medium, the means of something greater than ourselves, carrying something meant
for others beyond ourselves. Sometimes
we fall into the temptation of thinking that the church is really it, what it’s
all about, and as long as the church is here and we are part of it and we are
doing our bit to keep it going, everything is right with us and the world.
And
when we do this – when we forget that we one of God’s means, and not God’s end,
we fall prey to two sins, two slippery-slope patterns of unfaithfulness.
One is
pride when things are going well, when we seem, and feel successful.
Think
back to the 1950’s when Canada was “Christian.”
The church was full, Sunday school was bulging, and anyone who wanted to
be doing – and wanted to be seen to be doing the right thing was in worship,
filling a pew on Sunday morning, and was also willing to serve in some other
way – on a committee, as a Sunday school teacher, raising funds, singing in the
choir. Being a good church member and
supporter was synonymous with being a good Christian, and the well-being of the
church was the measure of our Christian faith and commitment – as though the church as we knew
it then was the be-all and end-all of God’s good will and purpose for the
world.
The
other sin – the opposite slippery-slope of unfaithfulness we find ourselves on,
when times are not so good and we are not as successful at being the church as
we knew it, is fear and anxiety.
It
starts with nostalgia – when Sunday school shrinks or even disappears, worship
attendance isn’t quite so regularly high, and it’s harder to find committee
members and helpers, we look back with a kind of grief on the good old days,
and soon the grief becomes full-blown fear and anxiety.
We’ve
known it here at times, and the United Church of Canada as a whole went through
this stage as well. Over the past few
decades our national church has fretted about decreased givings to the M and S
Fund, which is really our only way of supporting the national church. Decreasing membership has been seen as a
problem, closing congregations and selling church buildings, treated as a
crisis. The church is no longer the way
we have known it, and we’ve worried about the future of the country and the
fate of Christianity.
It
seems we’re getting past that now. Not
past the decreased givings to M and S, not past the declining membership, not
even past the closing or merging of some congregations and the selling of
assets. But past the fear and
anxiety. Because maybe we’re recovering
our sense of what Christianity is really about, and what it is beyond ourselves
that we trust and see and celebrate.
In the
midst of this spiritual awakening of our time – our movement perhaps from church-ianity
towards a more clear Christ-ianity, there are a few things about our church
here and the way we like to go about things that I think stand us in good
stead.
One is
the way in which this church does not push “membership” very hard. This struck me as odd when I first came here,
that a number of the real leaders of the church have never really “taken out
membership” here and don’t have their names in the book, and that when new
people come they aren’t really pushed to become “official members.” There’s a down side to this, of course, if it
means we don’t really invite commitment to, and engagement to the mission here. But it does seem good that the focus is on each
one finding the level of commitment and identification that makes sense to
them, and anyone who is looking for a safe spiritual home being welcomed here
in whatever way makes sense for them right now in their life. Because church, after all, is not the be-all
and end-all; it is the means of creating connections between God and the world
beyond itself.
A
second thing is the lack of anxiety about attendance. Yes, some Sundays we wish there could be more
here. We all look forward to good,
robust fellowship. We also wish more
could benefit from, and add to what we have here. But at the same time, we understand that
Sunday attendance is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that people are not here at
different times for all kinds of good reasons.
So we don’t go asking “why weren’t you here?” And when people are able to be here again, we
don’t greet them with “where on earth were you?” It’s more just a simple, “Hi! Good to see you. How are you?”
And as
for what they may be missing when they’re not here? Instead of saying, “Sorry! If you missed it,
you missed it” we try to find ways to reach out to where people are. Sermons are posted on-line on my worship blog
so people can read them if they want.
The Sunday school worship bulletins are emailed out every week to every
family on our list, so even if the children can’t be here they get at least
some exposure to the lesson for the week.
And we’re always looking for ways to use our website and other means to
reach out and help the flock – even scattered sometimes, to still be a flock.
And a
third thing – a third thing about this church’s way of being that stands us in
good stead for the way the world and God are now, is that sometimes the best
things this church has done have had nothing to do with the church itself, and
everything to do with the community around us.
Just
two quick examples. One of course is the
Winona Men’s Club. It was mostly men of
this church and one or two other churches in the community that first founded
the Men’s Club. It grew out of Christian
conviction about serving the well-being of the community. And what was created was not a church group,
but a specifically non-religious community group that survives to this day,
serving the well-being of the community and all its members in ways that no
other group, including no church, does in quite the same way. I think Jesus would be glad.
And
lest we just stay in the past, just one simple example of the same thing today
is the community Hallowe’en Party and Parade down in the lakeshore
community. Again -- a number of the key
organizers are members of this church, taking their Christian commitment to the
community outside the walls of the church, on the Sunday of the parade even
taking people out of the pews and children out of Sunday school, but ultimately
serving the well-being of the community in a way that Jesus probably approves
of.
So
what does it mean for us to be a church “centred on Christ for over 200
years”?
What
does it mean to gather around him, follow in his way, and grow into it
ourselves?
Are
there ways we still sometimes give in to an idolatry of church as we have known
it?
And
what will it take for Jesus
to continue to be glad that
we are here as a church centred on him and his
way for
the sake of the world we live in, in our time?
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