Sermon for January 29, 2006
This was quite a week. (Extemporaneous comments
about the week at Earl Lectures) There were lectures and preaching,
sacred dance and art, and MUSIC! Wonderful music….all exploring
this year's Earl Lectures theme of "Gathering the Beloved
Community: Voices of Faith for the Public Square."
At one point on Thursday morning, after Dr. Delwin
Brown spoke of the streams of theological thought that had all led up
to what is now called "progressive Christianity," one of the students
came forward and posed a question. In essence, she asked, "Given
this is our history, what is the name and character of our current
paradigm? Where are we now?" We all laughed at Del's
answer: "I have no idea!"
I think what he was saying was that we can't see
clearly when we're in the midst of the moment--we can only see the
sharp outlines, the developing patterns, and the emergent realities as
we look back. That is not to say that our journey is not being
shaped by the visions and intentions we hold--those are critical to
creating a positive and effective future--but it's true, we often can't
see the forest for the trees. When we're in the midst of it all,
all wound up and intense and involved in the particularities of our
work and our lives, it's hard to offer an objective analysis--to see
the "big picture."
It is also hard to face changing paradigms if what
is being changed you don't want to change. I think that is the
deeper message I came away with--that the shape of the future of
Christianity will have to be different from the past I've known.
I grew up with traditional worship services, organ music and hymns from
the 19th and early 20th centuries--yet that is a model of "doing
church" that is growing more and more out of step with 21st century
culture. Like you, I'm often not sure how to "do church" for this
new age, but I think there are some signposts that guide our way.
The first signpost is "Look to the Past." We
have grown terribly lazy when it comes to really studying and
understanding Christianity--and I mean everything from church history,
to theology, to the words and ministry of Jesus. Too many people
are content with "sound-bite size" faith--quick slogans and easily
understandable ideas. What we need in this complex world is
a deep grounding in the complex ideas and issues upon which our faith
is based. Even though I work hard on my sermons, I KNOW you can't
get sufficient depth from a 20 minute sermon once a week. You're
going to have to work harder and with greater commitment to develop the
kind of educated faith that will carry you and the Christian church
into the future. If we don't develop that depth of understanding,
if we stay ignorant of the breadth and height and depth of thought and
spiritual experience of our forebears……we will have cut ourselves off
from the root of our faith and from enormous resources of nurturance
and guidance. If that happens….if we cut ourselves off…. I'm not
sure we'll HAVE much of a future.
Speaking of the guidance the past can offer to us,
Dr. Hubert Locke offered the second of the three Earl Lectures this
year, entitled: "America and the Theocratic Vision: Why
America is Not a Christian Nation (and, Pray God, Never Will Be).
Dr. Locke gave us a history lesson-- one that we all need to
hear. He took us back into the founding of our country, and the
Puritan vision of establishing this new nation based upon a
theocracy. He guided us through our own history because we did
not know it; and he lifted up for us the lessons to be learned
from it. It was a compelling experience, and one that reinforced
the truth of the old saying, "Those who do not know history are doomed
to repeat it." I won't go into his lecture in depth right now,
but I'll be glad to share my CD of his presentation if you'd like to
check with me later.
The second signpost instructs us to "Look to the
Present"--take a good, long look at where the church is today.
You may not remember this (it's church history after all), but Jesus
wasn't interested in establishing a church. He would be dismayed
to discover that the church built upon his ministry has become more
interested in serving coffee hour than in serving the poor; more
committed to adequate income than adequate education for every
child; more concerned about addressing maintenance issues than
addressing justice issues; more dedicated to a comfortable
retirement than comforting the afflicted.
Do you remember that picture that always seemed to
be in every church school classroom I was ever in, the one where Jesus
is knocking on a door, looking a bit sad and standing in this dreary
garden? That was supposed to represent Jesus standing at the door
to our hearts, knocking and hoping that we'd answer. One of the
hymns that went along with this was, "Come into my heart, sweet
Jesus…" Well, here's how I see it--Jesus is trying hard to get us
to COME OUT! One writer put it this way: When Jesus called
Simon and Andrew to 'follow me', it was an invitation that enticed them
out of their familiar paths, out of the fishing boat, and into a world
full of problems and possibilities. Today, we in the church speak
and act on little but that which relates to ourselves. We refuse
to learn the language of the culture. We are reluctant to trust
the Spirit already at work in the world. Western spirituality is
introspective, individualist and preoccupied with itself …If God
loved the world so much that God "came down to earth' to show the
enormity of that love, isn't it about time the church came down from
its own clouds and got 'down-to-earth' in its love and concern?"
(Henry Brinton, "Take a Hike", January 23, 1994)
In his ministry, Jesus confronted complacency,
challenged the status quo, spoke truth to power and accepted the
consequences of doing so. Along the way he also washed dirty
feet, fed hungry mouths, healed sick limbs, opened blind eyes, cleansed
leprous skin, and exorcised demonized bodies. And Jesus said,
"Follow me." Jesus called us to do the same, and promised that we
would do even greater things. Let's take a moment for some honest
evaluation: what greater things are we doing? What things
are we doing at all?
If we're just going along as though it is business
as usual, it's time we look around and see just how much has
changed. "The whole world is changing--its ways of doing
business, its ways of doing politics, its ways of doing
everything….except church." (Brinton) We need to stop acting like
we have a case of arrested development, or that we're going backwards
instead of forwards.
I ran across some interesting information
about evolution while I was working on my sermon about that a week
ago. Though I had heard it before, I had forgotten that many
scientists point out that "devolution" is also common. Barbara
Brown Taylor mentions this in her outstanding book, "The Luminous
Web: Essays on Science and Religion." Looking just at human
traits, over the eons we have lost or reduced various parts of the
human body--tails, body hair, the ability to synthesize vitamin C, the
size of our teeth and appendix, the thickness of our skulls, and the
bony ridges over our eyes. But the example of "devolution" that
sometimes reminds me of the church is the process that the common sea
squirt goes through. The sea squirt begins as a floating organism
out there unencumbered and free to respond to its environment.
That youthful sea squirt eventually decides to find just the right rock
to settle down upon. Given its new stability, it goes about
rooting itself firmly in place. Once securely established,
it figures it doesn't need to think much anymore--so it eats its own
brain! It enters a self-induced persistent vegetative
state. That is not a description of any church I want to
lead--but I have attended a few that made me wonder just how far down
that path they'd gone.
Our final signpost follows logically: "Look to
the future." How can we look to the future when we don't know
what it's going to look like? Jesus told us how to prepare:
"Love God. Love your neighbor." The heart of faith for now
and for the future must be love. We need to be ready to pick up
any who have fallen, we need to be eager to reach out to any who are
hurting, we need to not hesitate to move out of our comfort zones and
into the world. Forget the verbal battles over things we fear,
and start working on building up relationships across political and
theological barriers. Instead of condemning others for having
different opinions, we must find common areas of concern like poverty,
housing, literacy or disease and work together to make people's lives
better. Along the way, you'll find you develop such deep personal
relationships filled with compassion, that you'd never think of causing
others harm by throwing stumbling blocks in their way.
These three signposts are pointing us toward greater
health as a church, and greater effectiveness in Christian
ministry. Following them will result in a church that no longer
seeks to preserve itself, but one that is ready to give itself
away. In that giving, we'll discover the joy of the gospel, and
we'll receive the gifts of the Spirit which cannot come to us any other
way: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Ephesians 5:22)
Look to the past. Look to the present.
Look to the future. But first and foremost, look to Christ, who
says to us all, "Follow me."
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Bakersfield, CA 93309
Phone: 661-327-1609
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