I can’t even imagine. One minute you’re doing what folks in Galilee, that remote outpost of the equally remote province at the edge of the empire, you’re doing what you do, which is just barely scraping by, and the next you’re following a man so charismatic that he is able to pull you away from everything you know with crazy promises. I can show you life in full. God’s just and caring realm is here. I will make you a fisher of people. And they did it, at least some did. Sure, some listened to him preach and then went back to serving the Romans, struggling to eat. But a small few made a decision to lead a radical itinerant lifestyle of preaching and healing. And that was exactly where things were when, suddenly, the charismatic man was gone, executed, and yet present, and then gone again, and he had given you no real clue how you were supposed to live in the world after he was gone. As much as they believed, and they did believe, the followers of Jesus must have been simply terrified in those first years. Jesus called them out of normal life, asked them to form a radical new community, and then, Holy Spirit or not, he left them in a world that didn’t work quite the way he asked them to live.
Jesus gave his followers an impossible task. Abandon everything, your jobs, your family, everything, and follow me. Imagine if that had worked. If those first followers had made disciples of all nations, everyone dropping all relations and obligations to live into God’s realm, who would harvest the grain, bake the bread, build the houses? It’s not that Jesus was speaking symbolically, he clearly wasn’t. Just ask Simon Peter, Matthew, Mary Magdalene. Get up meant get up, follow meant follow, and let the dead bury the dead meant exactly that. So with Jesus gone they were faced with figuring out how to live in a way that was faithful to the Jesus Way while at the same time managing to literally live. Paul referred to it as being “in the world but not of the world,†and we have been trying to figure it out ever since.
Maybe it was a little easier in the first years to be “in but not of,†to keep a distance from what was seen as a corrupting the popular culture, the ancient equivalent of a jersey Shore and Real Housewives world. Life was chaotic and those alternatives were not very appealing. The Jesus community formed small groups, and as the movement spread it became more diverse. They kept their distance from sin and temptation, but crossed other boundaries. The rich sat at table with the poor, slaves and masters broke bread together, and those who had followed various Hebrew sects were joined by former pagans who knew nothing of Yahweh before they encountered Christ. But there was a turning point, and it didn’t work out so well.
First there was Constantine’s famous edict of toleration. It didn’t mean completely smooth sailing for the growing Christian movement, there would be other challenges, but finally, in 380 of the common era, Christianity was named the state religion of the Roman Empire, the mighty power controlling portions of Europe, Asia and Africa. And we’ve been in trouble ever since.
You see, Jesus was anti-establishment. He was the original hippy! He opposed the establishment, the hierarchy, of his own culture. Pharisees and law clerks, the self-righteous and mighty, all received heaping doses of scorn. And while he was pastoral with members of the occupation army from Rome, he denounced that empire as well, and it did what all great empires do when faced with an alternative message. It used brutality, and finally murder, to preserve its power. Needless to say, it was a bit of a challenge for followers of this most anti-establishment of the Hebrew prophets, this God-with-us, to figure out how to establish structure within their own communities, and it was pretty much a train wreck when they became the establishment itself. As Jesus might have said many centuries later to his followers, “Dude, you’ve become The Man!†And once Rome collapsed and the Christian hierarchy filled the vacuum, becoming an earthly ruler, well… Paul’s “in but not of†was long forgotten.
For centuries the church has modeled itself on structures in the culture around it, usually with disastrous results. When empires and monarchs were the norm, the church became a kingdom, its monarch bejeweled an wearing a crown. When the decentralized nation-state developed, the break-away Protestant church organized itself in decentralized ways. When corporations and civic organizations rose to prominence after the Second World War, the church became both corporation and civic club. And that is where we are stuck today. Of course, the current model was adopted in an entirely different cultural context than the one we live in today. Folks stayed in the same community for years, stayed in the same job at the same corporation to which they were loyal, and that loyalty was rewarded with a gold watch and a pension. Those days are gone. Corporations are part of the vast criminal enterprise that is our economy, betraying their retirees, looting pension funds, all while enriching their executives and the speculators who drain life out of our economy.
The coat and tie are the uniform of the corporate age, the armor of the warriors of greed, and you will rarely see me wear them, because this is not a corporation or a government or any other form of human institution, this is God’s church. I am not a fan of clericalism, the privilege historically associated with ministers. I truly believe in the priesthood of all believers, allow you as congregants to speak the words of institution, no longer sit in a chair fancier than the lay person who celebrates with me, but I think we give away too much that is symbolic in our culture with our hostility to clergy dress, and so I wear the collar as a sign that my business is God’s business, that I am not an executive or town council member, as a sign that the way we do business here is not necessarily how they do business out there.
If we are wrong to model ourselves on the corporate, the civic organizations, Lions Club and Masons, offer no better alternative. They are just as stuck and unwilling to adapt as the church, are just about dead, a land of grey heads in an endless cycle of committee meetings and fundraisers, all the while bemoaning the absence of young people.
Many churches that have tried to adapt have by and large done so by modeling themselves on new cultural powers, the mall and the retail chain. They have turned Christianity into a self-centered enterprise, a consumer product that is all about you, the consumer. Be a Christian and get rich. Be a Christian and know your own, personal Jesus. Do whatever it takes to bring them in the door, manipulate their emotions, pick off members from weak and declining churches, this is the new way, and it is just as corrupting as the secular alternatives. It is no more “in but not of†than a monarch-pope surrounded by gold, wearing satin and Prada.
Funny enough, the answer has been in front of us all along. Right there in the New Testament, in the Acts of the Apostles and the authentic letters of Paul, the ones before that made-up nonsense in Timothy. And what we see is a community that was exactly “in but not of†the world, that was at the edges and that was doing the one thing the church is supposed to be doing, transforming lives through the love of Christ. They innovated and adapted, and most important of all, they built covenantal relations. The churches today that are thriving, that have turned from the endless cycle of decline and despair and have become sustainable witnesses to God’s realm have figured this out.
And so I offer you a description of the new church, one that is not only consistent with progressive postmodern Protestant belief, but is scriptural and successful. Let me say that again. The model of church that is succeeding in these chaotic times, the model of church that looks nothing like the church of thirty years ago, is also far more scriptural.
The church is a group of believers that have made a decision to follow the Way of Jesus. It has nothing to do with being baptized as an infant or growing up in a church or whether your parents are Christians and so you falsely claim the title of Christian, to follow the Way of Christ means to make a decision for Christ. And while Jesus doesn’t give us the clearest instructions on how we are to live in this world, he makes one thing perfectly clear: the only model Jesus gives us is a communal model. To be a Christian is to be in relationship with other Christians, and so the church is a series of overlapping relationships. To be a Christian is to be a member of a church, there is no such thing as a “spiritual but not religious†Christian. Yet more, these relationships are not ordinary every day relationships. Scripture tells us that we become one in Christ in the church, and so we give these heightened God-bearing relationships a special name. We call this special form of relationship a covenant, modeled after the relationship we believe the founders of our faith tradition had with the divine mystery we call God. And so we are in covenant, as Abraham, David and Mary were in covenant.
And so this is the first mark of the church, that it is formed by individuals who have decided to follow the Way of Jesus and have covenanted to do so together and so entered into deep and holy relations with others along the Way. There will always be folks who are at the edges of the community, but it is our job to get to know them, to draw them always deeper into the circle of love, the circle of caring, and the circle of daring, that is our covenant. And if you find yourself out there on the edge, disconnected and okay with a Sunday-only faith, know this: the deeper you move into covenant, the greater will be your reward.
The second mark of the church is this: that its one and true goal is the mission assigned to it by God: to deepen faith through spiritual practice, through worship, through study of scripture; to make disciples by sharing the Good News of salvation through Christ boldly, and to bring those who make a decision for Christ into covenant circles; and to build God’s just and caring realm by attending to vulnerable members of the covenant community while also declaring God’s justice in the world through prophetic witness and direct action, by answering Jesus’ call to feed, clothe, heal and house. Before these great scriptural missions, all else must fall. When any other priority usurps the rightful place of God’s mission, there is no longer a church. It is only in Christ that we exist as a church, only through God that we are redeemed, only through the Spirit that we witness in the world. It is not the mission of the church to preserve its building, as lovely as it may be, for plenty of churches have closed their doors with the building still intact. A friend and colleague posted pictures on Facebook recently as her church’s building was demolished. Nor is it anywhere in God’s mission to keep everyone happy all the time or to meet the demands of gossips and bullies, critics and saboteurs. It is a church when it is doing God’s mission, and when it is doing God’s mission, it will thrive. Churches have survived in deplorable conditions, enslaved and oppressed. In fact, history shows us that the church is always at its best when it is at odds with the aimlessness and sin that surrounds it!
The third mark of the church is this: that it is innovating and daring, a flexible network of believers who are in the world and so interacting with the world, the world of aimlessness and sin that is crying out for Jesus. It is a church in the world, Paul by boat and Paul by Roman road, the council with Peter and the Roman jail, it is moving, every day, making new connections, transforming. The true church is not static, never says thing like “that’s not how we do it here.†The true church says “let’s give it a try,†always just at the edge, daring to serve God, daring, daring, a network of holy acrobats with no net but Christ. The third mark of the true church is change.
Relationship, change, mission: marks of the church, marks of churches that are thriving, marks of churches that are providing people an answer in a culture so desperately in need of answers. My ministry has one purpose only. I am not the purveyor of the Jesus brand, the savior who will restore the church of 1970. I am the one you have called through the grace of God to help you become once again a thriving church, living into the future God dreams for you, and so I have worked tirelessly to help you deepen and renew relationships, beginning with your leadership team, and since I am you and you are me, since we are church together, I have opened the doors of my home and of my heart. I have called you to mission, using God’s will as the test for all we do. You will hear me ask again and again, you will begin to ask yourself, how does this action, how does this project, improve lives through the love of Christ. Numbers are nice, increased membership, a church that is financially resourced to do God’s mission, but God’s mission is the measure. Lives transformed is the true measure of our success. And to make all of this real, we must re-learn how to learn, how to adapt. And so I have been your teacher, not doing for you, but teaching you how to do.
This is God’s church, and it is an amazing place to be at an amazing time. Sayville Congregational United Church of Christ has a long and proud history, and it doesn’t have to end anytime soon. The saints who have gone before us, some of the saints who are still with us, have been bold. It is your time. Be bold. Be the church that God wants you to be, for God wants you to thrive. Not the building, beautiful as it may be, not the history, as much as we are grounded in it, but the dynamic covenant community of God’s mission people, an adaptive network of people on the Way of Jesus. Start changing lives, start now. If you have not done so, make a decision for Christ, and if you need to know more about what that means, what you have to risk to follow Jesus, come see me. We serve an Amazing God, we are God’s church. Amen.