SERMON NOTES FOR 1.16.11
Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
I was at a conference this week called Gathering of Leaders, for Episcopal priests engaged in transformational ministries like church planting. One of the other participants was the rector of Trinity Church, Asbury Park, NJ, David Stout. He became the rector there 7 years ago, and since then, the church has increased average Sunday attendance from 45 to 280. But if you’re like me, the first thing you want to ask the rector of Trinity Asbury Park is not, how did you lead this remarkable renaissance – but have you ever seen Bruce Springsteen? Because of course Asbury Park’s one claim to fame, as far as I know, is that it is the boyhood home of arguably the biggest rock star of last 35 years.
He laughed indulgently when I asked him this question, as if he had never heard the question before (although I heard at least two other people asking the same question at the conference), and told me this story: Trinity Church has a soup kitchen to feed the many homeless people in their area. Two years ago the Health Dept. was ready to shut them down because they needed a $3,000 commercial sink. They were interviewed on local radio about the problem because they just didn’t have the money and didn’t know what they were going to do. Two days later a check for $15,000 arrived in the mail from guess who. Apparently Bruce Springsteen still listens to Asbury Park local radio.
But even more striking: Bruce heard the story of what this congregation was doing to transform lives and decided to be a part of it, help make it possible. What a blessing to be able to help God’s mission in this way. Money truly empowers mission and is one of the things that makes it possible. We don’t all have the power to write $15,000 checks, though some do. But we all have the power to be part of God’s mission in some significant way. When you see Christ’s power at work in the world, it’s hard not to want to be a part of it – because Christ’s power is absolutely life-changing.
All three scriptures today are about how God calls us to be partners in God’s life-changing ministry of transforming the world. In our reading from Isaiah, the prophet tells us about his call to become a prophet, an agent of God’s life-changing power. Before he was born, he says, God formed him to be a prophet – the prophet genes are in his DNA. Remember who a prophet is – not a fortune-teller, but someone who sees where God is working and calls people to join in that transforming work. A prophet is someone like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this weekend, who gave his life for his ministry of prophecy (as public servants too often do – as we saw in Tucson last week). The ministry of the prophet is a lonely and dangerous one, as both MLK and Isaiah discover. But there is comfort: we are not all called to be prophets, though at some point we are all required in some way to listen to prophets, hard as it may be. But, the Bible is clear, we are all called to some kind of ministry. We are all agents of God’s transformation, called to use the gifts and talents God created us with, in some kind of ministry of God’s justice & love. Because following Christ means being part of God’s work in the world, an agent of God’s transformation.
And how are we to react when given the impossible task of transforming the world It won’t necessarily be easy, says Paul in the letter to Corinthians today, but it won’t be impossible either. Anything that God calls us to do is possible, says, Paul, because God has already given our church communities every gift we need to answer God’s call. One person is given the gift of healing, one the gift of prayer, another the gift of leadership, another the gift of teaching, etc. One individual doesn’t have all the gifts, but a church community together has all the gifts they need to accomplish whatever God calls them to do. Which is one reason we are called to be part of church communities, instead of worshiping on the golf course – all of us are called to take part in the community’s call to transform the world around us. In the words of retired Bishop Claude Payne of Texas, we are a community of miraculous expectation – if Christ is present, miracles occur routinely, and each of us has our part to play in making miracles happen. Whatever it is that we are called to do by the circumstances of our lives and the situations we find ourselves in, whatever God calls our communities to become, God has given us the strength and the means to do it already.
If we are a community of miraculous expectation, the challenge our gospel lesson gives us today shouldn’t be too difficult – the challenge of evangelism – sharing the good news of Christ with others. In our gospel lesson, John the Baptizer points to Jesus, and two of his disciples follow Jesus. Jesus turns and asks them: what are you looking for? A profound question each of us could ask ourselves – what are we looking for? What brings us to seek out this Jesus, to be one of his followers? What kind of personal or world transformation are we asking for? Maybe Jesus’ question is a warning: do you truly want to see and feel the power of God at work in you? Because if not, Jesus isn’t the person to follow.
Perhaps it’s too big a question, so they ask him a smaller question – where are you staying? And he invites them to come and see. We don’t know what they saw, but we know that it was powerful enough and amazing enough that they couldn’t keep it to themselves. The next day Andrew brings his brother Simon, Peter or Cephas. And John’s gospel goes on to tell us of ever-widening circles of invitation and sight, as more people are invited to see Jesus and stay with him. The power of God at work is so transformative that people can’t keep it a secret – once people see it in action, they have to share it. Being a community of miraculous expectation means that we routinely expect Christ to transform the lives of not only ourselves, but others too.
I read an article this week by Anglican bishop Bill Atwood, who tells of meeting an old retired priest in the 70s, who told him this story. His Bishop hired him in the late 30s to plant a church in a small town in the US. The priest knew exactly how to go about it, and knew he couldn’t do it alone. So he called for help: he hired – get this – an engineer, an architect and a builder. He bought tickets for them all to go to England, toured the English countryside until they found the perfect English village church, created blueprints from the church, bought native stone in England to be shipped to the US, and came back and built that church – an authentic reproduction of an English village church. As a church planter, I said – what??? I read that story with astonishment. You want to plant a church, so you hire an architect? That’s the old model of doing church – the model where you expect everyone to be Christian, so if you come to town and open an Episcopal franchise, you might attract people away from the Presbyterian franchise, the same way they might choose McDonald’s over Burger King.
But things aren’t like that in our world any more. It was clear to me from the beginning of planting this church that a church is not a building; to plant a church, you don’t build a building, you build a community. The building will come in time – I have confidence in that. But people don’t come to church to see a building, except perhaps out of mild aesthetic appreciation – if it’s really a church, then people come to church to see the authentic power of Christ at work – and when they see Christ working and transforming lives, there is no power that will keep them away.
I see an amazing power of Christ at work here at Nativity – a power that enables us to build houses with Habitat for Humanity; to give blood, to donate blankets for Navajo youth to give to the homeless, to provide Christmas presents for children and young people, to provide food, education and medical care for barrio children, etc. I see the power of Christ at work in our children and youth, who are growing together as a community of young people who love God and love each other, experiencing amazing growth and transformation to equip them for life. I see the power of work among our ministries of healing, prayer, meals for the sick, as we live out the power of Christ in our care for each other. I see the power of Christ at work in our ministries of worship, which provide our own touchstone to God who strengthens each one of us for ministry. And I see the power of Christ at work in people in our congregation who go out from here to live out that power in their everyday lives, as teachers, healers, bankers, businesspeople, parents, friends, neighbors.
The transformation Christ asks for is the revolutionary power of love that spreads through every place that Christians gather, live or work. So Christ asks each one of us to pray and think about how we are called to live out that power of love, in church and in the rest of our lives. And Christ gives each one of us a call to evangelism, a word that simply means, telling the good news. It means saying, I’ve found something that means a lot to me, and I invite you to come see for yourself.
A book I’m reading on evangelism (Unbinding the Gospel, by Martha Grace Reece) says most mainline Protestant churches aren’t “how” churches but “why” churches. A “how” church wants to know what steps to follow to do evangelism. A “why” church wants to know why to do evangelism. A “why” church is where someone says, You do evangelism, I’m going to go alphabetize the Sunday school closet. Episcopal churches have been a “why” church for too long – which is why we plant churches by building buildings rather than building communities. A church founded like that is at risk of becoming a nice club to belong to instead of a community of miraculous expectation. No wonder many Episcopal churches are in decline.
But we are part of a community of miraculous expectation. Which is why I think we are called to invite others, why we bother to do evangelism: the reason is, Christ has made a life-transforming difference in my life, I have felt the power of God working in me, Christ is transforming the lives of other people around me and other people I don’t even know. Life transformation means simply inviting others to come and see Jesus. When the power of Christ is at work, Christ will do the rest. So we say: Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God in the highest.
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