A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, January 27, 2008
Matthew 4:12-23
Matthew tells us that Jesus has just learned of the imprisonment of John the Baptist by Herod, and he withdrew to Galilee, to familiar territory among the people and places that were home. He saw Peter and Andrew hauling in their nets. He said simply “Come, follow me and I will teach you to fish for people.” They dropped their nets and followed. A few moments later Jesus spoke to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were mending their nets. They, too, left everything.
He didn’t say “follow me and I’ll teach you to engage in deep theological debates,” or “drop your nets and come to a marathon meeting of a church board.” He said “follow me and I will teach you to catch people; I will teach you to use your gifts and skills and experience to gather followers.” And in doing so, you’ll find a deeper meaning in your life than you have every imagined.
St. Augustine once remarked that fisherman Peter didn’t really lay aside his nets, but just exchanged them. Jesus took the everyday skills of these four and gave them new direction. They didn’t so much abandon their nets as replace them with tools fit for their new call – they now were fishing for people. This is the way the call of God usually comes – while we’re doing the daily tasks that fall to us.
Every once in a while we meet someone who is called from the cash register or classroom to the pulpit or mission field. But more often the call is to stay at the cash register or in the classroom and to fish from there!
Jesus reached into their hearts and reaches out to our restlessness. You know the feeling. You may be doing something that earns a decent income, doesn’t hurt anyone, but feels sort of empty and meaningless in the great sweep of things. We wonder aloud “who really cares?” and “what does it matter….”
That restlessness can be an opening to the Spirit. Lives can be changed. Said Jesus, “you don’t have to throw away your nets. Just exchange them; use your gifts in my service.” And they followed! We don’t know what all they left behind: families, homes, hobbies. Surely they left familiar places and close friends. But they picked up and followed.
But Jesus calls disciples to something deeper than just joining the gang and traipsing along. William Barclay, the Scottish biblical commentator and popular author, two generations ago, wrote:
It’s possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one’s weight. Once, someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, “So and so tells me that he was one of your students.” The teacher answered devastatingly, “He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students.” There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student. It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in the Church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.
What do you think? Would you agree that one of the great challenges for the church is that we want to be disciples of Jesus in addition to being disciples of Wall Street and Main Street and the Mall?
Jesus wants us to be CHANGED, transformed by our encounter with him. That’s why he walked the way to the cross – to show that the world has no power over kingdom people. Like Jesus, the Church is to gather and equip God’s people to choose and to follow.
All that we do is focused around this common task. If we fail in that we fall short in everything else. We can have the finest building, the biggest budget, the most members, the best programs, but if we’re not leading seekers to say “yes” to Christ we’re not the Church God has called us to be.
Obviously, it’s easy to come to church, but it’s hard to be the church. I think that’s always been true. It doesn’t demand a lot to walk in the door, sit in the pew, pay attention to the order of worship, drop a donation in the plate and then head back out the door.
The tough stuff is under the surface – it’s the shaping worship, rehearsing music, teaching Sunday school, hosting coffee hour, working in a Team meeting, wrestling a budget, confessing our mistakes, inviting a stranger, confronting our blind spots, forgiving someone who’s stepped on our toes; and really measuring our lives by the life and teachings of Jesus – this is the hard stuff.
But I can tell you, I really, truly, honestly don’t think there’s anything more important or more soul-satisfying than being the Church and following the savior. I knew what I was getting into when I headed off to seminary 40 years ago. I knew that parish life would be both the most frustrating and the best experience I could imagine. We don’t learn from our successes. We don’t grow from our victories. We push our roots deeper when we’re tested the most. As I share some thoughts this morning on the State of Our Church, I want first to say that it’s not always easy but it’s always good! I hope you feel the same.
Elsa and I are very clear that our role in the church is as pastors, teachers and coaches. But we don’t decide what’s best for you or tell you what to do. We do our best to preach the message of God’s love and Christ’s call. Sometimes it seems you’ve called us here to talk – but we can do our best when we listen twice as much as we talk.
In that spirit I sent an email invitation to about fifty of you who are church leaders – Council, Teams, Committees, and Staff. I asked you about the state of our church. I got more than 30 responses with lots of comments. The common themes are obvious. We’re on the same page, and that’s very good news.
My first question was this: What do you consider our greatest strength/resource/asset as we look forward? Answer: Our people – gathered together here in caring community. Folks in the pews, lay leaders, staff, pastors – God’s people gathered here together in common cause. We share joys and sorrows, we pay attention to each other, we engage in exciting and far-reaching ministries.
Diane Butler Bass, in her recent book Christianity for the Rest of Us, writes that the common factor in thriving churches is that the people are not afraid to ask and answer the question “what is God calling us to be, here and now?” I think we’re clear that God is not calling us to be another historic and traditional church that fights against change and new ways to express the faith. We know that we’re Open and Affirming, that we’re United Church of Christ. We know that we’re serious when we say “no matter who you are and where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
God calls us to know and live the old, old story and to make it real and relevant in the dilemmas of our lives. I rarely hear “we’ve always done it this way.” I hear energetic discussions about faith and faithfulness; I hear new ideas about how we can reach out and welcome in; I hear you asking important questions about how to follow Jesus. I see new friends coming and joining us on this journey, and I see (with real appreciation) the particular roll Elsa plays in drawing young adults to our congregation.
We have faith, spirit, tradition, openness, quality in worship, broad programs, and good people – all are essential resources for today and tomorrow.
My second email question was this: What do you consider our greatest challenge as we look forward? Again, there were lots of response but they clustered in three groups: 1) the challenge of the culture that affects us; 2) the challenge of welcoming and incorporating new members, while keeping traditional and progressive folks living together in harmony; and 3) the challenge of apathy or complacency.
First, we all know we’re living in an age of major transition out there in the real world. The place of churches in society, the complexity of the world’s issues, the heightened demands on our time, and the chronic sense of being over-committed – these are all realities that are affecting churches all across the country, especially churches like ours. Fewer of us were raised in any church tradition; fewer of us are inclined to be involved in a church as an adult. And, honestly, a growing percentage of today’s young adults has simply given up on organized religion as narrow, judgmental and irrelevant. These are cultural issues that we can’t change. And they affect what’s happening inside our church. So…
Second, we’re a church where blend traditional and contemporary, conservative and progressive folks together… usually in harmony! I remarked several weeks ago, off the cuff, that the very element of worship that makes you cringe may be what keeps someone else here – the hymn, the quote, the applause, or the silence, for example. We’re aware that folks who want a traditional church with the old, old story told in the old, old way, have lots of choices. Those who want the old story to engage these new and challenging realities have few choices. It’s a challenge for us all to listen to and love each other, and to forgive the times that feel our own desires have been ignored.
Third, look around most Sundays and imagine who among us will be here in ten years. A lot of us won’t, for a host of reasons. Who will be in the pews, in the pulpit, teaching in the classrooms, working at the HollyDaze Bazaar? That remains to be seen. We face the very real challenge of keeping members engaged and energized. When you see fewer singers raising their voices in the choir, or when you hear appeals in worship for Sunday school teachers, what do you think? Do you wonder why they’re not stepping forward?
As one email said our greatest challenge is complacency: “Complacency can be devastating. In my relative experience, our church is quite well funded, well grounded in the Bible and teaching of Christ, well attended, well loved, well cared for, well respected in the community and in the UCC family. This is exciting and refreshing for me personally and I for one find myself tempted to just sit back and enjoy it…” [instead of stepping forward].
Over the past 20 years our numbers have declined in nearly a straight line: book membership, worship attendance, and Sunday school. Small losses each year, adding up. There are all sorts of reasons – deaths, relocation, upset or disappointment. But I think loss of interest heads the list. We’ve been able to postpone the really hard choices so far… choices about staff, outreach, programs, and various ministries. But that can’t go on indefinitely.
It’s also true that we’ve seen almost continuous growth in our giving to the church. In ten years our giving has increased 60%. Even so, our Council is bringing a proposed budget that shows a deficit of over $25,000. If all goes well it will be smaller at year’s end. We’re accustomed to lean budgets. There’s really no fat in the proposed 2008 budget. Over the past eight years we’ve posted four years with a deficit and four with a surplus, but the net for all eight years has been a surplus of more than $30,000. We have the money in the bank to cover a proposed deficit this year, and it’s hard to ask all of us to be more generous when there’s money in the bank.
Other than a planned deficit there are three ways to balance the budget – eliminate one or more ministries we’ve been accustomed to; ask each of us to give more generously; or find sources of income beyond member giving. Maybe it’s time for monthly bean suppahs!
We also have some important questions – for example, is it true, as it appears, that while we’re all giving more total dollars to our church, that a smaller percentage is going to our annual budget, and a larger percentage is going to other ministries? Keeping the heat and lights on in this building aren’t exactly exciting mission priorities but if we don’t do that we can’t reach out.
So there’s work for all of us to do. The Council can’t bring you a budget with this kind of gap next year. We’re in a better place than most congregations. But we’re not in the place we want to be.
As I share this perspective with you I’m recalling the old joke about the pilot getting on the intercom and saying “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the co-pilot? I have bad news and I have good news. The bad new is that the pilot has had a heart attack, the landing gear is jammed, the left engine has fallen off and there’s not an airport within reach. But there’s good news… we’re right on schedule!”
It’s easy to point to indicators in our church that aren’t what we want them to be. We know there’s work to be done, and we’re ready to do it… aren’t we? We have bad news, sure. But the Good news overwhelms it.
If we were to paraphrase that same joke from a contemporary perspective we might say: the bad news is our membership is down, our attendance is lower, and we have a deficit budget. But the good news is that God is in the midst of it all. The Good News is that the Spirit is alive and speaking. The Good News is that Jesus is transforming lives right here, right now!
The business of the church is to help each of us have an authentic, life-changing encounter with Jesus. He called to the fishers, Peter, James and John, to leave their nets and to follow.
What have you been hauling around, that you need to leave behind in order to respond to his invitation?