A Lamp Shining in a Dark Place
John Wilkinson Third
Presbyterian Church February 6, 2005
2 Peter 1:16-21
Given the fact that that we experienced a State of the Union
address this past Wednesday, and that we will hold our annual
congregational meeting in a few moments, a similar report may
seem in order this morning. I read that the president’s
speech was interrupted something like 60 times in 50 minutes;
I will be satisfied with something less than that.
Like everything we do here, this morning’s conversation
should begin with prayer, and so it will. Every Wednesday morning,
in the choir loft of the sanctuary, 15-20 of us join for morning
prayer, led by one of the staff members. The congregation on
a Wednesday morning is comprised of staff members, church members
who volunteer at the church and other members, some of whom
are present on any particular day because their names will be
remembered in prayer.
For the past several years, we have been sending out a prayer
letter, dividing the congregation in 52 segments, and reading
a particular segment in alphabetical order each Wednesday. It
is a powerful thing, to be sure, to read those names and to
hear those names being read.
In the letter that we send out, we solicit prayer requests,
and we receive 3 or 4 every week, along with our ongoing concerns
for people in the hospital or facing other pastoral needs. Sometime
the requests are for a loved one. Someone has cancer, or is
facing an addiction, or has just moved to a nursing facility.
Sometimes they celebrate the birth of a baby or a new job. Sometimes
they are simple expressions of gratitude, or hope, or concern
for the world. All of you are invited on any Wednesday –
don’t worry about the alphabet!
In the context of Wednesday morning prayer, we read the daily
entry from the Presbyterian Mission Yearbook, a wonderful resource
whose daily entries focus either on a particular presbytery
or a region of the world’s Presbyterian mission activity.
Whenever we read the entry for a particular presbytery, we hear
how many churches a presbytery has, and how many members. And
almost without fail, the figure suggests that the average Presbyterian
congregation has about 200 members.
Is that a surprise to you? One can do a lot with numbers, so
don’t put too much weight in this. But at the same time,
it’s perhaps useful to remember the larger world of which
this congregation is a part. All of which got me to thinking
about numbers and trends and the like (aside from the Super
Bowl point spread – to which I say Patriots by 11!).
Did you know that the median age for a member of a Presbyterian
congregation is 55 years, and that the median age for a Presbyterian
minister is 51 years? That about half of our members describe
themselves as Republicans and a little more than a third as
Democrats, with the number a bit higher for ministers. 46% of
the members of Presbyterian congregations grew up Presbyterian,
while 63% of our ministers did. 69% of our congregations have
200 or fewer members.
Our largest presbytery is in Dallas; it used to be in Pittsburgh.
The largest concentration of Presbyterians is still in Pennsylvania
– having been born in Pennsylvania, I can agree that that’s
the state where Presbyterians are densest.
The average attendance at worship on Sunday morning is about
100 – the smaller the church, the larger of a percentage
of its members will be present on a Sunday morning, and vice
versa. We are 93% white, 3% African-American, 2% Asian and 1
% Hispanic.
There are a total of 21,000 Presbyterian ministers, 13,000
active and 8,000 retired. Of the 13,000 active ministers, 3900
or so are female.
We have 11,064 congregations and 2.4 million members, a net
loss of nearly 47,000 members from the year before. In the last
10 years, we have lost 336,000 members. Each year sees a net
loss of membership of approximately 25,000 – 40,000 people.
The number of Presbyterians peaked in 1960 at 4.1 million. In
2003, there were 2.3 million. By 2010 membership will have decreased
to almost half its 1960 total.
I have spent a good deal of time wrestling with that last set
of realities. I have read volume upon volume and article upon
article about what is typically called the Presbyterian decline.
And let me say clearly that my concern about decline is less
a statistical one than a spiritual one. Faithfulness can never
be quantified, and our savior himself taught us that wherever
2 or 3 are gathered, there he is in the midst of us.
People attribute a variety of reasons for the decline. Conservatives
posit that a 30-year pattern of liberal theology and activism
is the cause; liberals make the reverse argument, though never
as strenuously. It’s never that clear, of course. When
Rabbi Kotok asked me publicly a week ago whether we were becoming
more liberal or more conservative, I answered “yes,”
and truthfully!
The social scientists note that where we have been in the past
– center cities, first-ring suburbs, larger small towns,
there simply aren’t as many people in those places as
there used to be. They also report that we aren’t having
babies the way that we used to.
Is there blame to be placed? Perhaps. Is there work to be done?
Absolutely. But my hope for the work has very little to do with
affixing blame, or spending too much time on a statistical analysis
of the decline.
For some reason, the numbers of this congregation are running
counter to all this. The annual report that we will consider
later this morning says that we are some 40 members larger than
a year ago. That’s hardly a boom, but it’s worth
acknowledging. 50 new members, 12 confirmands, 27 baptisms.
Again, the point is not about numbers, but about connections
and gifts and call and community.
If any kind of renewal is to continue to happen – whether
it be at Third Church, or in the 73 churches of our presbytery,
the Presbytery of Genesee Valley, our in our denomination, it
will happen not because of a quest for more people, contrary
to popular literature, but because of a quest for faithfulness
and community and justice and spiritual growth.
That it to say, to quote a favorite movie, if we build it,
they may not come, but if we build it, we will have built something
useful for God’s people that reflects God’s love.
And the longer that I am in this church business, the more
impatient I am becoming, I suppose. The people of Nike may be
right – “just do it.” It may be a good business
principle. It may be an even better church principle, the impulse
to try things because they are interesting and creative. If
they do not work, the effort will have been worth it, and perhaps
one life will have been touched.
It is Transfiguration Sunday. I was talking to a friend this
week, and we were bemoaning that the Transfiguration of Jesus
comes around every year, with seeming liturgical equivalence
to Christmas or Easter. It is a strange episode to understand,
let alone craft an annual sermon around, so I will not. Perhaps
I will again next year.
Except to note the trio of icons gathered on the mountain –
Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet and Jesus, in whom
both the law and prophecy reside.
A week from this Wednesday, a group of youth will visit us
from Temple B’rith Kodesh to learn a bit more about Christianity
and the Presbyterian form of it. I will begin with the number
“one,” of course – one God. But I will follow
with the number “three,” how we know and experience
God as three in one, the Trinity. Something like that is going
on in the Transfiguration.
Something like that goes on in our spirits, in our psyches.
Something about the number three. Perhaps it is a marketing
principle, I do not know. If those of you in advertising or
marketing or psychology could tell me, I would be grateful.
Our minds organize things in clusters of three. Our culture
does: “I came, I saw, I conquered” or thesis, antitheses,
synthesis or red, white and blue or Tinkers to Evers to Chance
or Larry, Curly and Moe.
It seems that our theology does the same thing. In our hymns:
“One Lord, one faith, one birth” and “All
glory, laud and honor to thee redeemer king” and “Now
thank we all our God with heart and hand and voices.”
In our ecclesiology, what we think about the church...the old
Presbyterian battle cry of sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola
fide (scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone) or a newer
version: peace, unity, purity.
It is surely scriptural: “What does the Lord require
of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God”
or “faith, hope and love, these three…”
One seminary I know has new banners adorning its campus: “Heal,
relate, inspire.” I like that. Another seminary affirms
a perspective that is “ecumenical, cross-cultural and
urban,” while another seeks to train leaders that are
“pastoral, prophetic and learned.” We could learn
from all of those trios around here.
In fact, I do not think it would take a sophisticated organizational
chart to articulate our vision here at Third Church. We have
adopted a three-word tagline, “seeking the light,”
and it seems to me that all we do should do just that, seek
the light.
But more than that, and these are three loosely defined buckets,
all that we do – for ourselves and for the world –
should worship and nurture and serve.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul
and mind, Deuteronomy tells us, and Jesus – clearly no
marketer – added “and your neighbor as yourself.”
Each of these – worship, nurture, serve – is as
clear and as nuanced as is God’s call to us. And each
is connected to the others, nearly as inextricably as we are
connected to one another and to all the world.
I would say that each of us in our own spiritual journeys is
called to be about these tasks in some way: worshipping, nurturing,
serving, and that the mission of this congregation is to support
ways to make those things happen.
These are not new, of course. Worship, when we are together
and when we are apart, that seeks to connect us with God’s
transcendence and immanence. Nurture that cares for our souls
and minds, that builds connections with fellow travelers, and
that reaches out when one of is hurting in any way. And service
that serves by spending the night here or making a meal or tutoring
a child or writing a letter or reading a book, seeking to make
peace through hands-on work and by advocating for a better way.
It is Transfiguration Sunday, and though we are mystified by
that event on a hill, we cannot help but look at Jesus and wonder
what he would have us do, what kind of church he would want
us to be.
The New Testament book called 2 Peter was written after the
first generation of apostles. It is filled with arguments about
the nature of scripture and false teachings. Hearkening back
to the teaching of the prophets, 2 Peter compares the word of
scripture to a “lamp shining in a dark place.”
And though there is no clever way to organize this image into
three parts (unless perhaps a 3-way light bulb!), perhaps it
may still compel us as an image of the church. The church…“a
lamp shining in a dark place,” that will illumine and
provide warmth, that will shine in the dark corners of life,
that will provide comfort as needed and direction for the journey.
A lamp that attracts those who are seeking, those unsure of
their direction. A lamp that provides bright illumination to
those who are a bit too sure. A lamp whose light and warmth
are never, at the end of the day, statistically quantifiable,
and whose benefit is often quiet and modest.
But we know what it does, and what it can do, and what we would
be without it, and who we are within it. Thanks be to God for
the church, thanks be to our creator, redeemer and sustainer,
through Christ Jesus, our light and life. Amen.
