Sermons

Horses on Parade VII

John Wilkinson                            Third Presbyterian Church
September 9, 2007                   Luke 14:25-33

Today is Rally Day, a sort of ecclesiastical homecoming. We are back, all of us together. It is time to get things started, from choir rehearsals to Sunday school to committee meetings to committee meetings to…committee meetings. It seems to me that not much moss grows on this church ever, particularly this past summer, but now we kick it into a higher gear. It is good to see everyone, beach combers, cottage dwellers, children and youth, the choir.

But before things really get started – two services, Sunday school, and did I mention committee meetings – it is time for a party. You would have found one on the front lawn right after this service. But there will be no singing in the rain! In the Celebration Center, you will discover a wonderful meal prepared by Will Crain and members of the Congregational Fellowship Committee; if you are so inclined to make a modest contribution to help defray expenses, that would be great. Before heading downstairs, linger here a bit to find tons of information on learning and fellowship and service activities. Thanks to Sandy Gianniny and the Evangelism and Membership Committee for their organization.

If you are a visitor, an especially warm welcome. We are grateful that you are here today – we hope you will come again and often.

Allow me to introduce one name and face that you will see around here the next several months. Cathy Foerster will be serving as an intern in the presbytery’s Commissioned Lay Pastor program, about which she, or I, could tell you a great deal, but not right now. She will be observing, participating, leading, in a variety of programs in the next half-year; greet her today when you see her. Cathy, a warm welcome to you.

We will tread more lightly than we have on the Horses on Parade metaphor this Rally Day – but it will be a constant presence nonetheless. You will remember, perhaps, the Sunday six years ago when our horse, Horse Chess-nut, adorned the front lawn of the church. I said then and I will continue to say how much I loved it – both for its whimsy and creativity and also for the fact that it announced to the city and beyond that we were a church that cared as much about what happened beyond our four walls as inside of them; that we were a public church, seeking faithful engagement with all the world. Horse Chess-nut reminded us of that, and reminds us still.

That was September 9, 2001, six years ago. We remember as well, surely with less whimsy but with no less a sense of calling to live in the world, the events of two days later. We are called to remember, and yet we are not always sure how to remember. We are called to make a difference, and yet we are not always sure what difference we can make in such a broken and fearful world.

And so here, in this place, and from this place, we are called to work for peace. And we are called to pray: to pray for those whose lives were lost six years ago, and those who continue to grieve and mourn; to pray for world leaders, for those who occupy seats at tables of power and whose decisions affect us all; to pray for our enemies, as Jesus instructed us.

And we are called to remember. Let us pause for a moment of silence…Let us pray. Compassionate God, whose loving care extends to all the world, we remember this day your children of many nations and many faiths whose lives were cut short by the fierce flames of anger and hatred. Console those who continue to suffer and grieve, and give them comfort and hope as they look to the future. Out of what we have endured, give us the grace to examine our relationships with those who perceive us as the enemy, and show our leaders the way to use our power to serve the good of all for the healing of the nations. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord who, in reconciling love, was lifted up from the earth that he might draw all things to himself.1 As we gather this morning, in this moment, silence any voice in us but your own, and transform us by your holy word. Amen.

***
These are some for the most demanding, and difficult, words that Jesus ever spoke to his followers, or to us. The crowds are growing, and one can almost sense Jesus thinking through the implications of what it means to follow him.

But one can almost sense as well that Jesus is not concerned about the things that would make for a popular or successful or growing church, the things I read about in book after book and article after article and website after website. If he were, would he say that to be part of my community, you need to hate your father and mother, spouse and children? Would he say that to be part of my community, you must take up your cross – and we all know what that means?

These are difficult words, and demanding ones, and they seek to call into being a kind of community different than we might imagine. The crowd that gathers gathers with growing enthusiasm. They seem to have little idea about what taking up the cross might actually mean. They think they are joining a parade, a boisterous parade, as Fred Craddock writes, or perhaps a march, a triumphant march. They have little idea they are joining a funeral procession. So Jesus tells them that.

It is very sobering. Craddock writes: “What is demanded of disciples is that in the network of many loyalties in which all of us live, the claim of Christ and the gospel not only takes precedence but, in fact, redefines the others.” 2

And then two metaphors about discipleship using the imagery of building – one about calculating costs and one about finishing what you started. What will it cost us to be part of this community, and what does it mean to make a full and costly and urgent commitment to the kind of discipleship that Jesus lays out for us?

I think about the church a lot, in general. I think about this congregation a lot – mostly very fondly and with lots of hope, but also with a sense of responsibility for the tremendous heritage we have and the bountiful resources we’ve been given, that we use them as fully as we possibly can to make a difference in the lives of our children, youth, adults, in the lives of those who come here day after day seeking hope of one kind or another, in the life of this city and beyond. Jesus’ two building metaphors ring true to me.

You have heard a bit and you will hear much more in the months to come that we are deep in the process of planning for a significant capital campaign for this congregation, the first in several decades. So when Jesus talks about sitting down and estimating the cost before building and not starting construction without knowing that you can finish it, I am prone to want to pay attention! I don’t think he is really talking about where we locate a new elevator or how we arrange new appliances in the kitchen. But he is asking challenging questions about the nature of the community of disciples. And he is asking whether amid all of the plans we are making if we are asking the deeper questions about stewardship, the stewardship of every resource we have been given, money perhaps being the least important of all of them.

The building metaphor rings true, whether it is in examining the programmatic building blocks of who we are called to be – worship and education, service and fellowship, or examining the theological building blocks of who we are called to be – justice and hope, mercy and love.

Rally Day is a day to examine all of those things, to look at our blueprint just a little bit, to make sure our foundation is stable, that we are thinking about the things we need to be thinking about.

Beyond this congregation, what we usually read about the church falls into several broad categories – how the mainline is declining, how the evangelical mega-churches are growing, how religion influences – for good or ill but mostly ill – American politics, and how we are always fighting with one another. All are true. But none of this seems to be what is interesting Jesus – our architect, by the way, our foundation.

That is to say: this building matters, and it matters a great deal, but only in the sense that it serves as a sanctuary for the hurting, a way station for the weary, a launching pad for ministry in the world. Numbers matter, and they matter a great deal, but only in the sense that they reflect vitality and hospitality. Programs matter, and they matter a great deal, the subject of all those committee meetings, but only as they nurture our children in their baptism promises, feed our hungry hearts, call us all into a deeper and broader discipleship.

The church is evolving before our eyes. It is a much more interesting story than growth or decline. There is a whole new literature that I am discovering about the “missional” church, the “emergent” church. It challenges what are sometimes called the seven last words of the church: “we’ve never (or always) done it that way before.” But even so, it keeps worship and service at the heart of all that the church does, and that seems about right, foundational, even.

And it acknowledges the profound need for human community, even as it suggests that the way that organized religion, the institutional church – two horribly descriptive terms that we should retire immediately – has thought about these matters needs a dramatic revolution.

Generations younger than my generation, and there are more and more of those, are asking the same questions that have always been asked – who am I, what am I to do with my life, how can I find meaning? But they are asking them in non-traditional ways. They are turning to the Internet more and more, and as much as we protest the Internet’s lack of real human connection, it is there nonetheless. And when they turn to the church, we need creative ways, imaginative ways, to be ready. It means that the old values, the old foundational elements, are still in play. But it also means that we simply must discover new delivery systems. Worship. Education. Service. Community and connection.

What might that church look like, then? What might this church look like?

* It is a holy, catholic church, as we will declare momentarily in the creed composed as a baptism affirmation. Holy not in the sense that we are holy, but blessed by God, activated by the ministry of Jesus, provoked by the agitation of the Spirit, catholic in the lower case “c” sense of universal and welcoming and more expansive than any of us could ever imagine.

* It is, as the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams suggests, a “community of those who have been immersed in Jesus’ life, overwhelmed by it, have disappeared under the surface of Christ’s love and reappeared as different people.” And because of that, we are also “the community of those who have been invited to eat with Jesus.” And because we have been immersed and because we have been fed, we are a community that “works steadily to release the gifts of others.”3

* It is a community that is, as Walter Brueggemann describes it, “God’s agent of gathering exiles.” We are all exiles. Our ministry is about “gathering, about embrace, about welcoming home ‘all sorts of and conditions’ of people. Home,” Brueggemann writes, “is a place for the mother tongue, of basic soul food, of old stories told and treasured, of being at ease, known by name, belonging without qualifying.” 4 It is why, I will add, that it is important that we gather for worship, communal worship, to be with one another. It is why we wear name tags, why we take hikes together along Lake Ontario, why we gather for hot dogs in a hot and humid church basement. The simple act of gathering is counter-cultural, and all the more so when we insist there to be no barriers in this gathering.

Peter Selby writes that “a Church founded on unmerited and unconstrained mercy may not at times be the Church we would like; but it is the only Church we have been given.”5 And so it helps, every once in awhile, to dust off the blueprints, to inspect our foundation, to kick the tires. We sing about it: “the church’s one foundation;” “the apple of God’s eye;” a community that “lifts high the cross” and understands, if vaguely and incompletely and all too humanly what lifting the cross might mean.

Several weeks ago, in the context of discussing worship, we chatted briefly about hymns, and hymn-selection on a Sunday morning. In his absence, I blamed Mr. DuBois for the ones that don’t quite work on any given Sunday. It seemed only fair. There were many more we could have chosen today. Here is one we did not:

The church of Christ in every age,/beset by change but Spirit-led,/must claim and test its heritage/ and keep on rising from the dead.

We have no mission but to serve/in full obedience to our Lord:/to care for all, without reserve,/and spread his liberating word.

Then let the servant church arise,/a caring church that longs to be/a partner in Christ's sacrifice,/and clothed in Christ's humanity.6

Happy Rally Day. May we be as a horse on parade. And may God always be praised, in every age, in the name of its one foundation. Amen.