Mother's day

We have a problem in God's holy church.

Okay, we have several problems in the church, but there's one I'm thinking about specifically today.  That problem is the problem, the difficulty of living in the world, but not being of it.

At no time is this more pronounced than at the moment of a worship service on Mother's day.  For mother's day, as you may know, is not only a secular observance (which it is), but is also always on a Sunday.  And in case you weren't paying attention, the readings that we have in our lectionary don't have much to do with Mothers.  In fact, this Sunday, the reading from Acts was all about the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.  Not really one of those coddly mother's day readings.

Now, that's the eternal struggle, isn't it?  The eternal struggle that says of us as Christian people that we are looking towards Christ, that he is the be all and end all, but then we find ourselves in a situation in which we look to the culture to tell us what is important.  What is important on Sunday?  Moms!  What's the pastor going to speak about on Sunday?  Well, either not moms, or moms if he changes the readings.  That's about it.

The Gospel reading isn't about moms though.  The Gospel reading was cryptic instead, and featured a line from Jesus that ought to make us at least a little bit uncomfortable.  For we as Christians are used to the idea of Jesus as the greatest man who has ever lived, the only person to ever be perfect, flawless, the only person who has ever fulfilled the law, who has ever consistently done what is right and good, who has ever done what is right 100% of the time.  That's Jesus for sure.  And the rest of us, well, we can't even compete with that, can we? None of the rest of us can hang with that kind of history.  The best we can do is to do what Paul does, which is to repent, because the good we want to do is what we avoid, and the evil that we want to avoid is what we end up doing!  And yet, Jesus says something in the Gospel reading from Sunday, where he says that those of us who believe in his name will do greater works than him.

Could this be true?  This seems like a bit of a problem for us, given that Jesus is top dog who saved all of creation through the redemptive power of his death on the cross.  He raised the dead, healed the sick, restored sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, he did all these things, was right all the time, and still told us that we were going to do greater works than him.  Possible how?

Well, what does greater mean?  For those of you who were wondering how this would be possible, think on this:  The greek word  μέγας is great, of course, but means literally 'Any extension in space and in all directions.'  Now that's interesting.  For it means that we are able to do a larger work than Jesus, not a better one.  What could this larger work be, in terms of size and scope?  You've noticed by now that there was a Greek word earlier in this paragraph, and it is there because the New Testament was written in Greek.  Why was it written in Greek if that wasn't the language of the speakers who were transcribing it?  Because it was the language of the intended audience.  There is a moment in the Gospels where some Greeks come to see Jesus, and as soon as they do, instead of holding court with them, Jesus begins his journey towards his death.  He is set to die at that point, and does not go and minister to the Greeks.  His mission is, as he has said, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and as soon as the opportunity arises to minister to those outside the house of Israel, outside of the community, the gentiles, he goes to his death.  Because Jesus knew something important that we have all assumed.

While he is still here on earth, the faith he is here to create cannot be a global one for all people.

We've all heard it, of course, which is that the stereotypical picture of Jesus that hangs in a great many churches doesn't look like what the real Jesus would have looked like.  No kidding.  

So that's not what the actual man in Israel would have looked like?  I had no idea.  Well, of course he wouldn't have looked like that (likely).  He also wouldn't have been speaking English.  Why do we have the Bible in English if Jesus wasn't speaking English? Because that's the language of the intended audience.  Why do we have Jesus looking white in this picture that hangs in North American churches? Because that's what the majority of parishoners look like.  And the average suburban church in North American doesn't have a monopoly on this, you know.  Consider the following images, all of Jesus.

 

 

  

How many of these pictures are authentic to what Jesus would have actually looked like?  Well, none, I would expect.  But that's sort of the point.  We obviously want the Bible to be in the languages of Africa, and Asia, and North America, and viewing Jesus as the same race as you, as the same culture as you, as your personal Lord and Savior, that's exactly what that is.  He wouldn't have been speaking English, but we translated his word so it means something to us.  He wouldn't have been a white guy, but in our art, to be our savior, he appears thus, the word made flesh has been translated for this audience, without losing the message.  That's a greater work.  Jesus, being middle eastern, being Jewish, was only ever going to reach the Hebrew people of the middle east, he said as much himself.  But if he dies, if he rises, and if he ascends, then the Gospel becomes not about the middle east, not about Israel and Palestine, not about light vs dark, but becomes about the Word of God made flesh, dwelling amongst us. 

This is a bigger issue than you think it is, and it's the greater work that Jesus would have us do, as people who believe in him. We are called to be great commission people, and we honestly don't really realize how big of a job that is.  For we, as great commission people, are called upon to do the work of evangelizing the world, and it frequently happens one person at a time.  Sure, you have moments like you do in the book of Acts, where three thousand came to faith in one day, but you also have moments like that in Timothy, where we hear about Timothy's faith that was passed on to him through his mother and grandmother.  And that second one is usually where the heavy lifting of evangelism actually takes place.  For it's one thing if you're trying to evangelize a world, a disbelieving world, to bring them into the fold of your faith, but it's quite another to bring those who are of your family into your faith.  And if you're one particular type of evangelist, then you evangelize harder than anyone else, because you have so much to lose.

If you're doing door-knocking evangelism, then the people that you meet, who are all presumably nice people, well, if you don't know them then if they reject your message then it doesn't mean that much to you. You tried, you failed, and you move on.  If those random strangers reject paradise, well, it just doesn't make that much of a difference to you.  But if you are a mother, and you are rabidly, dangerously protective of your child, if you gave birth to that child, and if you are living for that child, to give it life and health and strength, if that child's tiny hands and shell like ears dominate your thoughts, if you would pour your life into that child an hour at a time, if you want them to have everything you could never have, to live better than you do, then you'd do something really important for them.

You'd want them to live forever.

It's usually our mothers, our grandmothers who bring us to baptism in God's house, and more than that, it's our mothers and grandmothers who tend to do the hard work of evangelism, not just getting us 'done,' but also bringing us to the services at God's house, leading us in prayer in the home, praying with us and for us, insisting that we say grace, helping us to read the scriptures, encouraging us in confirmation, and so on.  In other words, fulfilling the words of the great commission, to not only baptize, but to teach us to obey everything Christ has commanded us.  And that's the greater work.  The kind that Christ, by definition could not do, because he cannot and never will be called into that vocation as a mother.  It's a greater work in the sense of it being a bigger, a larger work, not a better one.  Obviously, we cannot do better work than Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who saved the world, but we can be part of a larger work.  Instead of bringing the gospel to 12 men in Israel, we can take it to the ends of the earth.  Instead of bringing it to Jerusalem and then to all of Judea, we can bring it to everyone.  And instead of going door to door with the message of Christ for a moment, we can go into our own doors, and build the body of Christ in that place, person by person.  And that, if it goes to the end of the earth, is a greater work.

Church growth and the liturgy

Church growth is a nebulous topic, primarily because there are so many opinions on how it should be done.  For you see, when you get a group of people together to talk about church growth, most of them will end up talking about what it is that they need, what it is that they are looking for, and what it is that brought them to the church and sustains them in it.  And that's no surprise there, because one of the great and abiding mysteries of human nature is that we don't have any real idea how to think like someone else.  That's why ads directed at teenagers always seem so lame and stilted, that's why marketing towards the kids these days always seems as though it was written by a corporate hack, because it was. And 40 plus year old guys can't think like teenagers.  It doesn't work.

So when you get together a whole bunch of well meaning evangelists together to talk about church growth, how to get people in the doors, it all ends up collapsing pretty quickly because you have two things going on at the exact same time.

Thing 1 - You are getting information and ideas from people who are already in the church, and
Thing 2 - You're getting zero input from the people you're trying to reach, because they're as of yet unreached.  And you're not likely to get information from them until they're already in the door and have signed on.

So what to do? It's a really good, really important question that can't be overstated.  You can't get input from people unless they tell you, and the only feedback you'll ever get is that you guessed wrong.

Now, we who are in the church, who want to share the message of meaning, of dignity, of purpose and of salvation that Jesus Christ brings, it's complicated to bring that to people whom we don't know, and who aren't giving us any clues.  And in that case, how on earth are we supposed to figure out what they need? How on earth are we supposed to work out what it is that the kids of today are into, given that they're not telling us, and they just roll their eyes when we talk?

Well, fortunately enough, we have been given a great gift in the scriptures, something that we don't often talk about, and really only in this period following Easter, and that is the book of the Acts of the Apostles.  The book of Acts tells you what the disciples were doing, and what they were doing to attract people to faith in Christ worked.  The book of Acts, chapter two tells us that

All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, and to fellowship

and to sharing in meals (including the Lord's Supper) and to prayer.  

Okay, that seems a little simplistic, doesn't it? Meet together, share meals, share the Lord's Supper, dedicate yourselves to the apostles' teaching and figure it out from there.  Simple enough.  Prayer, worship together, fellowship.  That's too simple.  What about a ten step program for teens? What about a fifteen point evangelism program? What about any of these things?

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know much about "church growth," but what I do know is that the book of Acts tells us how the early church operated, and they seemed to grow okay.  And if they grew okay in those days, without easy communication, with the church being under fire and threatened with calamity at any second, if that's the case there, then who am I to disagree? 

It comes down to a tale of two things, classic vs modern.  Look at these two buildings for a second.

 

These are both buildings from the University of Regina, one classic, the other contemporary.  But the problem with contemporary, is that it is dated.  And it is dated instantly.  Because things that are contemporary are by nature of a time, then usually, as far as buildings go, by the time they're finished being built, they're out of style.  It's inescapable, which is why so many modern buildings end up looking far more out of date than far older buildings that may be surrounding them.  Not because those older buildings are more timely, quite the opposite.  They exist out of time, and external to pressures of change in fashion.  Again, take these two cars.

One is classic, the other is dated.  I'm not telling you which one is nicer, you're free to like either, obviously, but hopefully you see that one has transcended time, and the other has not.  By trying to capture the moment, once the moment is passed, the item becomes dated.  And that leads us back to evangelism, and back to Acts.  Back to how the disciples grew the church.  Through prayer, through dedicated to the teaching of the apostles, through the Lord's supper and worship.  Through fellowship.  Those are all key details that you need to consider, and you also need to consider one more. One more powerful one.  And like with most massively powerful things, this one may be lurking underused.

Consider the walk on the road to Emmaus.  Consider the stroll that those two disciples were making when they encountered their risen Lord.  He greeted them, they responded.  He asked them what was on their minds, and they told him all their disappointments, all the reasons that sadness was etched on their faces.  They told him everything they had expected, and their frustration that it hadn't worked out the way they had planned.  Jesus was supposed to save them from everything temporal, and instead he had gotten himself nailed to a cross and killed.  So much for their liberation from worldly problems.  And then as they walk, Jesus goes ahead and explains everything from the scriptures concerning himself.  And the scriptures are long, you know because you've given up trying to read them all the way through a few times, right? The scriptures are long, and they are laced through, filled to the brim with references, stories, allusions and signs of Christ our Lord.  The Bible is about him, and everything in it points to him.  And after Jesus has explained to them everything from the scriptures concerning himself, then they invite him in for a meal, and he takes bread, blesses it, and breaks it with them, and they at that moment recognize him, and he is real before them.  Then he vanishes from their sight, and they carry the joy of having encountered him with them, and communicate it to others when they see them.

You know what that is?  It's the liturgy.

Think about that walk to Emmaus, and how closely it mirrors the liturgy in churches.  They meet up with Christ, tell him what it is that has given them sorrow, why they feel as though Christ has not lived up to his promises to them.  They tell Jesus why they are sad, angry, hurt, disappointed.  And then Jesus tells them about himself in the scriptures. He explains to them everything in the Bible about himself, from the Old Testament to the New, he tells them that the scriptures are all about him.  And then, he takes the bread, breaks it with them, and is suddenly recognized by them as their Lord.  And that is exactly what the church service offers.  What do we have to offer people in our churches? We have Christ to offer them, the word made flesh.  We have the real presence of Christ here among us, and if the idea of the walk on the road to Emmaus leading to encountering the risen Lord is something that you think you'd enjoy, then prepare to face the fact that that's exactly what happens every single week.

Every week we encounter the risen Lord.  Every week when the words of institution are spoken, and the bread is broken, Jesus Christ is literally every bit as present there in that meal as he was on the road to Emmaus.  That's every week.  Every liturgy, every Holy Communion, every time we meet together and break bread, Christ is present.

So when we're thinking about church growth, it's always good to consider and to ponder through the fact that the Holy Scriptures already told us how to get it done, and in both cases, it involves breaking bread. Breaking bread in fellowship, and breaking bread at the Lord's table.  And in both those cases, those are places that Jesus promised to be, and to be found.  So when you're thinking about church growth, and thinking about what it is that people are looking for, it's a good chance they're looking for Christ.  The big secret that we have in our churches is that we know where to find him.  He is found in the breaking of the bread.