Church #4 Repent & Follow Me 1/26/20

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

 Church #4   Repent and Follow Me (Jesus)

1/26/20   Epiphany 3A

           

            In this series of sermons about how we are the church and what the church is about, I want to take a Sunday to talk about our own relationships with God. - which includes Creator, Jesus and Holy Spirit, because these are the 3 aspects/ persons/ parts of God.  There isn’t an Old Testament God and a New Testament God - God is God.  We experience God in different ways, and we talk of God in different functions - its all God. 

            Last week I talked about how important it is for each of us in the church (the called out gathering of people who follow Christ) to know how to listen and respond to the nudges of the Spirit, so that as a church we can do the same, and the winds of the Holy Spirit be the power that fills our sails and leads us where God wants us to go.  The whole church can’t respond to God unless each of us in it are responding to God.  Jesus says 2 things to us: ‘without me you can do nothing’; and ‘with God all things are possible’.  Its only as the fullness of God abides in us and guides us on that the written scriptures speak to us in our inner selves;  that a “nice talk” I give on Sundays becomes God’s word to us today, that our encounters with other people become holy encounters, and that our prayers go past the ceilings. 

            This week’s Scripture we just heard records the first things Jesus said when he started his ministry. Matthew so crafted his telling of the Jesus story that Jesus’ opening words define so much of what he says later.  See, in the first 3 chapters, Jesus is born, and then we jump to the adult start of his ministry; John the Baptist preaches about him, and he shows up to be baptized; then immediately is compelled by the Spirit out into the desert to do what amounts to a vision quest, where he fasts and is formed in his call and understanding, defeats the temptations of shortcuts, and re-emerges with his first proclamation ready: 

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is come near.”

Then he begins to call some disciples around him to teach them, and he says his second words to some local fishermen:

“Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

Jesus himself prepared in the desert then began his ministry, and when he begins to speak he also tells people to prepare and begin their ministries. Repent, realize the reality of God’s worldview & realize our lives need to be reoriented; and then follow - which will also include spreading the word.  We start with our personal encounter with God, and follow Jesus out into our called works.. 

‘Repent’ is an interesting word.  It sounds kind of old fashioned and reminds us of the old tent preachers. Some modern synonyms are: feel remorse for, regret, be sorry for, rue, reproach oneself for, be ashamed of, feel contrite about, wish that one had not done something.  An example of this kind of ‘Repent’ is like when I realized that venting my frustration & anger on the person who first answers the telephone when I call about a mistake on my bill, is unproductive - they are probably not the person who can make changes anyway.  So I repented of that behavior, and still frustrated in my heart, spoke reasonably with that first person, asking them to help me with this problem.  It works better that way.  And its turned out to be true in so many other encounters - when we attack, they put up their fists back.

The Greek word for repent is ‘metanoia,’ which literally means “to see afterwards.” It’s about seeing that we’re on the wrong track, and turning, changing, re-engineering, re-imagining; it’s about a broader or new understanding that changes the way we perceive our actions, and changing because of it.  It often includes that remorse and regret that we spent time and energy in a wrong-headed way. 

Jesus put HIS call to repent in the context of acknowledging God’s  existence, and how God’s definition of what is true and good for us is ultimately the best.  I mean, God created it all, right?  Jesus calls people to repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, the very realm of God, is here now.  Its time is now; acknowledge God and realize how that changes things.  When we accept and admit that God’s point of view is the right way, all the things we thought we understood move and fall into a new big picture.  OOOHHH!  So THAT’S what’s going on!  So THAT’s what it’s all about!  Everything refocuses, falls into place in a new way.  And our first response is, Oh no, I’ve had it all wrong - I’ve been living in a false understanding.  The scales fall off, a new ultimate love reorients us - and we feel that we repent of what I’ve been about, and now step into God’s reality, like going from balck and white to color perhaps, or going from 2 dimensional to 3 dimensional. 

Oh - I thought I WAS going north, but now that I see the whole map, I reset my course  to the real north.  Oh - I thought THESE were the right goals and values, but they’re NOT!!  So now I will follow God’s input about goals and values.  Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 

In my experience, this isn’t a one-time deal, a one-time conversion. I know there are people whose first experience of God is an eye-opener of large magnitude.  In my life, and I’d guess even in theirs, this awakening to God’s truth actually keeps happening again and again.  I haven’t been able to take in the enormity of what the realm of heaven is about except bit by bit; and each time it happens that I comprehend a little more, I have to readjust and tweak my living yet again.  Maybe saints get it all at once - I sure haven’t.  Oh - so THAT’s what that story might mean!  Oh - Jesus was really saying something more than I got!  The more I live and the more I experience, the more I know about different people and different ways, the more I know about my inner self - - then the more I see in the Bible and faith.  Oh...my picture, my worldview, has been so limited - I need to enlarge my scope and let more of this understanding in, and let the Holy Spirit heal me... or guide me…  or increase my love…  So maybe this blends into the “following” that Jesus called us to - keep following me, keep learning of me, keep walking in the ways I show. 

Now those early disciples Jesus called had the good fortune to have the actual Jesus there to talk to and walk with - and the Scriptures picture them as not always “getting” what he said even then!  So even those folks whose names we know as “The 12” kept growing as they followed, kept maturing in their faith and understanding.  And eventually they followed Jesus as well in doing the work of ministry themselves, and spreading the word. 

What we have is the written Scriptures that teach of what it’s like to follow God, to follow Jesus; and we have God’s Spirit to quicken those words and make them alive for us.  We the Bible, a library of books and letters and writings and stories about how people have lived and grown with God.  A good question in this 21st century is, how well do we know it?  Spending time in Scripture and in prayer is how we spend time with Jesus.  Scripture that we’re familiar with gives the Holy Spirit a way to nudge us, lead us, direct us, and teach us. The Bible isn’t an easy book - it was penned by faithful people in different cultures and different centuries.  It doesn’t spell out definitions and outline a belief structure.  It’s mainly stories of how people encountered God and lived with God, how they understood God and themselves and the world.  Sometimes the truth it tells is oblique, needing us to sit with it and ponder it. Many of the older stories were distilled over years of oral tradition into stories that are packed with meaning.  

Many church folks haven’t read the stories since we were children in Sunday School.  Or thought about them as adults.. with adult brains...with adult experiences and questions...or worked to hear what they mean in our own era.  Or what they mean for our own lives. Back in the day when the game Trivial Pursuit was popular, a Bible Trivia game came out in the same format, asking factoids of Bible stories.  Yeah, it’s fun to know the answers to those kinds of things, but that’s not the same as assimilating the teachings into our life in 2020.  But it’s a place to start.  Like studying English or history or science, where there’s a certain amount of knowledge to lay down before one can work with it, really understand it, and use it.  Its not different with faith. 

SO - I have a little easy Bible quiz for us today... mainly those factoids.  Let’s play.

Power Point Quiz

So how’d we do? 

Whatever our level of Bible knowledge, there’s more in this library that will grow our faith.  Knowledge of the Bible, even at the factoid level, is falling off generation by generation.  The stories and phrases used to be a part of general knowledge, and writers could quote things or make allusions to stories, and their audience knew what they were talking about.  Not so anymore. 

How would we like to read the Bible through together?  I thought that might be a good way to encourage us to dig in again as adults - and to get started, if we’re younger.  I’ve looked at a whole bunch of “Read the Bible in 1 Year” plans available online, and haven’t found one that feels like fun.  So I’ve started designing The Jamesville Bible Reading Plan, which I think will get the storyline and hold some interest  - although to be honest, some of the books can get tedious.  I thought this might be a good discipline to start observing in Lent, and will be presenting the Jamesville Bible Reading Plan in the next weeks.  It’s a good way start working on our encounters with God, our relationships with God.  Tell me what you think, OK?    AMEN.

Church #3 - Whose Church Is It Anyway? 1/19/20 Epiphany 2A

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Church #3   Whose Church Is It, Anyway?

1/19/20 Epiphany 2A

            I think I’ve mentioned the young man Billy, who came to this country with one suitcase and his identification papers from Congo, and who lived with me and my children while he completed High School. Growing up in France and the Congo, he was totally disoriented when he stepped off the plane in Richmond, VA with just a phone number to a contact person. All he knew of the US was from Hollywood movies - he thought we were all wealthy and immoral, and his father had warned him about us!  He had High School level English, no money; our culture was not familiar, nor our school system, nor our food. Billy’s gifts were a huge smile, a buoyant personality, and easy friendships - he acclimated quickly.  I could tell lots of fun and poignant stories about the impact he had on our lives. 

            What I want us to imagine is what it’s like to step into a different world, as Billy did, where so much is unknown as yet.  See, I’ve been fishing for a way to explain what Jesus might have meant when he said that when we repent and are baptised, we start our journey in the Kingdom of Heaven, aka the kingdom of God - that is, we take on a new country, a new way of looking at the world, new ideas about people, about life decisions, about God, about our own worth, about what it means to be created in God’s own image, about being called to follow Christ, about being joined into Christ’s church, which is also called Christ’s body now on Earth.  Yet we’re still on the same planet as before! And all the same things are around us!  It’s us, inside, who are reborn, who are new.  The apostle Paul, in his letters to those first gatherings of people around the Mediterreanian Sea, tries to describe it by saying we used to, “live according to the world,” but now, “live according to the Spirit.” Other times he uses words like putting off the “old man” and putting on the “new man.”  (I overlook the sexism of Paul’s language.) Another place he says that Jesus Christ is like a “Second Adam,” a second creation of humanity, and that we are taken into this new life when we follow Christ. It’s difficult to explain, and I don’t think we Christ-followers have much of a comprehension about this.  We have tended to think following Christ is about taking on some good and nice behaviors and attitudes, attending worship, supporting missions and such. 

The New Testament, however, teaches that we have become new people deep in our soul, our spirit; it uses the language of being born again, which has been taken over by some groups as a one time come-to-Jesus event of conversion.  What it means is that we have started a journey into the new resurrection life of Jesus, and we are learning to live in Christ, in a new creation, a new comprehension, a new reality - -  while still actually on earth.

God gathers us in communities, churches, so that we can be supported, encouraged, educated, formed, and nurtured into this new way of living - we can thank God and worship, we can grow and learn to be fully this new human; and we can communicate God’s love and restorative message like God’s very ambassadors.  We can show the radical welcome to the table of God, the abundant and generous forgiveness and provision of God, we can offer the healing of God to those who long for it; the spirit of God can move us and lead us as witnesses to God’s grace and glory, fill us - heal and change us from the inside out.  Early believers fed each other and shared everything, the Scripture says.  They gathered despite economic or other distinctions - of course as they went along, they ran into difficulties with the huge changes - that’s why Paul kept writing letters and encouraging them in their journey and new lives.  It was really different from the way they’d accepted as how the world is, and difficult to take in all at once.

Is this how we think of church???  Not usually…. 

In asking us all to be more aware of our use of the word “church,” I’ve found myself starting to say things like, “Let’s meet at the church,” and I’ve had to stop myself and say “at the church building.”  We’ve grown used to thinking of our facility as what church is, and forgotten that “Church” actually means the gathered people of God.  We would be church no matter where we met - outside, in a house, in a convention center, a rented store front - because WE are the church. I’m learning to change my language along with you all, because I think our understanding of ourselves as the church is a foundational piece of the new thing that God’s Spirit is doing in our era.  As many congregations in the country are shrinking and being unable to continue in their buildings, they are remembering that wherever they meet, THEY are the church.  A good building is a good asset for ministry, for worship, for a meeting place, for opening to the community, for visibility in the community - and still it is not “the church” - WE are.

I’m recommending a book study group for Lent, coming up in about a month now - it’s called Sailboat Church, and its written by a former Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, Joan Gray.  She sets up a helpful dichotomy with the rowboat versus sailboat imagery that I think is a helpful and needed look at the way we Christ-followers are ‘church.’

In a nutshell (because we’ll explore it more in the study), the rowboat church can be characterized as something WE are responsible for, with our hard work and dedication - - to grow, we just need to work harder, have fancier programs, have good brand identity, and get a spiffy new pastor with young children and a great personality.  Then people will come.  Rowboat churches can find themselves using measures of success like numbers of bodies in pews, numbers at programs, and a healthy budget.  The rowboat mentality thinks if we do everything right, it will work, and sometimes looks at new members as “giving units.” (I don’t like that word or concept.)  Rowboat churches look at church as a religious organization, and get tied up in the structure and job descriptions. As the operations of the church become more like a business and a civic organization, the spirit and life of the rowboat church dry up. It struggles to “fill positions,” andlongs for a return of the times when classes were full and younger people would work harder. 

            The Sailboat church, on the other hand, knows that the church is GOD’S, and that the power comes from God’s Spirit, like wind filling the sails.  Sailboat churches know that they don’t make the wind - the wind of the Spirit comes from God to move and blow where it will. It’s the Spirit that will move the church, lead and guide the church.  Sailboat churches know that their personal relationships with God need to be alive and vital; their own spiritual lives need to be nourished and fed.  They need to know how to pray, how to listen for the Spirit for their own lives and their corporate life as church.  Cultivation of each person’s journey as a follower of Christ is key.  And yes, there are positions and leaders and such structure as will raise the sails and set them to catch the winds.  There’s a certain knowledge about boats and water, and how the wind works.  Members need to be good sailors.  Yet the vision and the power and the guidance is from the Spirit, working towards God’s goals. 

            Gray’s book will be a help to us to look together at our own journey with God, and how to seek the Spirit’s guidance as a body together.  This is important work for each of us to do as we look to our future here as Jamesville Community Church. 

            I believe that God has called each of us here to be a follower of Jesus Christ.  I believe that God has called us to step into this new life in the Kingdom of Heaven, and desires a deeper relationship of love and trust with each of us.  I believe that there is no better or higher work we can do than seeking to know God, learning to walk with Jesus, and hearing the voice of the Spirit.  There is no higher calling than to live into this new realm of God that Jesus announced, which is the way humans are designed to live, and the new life of Jesus’ resurrection that is shared with us.  Even while we walk and work in this country, this state, this world - we are citizens of heaven, and called into the body of Christ called the Church. 

I cannot say this strongly enough -- it matters how we understand ourselves to be the church. It matters how we respond to God and seek God personally. It matters that we listen for the direction of the Holy Spirit as we seek to be Christ-followers in this day and time.  It matters that we hoist our sails and let the Spirit be the wind that fills our sails and empowers us into  mission in this world. 

            I hope and trust we are praying for the church constantly in our challenging times - our local church and other local churches, and the universal church.  God is still working, still seeking people, still building this church.  We need to align ourselves with where God is going.  AMEN.

Church #2 - Remembering Our Baptism 1/12/20 Baptism of the Lord -A

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L.  Kiser

Church #2 - Remembering Our Baptism

1/12/20   Baptism of the Lord A

            Last week we talked about the confusing ways we use the word ‘Church’ to mean several things: to refer to our building, and to refer to our gathered group here, which is the real meaning of the Greek word ecclesia,;and a local part of the whole Capital-C Church universal.  As we are beginning to look towards our future, our purpose and our mission as Jamesville Community Church, I asked us to pay attention to which of these meanings we meant, when we used the word ‘church,’ and seek to direct our pondering to the Biblical meaning of the word ie the gathering group of called-out Christ-followers. In other words, wherever we, this group, meets, whatever building or non-building, we are the church.  I want there to be no confusion when we talk further about our vision for the church and the mission of the church, that we are talking about a called-out and gathered people, and not buildings, as significant to our mission and ministry as that building may be.  I want us to be clear that when we speak of the overall purpose of church in Scripture, we are talking of all congregations that profess to follow Jesus Christ, and that we people here at Jamesville are an arm of that larger church, living out our following of Jesus Christ in this specific locale, and under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.  

            This Sunday, today, we’ve remembered our own baptism on the traditional Baptism of Jesus Sunday.  I’m hoping we will indeed remember that we are baptized & what that means in our current life. Remembering our baptism is a good way to begin a new year and a new decade. Now we have both a Star Word from last week, Epiphany, & a water drop from today to set ourselves on a faith journey this year! 

            So let’s talk about baptism for few minutes. How many here were baptized at an age where you actually remember it?  As an older child, or at Confirmation, or as an adult? OK.  For many of us, baptism is the way we formally entered the church: we professed our faith, we took a stand with the message of Jesus Christ, and declared ourselves to be a Christ-follower, promising to turn FROM evil and turn TO God.  We also became a member of the church.  

      Who here were baptized as infants or toddlers, & don’t actually have a personal memory of the day? OK.  For  those of us baptised as young children, our parents promised to raise us to know and love Jesus Christ and be his disciple, and we confirmed our baptisms at Confirmation, claiming for ourselves that we now identified with the Jesus way, we promised to be Christ’s disciples and to follow what he taught. We joined the Capital-C Church universal, the Body of Christ, and we also became members of a specific local church.  At least in the Presbyterain sacrament of baptism, the questions asked at Confirmation are the exact same questions asked of our parents in infant baptism, and of adults in adult baptism. 

            Like many rituals, this acting out of our profession of faith isn’t necessarily the very moment our hearts say YES to God, or the very moment that faith starts.  Like plants and like human life, faith starts in secret ways, underground or in the dark.  The outward things we do are our public professions or our belief in God, whether for ourselves or for our children. Although we see baptism as a grace and a sacrament, it’s not magic.  More on this later.

            I’ve had people tell me that they don’t much care for the idea of standing in front of a crowd and getting wet.  Maybe it IS a weird ritual; it’s so much a part of my world that it seems normal to me!  There’s a lot of symbolism in the actions of baptism, and a lot of history.  We Protestants generally see baptism more as an outward and visible sign of an inward reality.  I’ll say that again because that’s a line I remember from seminary: an outward and visible sign of an inward reality. The important part is what’s going on inside between us and God: the decision to follow Christ (theologically of course God was already seeking us), to be identified as as a Christ-follower; the public declaration of choosing the faith and gospel taught by Jesus Christ, and believing that he spoke for God. The decisive words include choosing to turn from the ways of sin, and instead choosing to give ourselves to beginning the journey of faith. Its public - we almost always do baptisms in communal worship, or at least with some members of the community present as witness to the promises being made.   

            So in one way, baptism is like an entrance rite, an initiation of sorts.  Yet it’s a lot more than an initiation to just any nice group like a fraternity or sorority, or a civic organization.  It’s about one’s whole life, not just joining a nice group.  It’s about choosing the life & journey of Christian faith.  It’s about coming into this tradition of faith in God that dates back through the centuries, joining the ranks of those who actually risked their lives and their place in their family by declaring their belief in Jesus Christ. 

            The video we saw as we came forward to get our glass water drop showed one way that baptism has been historically done - being immersed in living water, flowing water - water that carries the symbolism of being life-giving and necessary for survival.  Humans can live without food for a lot longer than we can exist without water - maybe 4 days without water before there’s survival issues. We can go without food for a lot longer - water is quickly essential. It was always important for human groups to locate water for our own selves, as well as crops and animals.  Scriptures talk of God’s Spirit as a life-giving fountain of water, springing up in us to new life. 

            Baptism’s water also carries the symbolism of cleansing, washing, taking away the dirt and dust of the world - of reorienting our life, giving up the old ways for the ways of Christ. 

            In an even deeper symbolism, immersion in water carries the symbolism of being buried with Christ, and raised with Christ.  It’s like we die to our old self, and rise to the new life Christ promised.  Death and resurrection to new life is a major and basic part of the Christian faith - in baptism by immersion, we symbolically go under the water, and are raised from it. Of course, many denominations baptise by other ways than immersion, but the symbolism is there, that of identifying with Jesus in his death and resurrection to new life, like the actual waters of birth. 

There are stories in Christianity of saints rising from the water of baptism and singing.  Most of us don’t - most of us have the experience like the young man in the movie Tender Mercies, with Robert Duvall, who says he was glad he did it but he didn’t especially feel anything. We might have the experience of conviction or conversion prior to putting ourselves up for baptism; we might just have felt a call to identify with Jesus and make this declaration.  We may have been baptised as infants and raised in a church of called people, knowing the love of Jesus since before we could speak.

(In my Baptist tradition, when you felt the conviction of your sinfulness and need for forgiveness, you went up during the last hymn to pray with the pastor; then your baptism was set up for the next week. So I did this at 7, and was baptised by immersion the next week. The church ladies helped me change into a heavy white robe, & I rehearsed with the pastor before the service.  When the service started, I waded into the baptismal pool and was baptised.  I remember feeling very nervous before it, then really happy I’d done it. I was happy to be a member of the church.)  

            As we continue to ponder who & what church is (instead of a building the church meets in), let’s add to that pondering what our baptism into that “church,” that gathering of called-out people of Christ, means to us today.  What does it mean to us that we have pledged ourselves to follow the way of Jesus?  What does it mean to us that we have identified ourselves with this movement, this way of life, this worldview of faith in God?  What does this joining the Body of Christ call for from us?   Does it make a difference in our life choices that we have turned FROM evil and sin, and turned TO the ways of God?  Does it make a difference in the way we use the money God has given us?  Does it make a difference on how we treat others at school or at work?  Does it make a difference in what we choose to say in social media? Does it make a difference on how we treat family members? Does it make a difference in how we conduct our relationships?  Does it make a difference in our choice of vocation? Does it make a difference in caring for our environment, like recycling or single-use plastics?  Does it make a difference in how we view other races?  Obviously, since I wrote these questions, I think the answer is “Yes.”  So the next part of those questions is, “HOW does faith impact these choices?”  Because it does!

            Although we talk about the grace of baptism and its spiritual meanings, I don’t think of baptism as magic. Our United Methodist and Presbyterian denominations walk a middle road, saying that its the outer symbolizing of the inner reality, yet preserving the mystery that baptism confers a certain grace from God as well.  We also see the church (people) as responsible for providing faith development and Confirmation for the children & adults.  My personal understanding is that the act by itself doesn’t get us “in” with God, which is what a mom told me once (we had to have a talk…); it’s what we are symbolizing as far as our inner life goes. At the same time, I’ll agree that there may well be more going on than I understand. Even those who get baptised as adults can’t claim to totally understand what they’re doing - much like infants! Certainly baptism is more than just to get an ‘in’ with God, as one mom said to me - we had a talk….

Perhaps we understand more about our baptisms as we look back, remembering and pondering our baptisms from a way down the road.  Who knows what our commitment to God in Christ Jesus will lead to in our lives?  Who knows what we will be led to do or to be?  Who knows in what events of life we will be called on to show faith?  Who knows, ahead of time, in what kinds of craziness we may need to live the life of faith?  Especially in these days of threat to the planet’s climate and biological diversity of species, in these days of unstable leaders that have the ability to use nuclear weapons, in these days where hatred and division seem to be on the rise - our witness to God’s love and forgiveness, and generous kindness may seem rather naive or useless - unless we trust the deep faith that undergirds the world. Certainly believers in other times of history have lived their faith in very difficult times. Perhaps believers of the future will look back at these times of affluence as a difficult time when faith lapsed.

So the challenge this week is to ponder our own commitment to God, and what we feel in our hearts and guts about our following of Jesus Christ.  The invitation is to remember the zeal from the beginning, to re-ignite the flame of devotion, rekindle the fire of longing for our spiritual life.  AMEN.

Church #1 - What Is Church? 1/5/20 Epiphany A

Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser

Church #1   - What Is Church?    

Jan 5, 2020 Epiphany

Happy New Year!  I hope we all had good times over the past week with family & friends.  I enjoyed being with my grandchildren in Seattle - can’t say it was exactly restful, although I loved it - and it was certainly different from my usual days! Now I’m ready to jump back into things here at Jamesville, and move forward with our Transitional journey. 

Jamesville CC is on a journey, somewhat like the Wise Men we’ve talked about in Children's Time. So far in our journey, we’ve done a good job looking at our congregation’s history.  I saw folks at the Christmas Eve services enjoying the timeline we put together in the Fellowship Hall.  As I wrote in the last newsletter, the next step of our journey together is to begin to think about our church and community, and what God is calling us to in our future.  We will look at the neighborhood God has set us in, its needs and projections of its future.  We will hear from some of the community leaders.  We will look at our own congregation, our own gifts, and the ideas the Spirit gives us. We will pray for our minds to be open and receptive to the vision God gives us  I will be preaching towards our understanding of what a church truly is and does. We will have some house meetings to talk with one another about our ideas. Putting it all together, we will set some goals and maybe put some things into practice. 

It’s always good to periodically take a look at ourselves, take stock of where we are, see if that’s where we hoped we would be -  readjust, reimagine, and reorient. Looking to the future and pondering what plans God may have for us is an important aspect of preparing for the future.

It occurred to me that a starting point might be to spend some weeks talking about “Church.”  What do we mean when we use the word “church”?  Are we all thinking about the same thing?   Do we all agree on what “church” is?  What “church” means? Do we all know what is said in Scripture about “church”?  I’ve put in some time pulling my own thoughts together.  I’ve also been collecting articles and ideas about what other congregations are involved with. I call it my IDEA file, and it includes articles from magazines and e-zines, as well as things that have popped up from my clergy facebook sources. These are going to be available and maybe distributed somehow, in order that own creativity is sparked - not that we have to copy, but to let our own minds open up to the creativity of God’s Spirit. 

Our starting place in this sermon today has to do with a very basic discussion on what “church” means. I’d bet that most of us here immediately formed a picture of our church building here, or a former church building we loved. But the church Jesus started wasn’t about buildings - it was about people.  I did a children’s sermon a while back, based on that little hand thing - “here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people.”  We did it with our hands like this (illustrate), and when we opened the doors, I joked that all we saw were people’s feet!  So I showed the children another way of doing their hands - a little more complicated, but when we opened the door, there were the people!!!  

Friends, the church we need to ponder and think about is made of humans, no matter what kind of building or structure we gather in - or if we gather in any structure at all.  To be scholarly a moment, the word translated “church” in our Scripture is the Greek word ecclesia, or a gathering for a specific purpose.  It originally meant a political assembly, like for a debate.  Its close relatives include the words for “summoned” or “called out.”  So a “church” is a called-together group, for the purpose of following Christ Jesus, and all that that means. We’ll talk more about the ways we address this purpose in other sermons, like learning, praying, acting, worshipping - all sorts of ways we grow into following Christ better. In other words, a “church” is basically a community of people who all are basically going the same direction - following God by hook or by crook, as best we can, with all our foibles and personality differences. 

I wish our English language had separate words for the group of Christ-followers and the various structures that we build for our centers!  It’s confusing to our speech and our thinking to use the same word. “Church” in the scriptures isn’t a physical building.  We could gather anywhere and still be the church of Jesus Christ.  Early Christians gathered in catacombs - which were the underground cemeteries of their time and place.  That sounds icky, but the church had to gather in secret at that time, and meeting in the catacombs was safe. Other early churches, like the ones the Apostle Paul started, gathered in peoples’ homes.  Churches in other countries have met under trees or in nice clearings. When I attended the Presbyterian General Assembly, where people come from all over the country and the world, we’ve worshipped and prayed and shared the Lord’s Supper in huge convention centers!  Places that the next week have Tractor Pulls!

I’ve had fun thinking up what other words we could use to differentiate church as people from the common usage of church as building.  I’d like to keep the word “church” to mean the gathered Christ-followers, because that’s what it means when we read it in the Bible.  For our building, now, we could use words like the ‘meeting place’, or ‘center’, or ‘facility’.  Some newer congregations with several locations talk about themselves as one church meeting in two campuses, and name the campuses.  We could refer to the ‘sanctuary’ and the ‘education room’, although I think education is not the right word for the kind of learning and character formation that goes on there.  Let’s work on that, shall we?  Let’s get creative and make a good new word.

It’s not that it’s bad to have a nice place to worship and gather, or a nice building to offer to the larger community for good things.  And our buildings can become significant to us - when we have met and worshipped or studied or prayed together in the same place many times, it can become special to us. A place can take on good associations ( or bad associations, depending on our experience there).  And a building can become a marker of sorts in a community - it reminds the community that Christ-followers are here and meeting.  If our building is open for community use, it tells the community that Christ-followers are interested in the well-being of all people, and their common human needs. 

So as we ask God to help us envision the life of our church (ie our local group of Christ-followers), part of our thinking could be the use of our facility as a means of facilitating the ministry and mission God is calling us to do.  But I do want us to focus more on ourselves as an arm of the Church Universal, a part of the Capital-C Church of Jesus Christ that lives and works here in Jamesville, NY.  And how we, in our unique way and setting, can carry out the purposes  of Christ’s church here. 

Part of our concept of ourselves as Christ’s church is this connection to the larger, universal Captial-C Church.  Its good that this Epiphany Sunday reminds us that God calls to all people, including those we might call foreigners.  God is the God of the world.  And the Capital-C Church includes all Christ-followers from every time and every place, like we say in communion.  The early believers, the apostles, those in the 6th century, the 11th century, the 15th century and so on.  Those in Russia or Japan or Europe or South Africa or wherever - - in Christ, we are all one.  Their suffering is our suffering, and their joy is our joy.  And visa versa.  Those who are part of the denominations of Presbyterian, United Methodists, Roman Catholics, 7th Day Adventists, Greek Orthodox - all who believe and seek to follow Christ.  The Capital-C Church goes on even if various local congregations fade away or if denominations split.  It may be even larger than this, too. It may include all who seek to worship and serve God, period. 

We here in Jamesville CC, NY, USA are a local manifestation of the Capital-C Church of Jesus Christ, which the Bible also calls the Body of Christ.  This is where we live and serve God to the best that we can hear and follow. 

So this is the context I want for us to understand when we seek the direction of God for our “church.”  What is in the Scriptures about Christ’s church is true for the church overall.  It’s rather in large and broad outlines, and not detailed for whatever country or century or community the specific congregations find themselves.  So we have some work to do in interpreting and envisioning how we live out what Scripture says.  This is the work of this group gathered here - I can’t tell this church exactly what to do - that’s our group’s discerning., and what we’ll be working on in the coming months.  So this week, think on these meanings of “Church” ...work on recognizing when we’re meaning the people or the building, and look for words to differentiate them.   Imagine lines connecting us to Christ-followers around the world, or through the centuries.  See that our denominations are more ways of organizing ourselves and governing ourselves than they are written in stone, and ways of handling different understandings of what living for Christ looks like.  Be in prayer for the Capital-C Church as well as  the local bodies that gather in all the towns and cities, and especially for us in this journey now.  

AMEN.