A sermon preached at Old South Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Hallowell, Maine, September 20, 2009.
Text: Mark 9:30-37
The Rev. Susan M. Reisert, Minister
Away from the crowds (at least for the time being), here in the seclusion of a house, the disciples are getting a private lesson from Jesus. They need some quality time with their teacher, because things have been rather up and down for awhile now. There have been mountaintop experiences, like seeing a blindingly radiant Jesus standing right next to Moses and Elijah, and other wonders as well: another crowd fed on a few loaves of bread (with leftover abundance), more healings, and still another bright, shining moment when Peter boldly recognized Jesus as the Messiah. On the other hand, there have been some perplexing, even disturbing, moments. Jesus and his followers, it seems, are not on the same page. He speaks more than once about his coming suffering and death, and scolds Peter harshly when he balks at such unpleasant talk, while the disciples continue to be absorbed in measuring their own greatness, especially in relation to one another (some things cross boundaries of place, time, and culture). Peter, James, and John must be wondering, for example, whether they're somehow more important because they were up on that mountaintop with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Who could blame them for feeling just a little bit special?
And then Jesus turns and asks them what they were arguing about. They must be embarrassed, because their awkward silence is palpable, or, as Eugene Peterson translates it in The Message, "deafening." We would probably feel similarly uncomfortable in their place: "how often we would be silent if Jesus were to confront us and ask us what we have been talking and fretting about." Even more, we "would fall silent if we were asked to explain how what we are doing and saying accords with the way of life that Jesus sets before us." Talk about a lesson in humility! We do well, then, to heed an important caution as we read this story about the disciples: "This is not an exercise in attacking their flawed notions of discipleship and contrasting them with our own potentially more adequate notions and practice." We could find ourselves distracted by measuring our own righteousness against that of the disciples, and somehow judging ourselves greater, more aware, more faithful.
We know something important is coming when Jesus sits down, like a traditional Jewish teacher. This isn't just a casual conversation but something critical, something profound, that he hopes his followers will remember long after he has died and risen again. At this point, they seem to suffer short-term memory loss when it comes to Jesus' words about suffering and dying. They would rather think about glory, but then, who wouldn't? We learn, as we read the Gospel of Mark from beginning to end, that this journey toward Jerusalem and the cross is a long one, and understanding does not come easily to these disciples. We have a sense from the larger New Testament narrative that they never do "get it" until Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit fills them with the understanding that eludes them throughout the Gospels. In the meantime, they're human, just like us, and their sights are set much lower, that is, on the "high" places of honor.
[The first three paragraphs were provided by "Worship Seeds," found in the "Worship" section of www.ucc.org]
Today's passage is often used to highlight the significance and importance of children in our midst, in the company of the faithful, as a way of understanding who and what Jesus is all about. But, today's passage is not really about children at all. It's about the stark contrast between Jesus' understanding of greatness and glory and the world's concept of greatness and glory. Jesus pulls the child in, using her or him as an object lesson. In the first century, a child wasn't accounted for much of anything. So, there's Jesus, knowing that the disciples, his closest friends, colleagues, followers, are still having a really hard time understanding his message. They want to talk about glory and honor. But, Jesus again shows them that they've got it all wrong. God's rules for glory are just about the exact opposite of the world's.
We still get this wrong. We still have a hard time with this message. We still look for glory and honor in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. But, just as Jesus held out hope for his early disciples, sitting down with them to teach them over and over again, there's still hope for us as well.
Today, I would like bring this lesson into what I started last week. Last Sunday, I began what will be on-going effort, an on-going focus, for this fall and beyond-an issue that we will consider and pray about in worship, in committees, in more casual gatherings, and in the wider church, in our Kennebec Valley Association, for instance. And, that subject is: the future of the church. And, more specifically, the future of our church given the reality in which we live-congregations of our kind in this area are getting older and smaller; our buildings are requiring more of our financial resources, and even still, some maintenance is being left for another time; and, at the same time, the communities in which we witness and live are getting smaller too. Although towns like Sidney are growing, most cities and towns in Central Maine are getting smaller. When we talk about church growth, could it be that our difficulties are not just because we are doing the hospitality thing wrong, maybe it's also because the pool of people to whom we witness is getting smaller as well.
Most churches of our kind and others as well, talk about growth. But, one of the questions that I wonder about, especially in terms of our lesson this morning (and I'll tie that in in just a moment), is why we desire to grow. Why is growth so important? Why do we worry about it? Why do we encourage it? Why do we declare it a goal, time and time again?
Our neighbor, South Parish Church, is currently seeking a new pastor. In their blurb in the UCC listing, they say "come grow with us." Here, at Old South, I've heard, on more than one occasion, a remark, directed at me, that goes something like this: "When we hired you, I thought we would grow more."
Growth is an important issue in the minds of church folk. But, why? In my conversations about this issue, I've heard a variety of responses, ranging from the desire to see more younger people in the church, because that's what many remember, churches with lots of families and children, to a recognition that without more people, we will have difficulty paying our bills, keeping the pledge units not only stable, but actually adding to those numbers, sharing the burden of this physical plant, its maintenance, upkeep and possible renovation.
When talking about church growth, laced into almost all of those conversations, there is a memory of our past glory, when the mainline churches-the Congregationalists/United Church of Christ among them-were at the top of the church-going heap. Our churches were the ones that people attended. Our churches were the ones in the center of community life. Our churches were "the" place to be. I grew up in a proud stone church, at the head of the town lake. If you weren't a Roman Catholic, but wanted to be around the movers and shakers of that town, you went to First Parish. And, now, I serve a proud, stone church with the highest steeple in town.
When talking about church growth, laced into almost all of those conversations, there is a memory of our past glory-when you had to come early on Christmas Eve in order to get a seat.
But, maybe, just maybe, that in our former basking in that glory, and our now fretting over why it all went away, we've got too focused on the ways of this world-on how the world defines success, glory and accomplishment. Maybe, just maybe, we lost our way, our focus. Maybe we got a little too caught up in the ways of this world, and how this world defines success and honor, and we lost sight of how God defines success.
The disciples were talking about glory and honor. The disciples were talking about who was the greatest. They were arguing over who was the greatest. So Jesus took a child-Jesus took something that didn't account for much of anything in the first century-and placed that child in the center and said, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me."
Maybe, just maybe, we lost our way. In the midst of all of those people cramming into our churches, in the midst of all of those people crowding our church membership rolls, maybe we started to think that we were the greatest. And, in so doing, we lost our way, we lost our commitment to really being the church. But, there is hope-there's always hope-that our current situation will offer an opportunity to get re-focused, to find renewal in what really matters-being the church of Jesus Christ, a church that seeks to witness to God's love for all people.
These days, conversations about church growth often lead to pointing to those other kinds of churches that, even if they are not experiencing explosive growth right now, certainly have experienced explosive growth in the not-too-distant past. Those churches are often more fundamentalist, more literalist in their interpretation of the Bible, and so forth.
Those churches often get pointed to, as if their numbers mean that they are doing something right, as if their numbers mean that God loves them more, as if their numbers mean that they hold some place of glory and honor in the realm of God's kingdom. Well, their numbers may indicate some kind of success, but that is the success of this world, that is success in the eyes of worldly definitions of glory and honor.
I would argue that numbers don't mean anything when it comes to faithfulness to the Gospel. [repeat]
This is where our opportunity exists. This is where our hope lives.
To be the church, to follow in the ways of our God, is not to try to re-create what some other church is doing or what we've done in the past. It is to enliven our sense of living out the message of the Gospel.
Now, I'm not trying to argue that we should circle the wagons, and put a damper on hospitality, on our welcome to newcomers. Because the Gospel is about hospitality, about welcome.
What I'm arguing today, is that instead of being so focused on growth, as if growth signals success or failure, we ought to get re-focused on being the church, on being the church of Jesus Christ, on re-awakening that sense of our mission and our reason for existing-that our one and only Head is Jesus Christ. He's the one we follow.
It is certainly nice to have companions and friends with whom we share this journey. But, whether we have big numbers of them or small numbers of them doesn't say anything about our faithfulness to the Gospel. Our numbers don't say anything about our true success, our following of God's way rather than the ways of this world.
Remember this: how many of those early followers followed Jesus all the way to the cross? How many of them wept under that cross not because they were spectators at a brutal event, but because they knew who that was dying there? How many? Only a few. Only a few.
Numbers don't say anything about faithfulness to the Gospel.
Don't fret and argue about things that don't matter. Don't fret and argue about things that are distracting you and us from what we are really supposed to be about: following Christ, being faithful to the Gospel.
May God bless us as we continue our journey, our journey of increasing faithfulness, increasing connectedness to God's love and hope for all people, always welcoming those who wish to join us in our mission.
Praise be to God. Amen.