Scripture Readings:
Epistle – Galatians 5: 1, 13-251
1For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. ….
13For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. 14For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.
16Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. 18But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. 19Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
Gospel – Luke 9: 51-622
51When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. 54When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” 55But he turned and rebuked them. 56Then they went on to another village.
57As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” 59To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” 61Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” 62Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
“If
We Live by the Spirit
Let Us also Be Guided by the Spirit.”
Our own Bishop Warner Brown wrote us all a letter last month; did you read it? It’s entitled “What If We Rethink Church?”3 He means to challenge us to look at our church, not in the ways that we remember it, or wish it were, but in the way that it is. We’re then asked to be creative in reshaping our church to meet the needs of the new reality in which we find ourselves. The “Rethink Church” campaign has come to us from our Council of Bishops and asks us to consider the question, “What if Church was a verb?” Begun last year, “Rethink Church” is asking us, who are the church, to not only open our doors, but then to move out from behind these walls and become engaged with those outside who are looking for spiritual fulfillment every bit as much as we are, and together become more actively engaged with the needs of the world as we find them. The other question that would drive us, then, is this: “What if the church were thousands of doors, each of them opening to a different concept or experience of church?” The idea is to offer our church, not just as some place to come into and “hang out” for awhile, but as a faith center from which we then move out into the surrounding community and actively become part of the plan for transforming the world that was at the heart of Jesus’ life and teachings. That is rethinking what it means to be the Church.
Today’s church finds itself in a whole new world. And in spite of those of us who nostalgically long for the church to be like it was in 1944 or 1954 or 1964, it never will be that again. For one thing, the church is now only one of all kinds of institutions or organizations offering a hopeful view of the world and a new purpose for living. Our time is much like a huge supermarket situation in which most people feel absolutely no need to buy what we’re selling at all. So the major challenge for the church, according to those who do the research on this kind of stuff, is for us to be able to not only identify and name the presence of God or the sacred in our often fragmented lives, but offer ways in which it can be experienced – and experienced here. Because others beyond the church are doing just that. And they are often coming up with very different and competing answers.
Which can cause some of us to be a bit shocked because church no longer has (if it ever really did) a monopoly on things spiritual or sacred…God stuff. What I find worth noting is that the secular keeps giving birth to the sacred, often against its will and in spite of itself. Yes, sadly, Roger is moving on; but now that I’m entering my own last year of active ministry among you, I really hope that you’ve picked up by now my own view on all of this. It is a point of view, I know, that often challenges some of you because what I’ve had to say isn’t usually the traditional one that some want to hear. And yet I fervently believe that the very life of the church depends upon our being open to change and open to new perceptions, and not clinging to the comfortably established or inherited ways of thinking about things. We especially can’t afford to cling to a theology that doesn’t fit our 21st century understanding of reality. Along with other progressive Christian colleagues, I believe that the Church now needs to ensure that it frees up people to go on their own journeys – and yet each one a journey that, to begin with, Jesus himself made. What’s more we’re neither meant to worship from afar the man nor the journey that he made, but to step where he stepped, to follow the Way, the Truth, and the Life that for him revealed the reality of God. If we can finally get our mind and hearts around it, that’s just as radical a change as the one Jesus himself advocated in his own time!
From the point of view of the biblical storyteller we call Luke, the tradition isn’t all that clear concerning Jesus’ intentions as he approached that Samaritan village. Whatever they were, he wasn’t able to carry them out. The villagers wouldn’t have anything to do with him or his group. Not surprisingly, some thought that Jesus was crazy, others thought that he might have had some good things to say, interesting, admirable even, but completely unrealistic, ideas that would get him into trouble if he weren’t careful.
According to all of the storytellers of the Jesus-event, Jesus encountered opposition to his perception of reality from practically all of the authorities of the day, but just how hostile this opposition was is a matter of speculation. On the other hand, so those same storytellers say, a lot of ordinary people sought him out. And they didn't go to church – excuse me, the synagogue – to meet with him. They met him on the hillside and by the lake, while they were hanging around shopping in the marketplace, or while they were mending their fishing nets. They ate with him and held parties for him. They invited him into their homes. There's no indication at all anywhere in the gospel stories that the synagogues had a remarkable increase in their membership and in those who attended worship because of Jesus. And yet those who did choose to follow him experienced what he said, somehow, as “good news.”
As a biblical scholar in the Jesus Seminar, Stephen Patterson, once said:
What they learned from Jesus and experienced in his presence was not just a good teaching or way of life – an ethic... Rather, it was an expression of who they would claim God to be.4
It was then up to them whether or not they felt free enough to go on the same journey that he’d begun.
For me, the story of Rosa Parks shows exactly what Christian freedom means. Rosa, who was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was raised in the rural south where, not surprisingly, she experienced a lot of hatred and injustice. She did not, however, grow up embittered and enslaved to anger. Daily prayer and scripture reading with her mother and grandparents helped shape her into a faith-filled woman. One of her favorite biblical texts is Psalm 27: “The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (v. 1a) and “Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries…(v. 12a).
“Long ago,” Rosa affirmed, “I set my mind to be a free person and not to give in to fear.”5 This resolve was sorely tested, as some of you may remember, on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, when a white male passenger demanded that Rosa surrender her bus seat. She refused. Standing firm and not submitting again to that old yoke of slavery, Rosa’s simple defiance led to her arrest, to the boycott of the Montgomery bus line for a period of 381 days (led, of course, by The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), and ultimately to the 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared bus segregation unconstitutional. It sounds unbelievable to us, now, that such a thing could’ve ever happened in our country, but it did – and much, much worse. It’s fitting, then, that Rosa Parks is recognized as the mother of the modern Civil Rights movement in the United States.
Ms. Parks, herself, reflected on that historic bus ride by simply saying this:
I felt the Lord would give me the strength to endure whatever I had to face. God did away with all my fear. I did not get on the bus to get arrested; I got on the bus to go home. I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving in. I knew that I could have been lynched, manhandled, or beaten when the police came. I chose not to move.6
Today we mark both an ending and a new beginning. By this time next week Roger will be the pastor of The First United Methodist Church of Vallejo and I will be the only ordained clergy person appointed to serve The First United Methodist Church of Napa. I want to invite us all to do two things this coming year. First, I want us to take with radical seriousness the implication that the Way Jesus offered to us was one of being open to surprise and of a new way of being in the world – in the same way that Rosa Parks surprised everyone around her and claimed her right to a new way of being in the world. The Way of Jesus, you see, is a way that doesn’t cling to deeply entrenched customs or our inherited ways of doing things. That’s my first invitation to us all. The second is, to allow a new breath of the Spirit to blow through us and fly out of this place with just as much energy as those balloons had as they expelled the breath of our children and flew around the sanctuary just a few moments ago. If, together, we can do that, then we may not only be in for a really different and yet exciting journey, we will truly begin to live into and be guided by the Spirit of God.
* * *
1 Whatever Paul has been discussing theoretically up to this point come together in these verses. And the ways in which he uses the terms “flesh” and “spirit” are worth noting. “Flesh,” for Paul, isn’t just about the physical body, but the directing power that has a person respond only through self-centered desires, fears or impulses. In the end, anyone who gives in to “the flesh” embraces a very limited life. “Spirit,” on the other hand, is the presence of God that shapes someone’s life according to the character and teachings of Jesus.
So, for Paul, without the responsibility of love for our brothers and sisters, freedom becomes woefully inadequate. Being free in the way that Jesus meant wouldn’t have us simply going around doing whatever we please. We are not meant to simply sit back and enjoy our personal freedom if our neighbor remains enslaved or is denied the same freedom that we’ve been given. Our freedom is personal, but it’s meant to be enjoyed by everybody. The power of the Spirit that Paul talks about, then, is as it gives us both the will and the way to work toward the well-being of others every bit as much as we would want such well-being for ourselves.
2 Our gospel reading for today comes at the beginning of a much longer section (from 9: 51 to 19: 27) that’s been referred to as the “journey narrative” because it’s about Jesus traveling toward Jerusalem – the place where prophets die. For our author, Luke, Jesus is the prophet who would turn the world upside down. All biblical prophets, of course, are disturbers of the status quo; Jesus is no different. He presents a radical critique of the accepted religious standards and social values of his day, and offers a new way of life that lifts up the poor, breaks down the barriers set against the marginalized, and welcomes the outcast to his table. So it is that in describing his own journey, he lets it be known what it must mean for those who would follow his way in their own lives.
3 The bishop’s full text is as follows:
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I want you to join me on a mental journey. To a different reality: to where church . . . is not a building, but a concept. To where church is not just a place we go, but something we do. To where church is no longer a noun . . . and open is not an adjective, but a verb.
I want you to Rethink Church. Not in terms of what it is, but of what it could be.
Eight years ago, The United Methodist Church began telling the world that "our hearts, our minds, our doors are open." We had great success with that means of raising awareness about who we are as a people of Christ: In a Gallup poll taken one year ago, 96% of respondents had either a positive or neutral view of Methodists - the highest approval rating of any religious group in the United States. But as we seek to reach new generations, to bring to the table those with spiritual hunger they themselves may not even fully recognize or understand, we have to take our message to the next level. To reach a new audience, "open" must become a verb that challenges us To open hearts. To open minds. And To open doors: 10,000 of them.
In May, United Methodist Communications will roll out a new national advertising campaign with the Rethink Church message, which seeks to redefine church as an experience beyond Sunday mornings or the building itself. It asks . . . what if we rethink "church," to see it as unlimited points of entry, instead of a building - 10,000 doors, if you will - with each one opening to a different experience of church, and with anyone knocking being able to find an entry point to his or her own individual journey?
The goal is to encourage a spiritual dialogue, both within and outside of the church. To nudge "unchurched" young adults, in particular, to think about their spirituality and consider what churches may have to offer - while at the same time challenging those of us within the church to ask whether in fact we do have something to offer that young adults would want.
As the Wesleyans of today, we need to take our spirit of activism and apply it to ourselves. We need to do things differently: we need to Rethink Church.
The Rethink Church/10,000 Doors movement will be launched on May 6. This is the time for us to do the work of examining ourselves and imagining what we could be.
In advance of the May 6 launch, I encourage you to explore the Rethink Church website at rethinkchurch.org - and to consider taking UMCom's Rethink Church 101 Welcoming Training (a free interactive online course), as well as a free, self-directed online course about the Four Areas of Focus that UMCom has developed. (You will find links to Rethink Church and Four Areas of Focus materials under "Resources" on the Conference website.)
This year's Annual Conference Session will provide opportunities to learn more about Rethink Church from United Methodist Communications staff, and to engage in workshops centered on empowering our congregations.
Finally, I ask you to consider this: In a recent study, The Barna Group found that only 16% of non-Christian young adults, ages 16-29, have a favorable impression of Christianity - while 87% consider it to be too judgmental, and 85% see it as hypocritical.
In the face of this reality, isn't it time to rethink how we relate to young people?
Isn't it time to Rethink Church?
By: Warner H. Brown, Jr. – on 4/17/2009
4 Stephen J. Patterson in “Dirt, Shame, and Sin in the Expendable Company of Jesus” from Profiles of Jesus, edited by Roy W. Hoover (Polebridge Press, Santa Rosa, CA, 2002), p. 222.
5 Rosa Parks with Gregory J. Reed, Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of Woman Who Changed a Nation (Zondervan Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1994), p. 17.
6 Op. Cit., pp. 23-24.