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What Does It Mean to Be Us?
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
March 1, 2009
The First Sunday in Lent
Mark 1:9-15
You may have noticed the
Preparation for Worship statement in your bulletin. It’s a thought from the
eminently quotable Frederick Buechner, who says that “After being baptized by
John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he
spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During
Lent, Christians are supposed to ask themselves one way or another what it means
to be themselves.”
Now you may disagree with
the good Reverend Buechner. You may say that Jesus knew from the very beginning
who he was and what he was supposed to do. But if you were listening to the
Gospel reading for today you heard Steve say that when Jesus came up out of the
water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on
him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved. With you I am
well pleased.”
Now imagine what your next
forty days would be like if you had seen the Spirit descend on you like a dove,
and heard a voice from heaven speak those words to you. Wouldn’t you want to go
to a quiet place where you could reflect on what had just happened? Wouldn’t
you want to remember the sight of that dove, and hear those words ring in your
ears? I would. If I were Jesus I think I would have sat on a rock and
repeated: “I’m the beloved son of God. I’m the beloved son of God!” until the
truth of it finally sank in. But eventually I would begin to think about what
came next. What is the beloved son of God supposed to do? What is the beloved
son of God supposed to say? After 40 days in the wilderness Jesus knew and he
came out preaching, “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near;
repent and believe the gospel!”
It was an announcement of
the coming Kingdom, and I’ve told you before how important that was to Jesus,
how in the Gospels, in one form or another, he refers to the Kingdom some 120
times. When his disciples come to him asking him to teach them to pray he says,
“When you pray, say this: “Father in heaven, holy is your name. May your
kingdom come, may your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” I’ve said it
before and I’ll say it again: I think Jesus really wanted his disciples to help
him bring heaven to earth. And in those early days of the church that’s what
they were trying to do. The book of Acts tells us that, empowered by the Holy
Spirit, they went out into the world and began to turn it upside down (Acts
17:6), so that people were being healed and people were being saved and instead
of being up there somewhere it seemed that heaven was right down here, where
they were.
There was a time in this
country, not so long ago, when it seemed that heaven had come to earth. It was
that magical time in the middle of the last century when the war had been
won—when our boys had come home, married their high school sweethearts, and
moved into houses with white picket fences. They started raising families and
bringing them to church until the pews were full and the offering plates were
overflowing. A lot of new sanctuaries were built in those Baby Boom years
between 1946 and 1964; a lot of new Sunday school rooms and fellowship halls.
It was a time of unprecedented growth and prosperity for the church in America,
but unfortunately it didn’t last.
Those babies who filled
the church nurseries and Sunday school classrooms eventually grew up and went
off to college. Many of them didn’t come back. In the late sixties and early
seventies church attendance began to fall off in America. Those new
sanctuaries, built to hold a thousand people, began to empty out. In the cities
especially, big, beautiful buildings that used to be full on Sundays now echoed
with hymns sung by the faithful few. What followed can only be described as a
state of mild panic as congregations wondered what had gone wrong and who was to
blame. Was it the pastor’s preaching? Was it the organist’s music?
What followed, eventually,
was something called the “church growth” movement, intended to fill those empty
pews. “Let’s throw out the hymnbooks and anthems,” it said. “Let’s bring in
some drums and guitars.” Pastors left the three-piece suits in the closet,
stepped out from behind the pulpit. They began to look for ways to make their
preaching “relevant” by talking about the real life issues their people faced:
a seven-part series on stress in the workplace and how to raise wonderful kids.
Some churches were more successful at this than others, as you might imagine,
and as they competed for a dwindling number of prospects the mega church
emerged: a powerhouse of music and preaching that appealed to religious
consumers while the little church down the street struggled to survive.
Now, I’ve sketched all
this in broad strokes, with very little supporting data, but I hope that those
of you who have lived through the past sixty years can agree that there is some
truth to what I’m saying. When someone asked my predecessor at First Baptist,
DC, how he grew such a large church during the fifties he replied that frankly,
in those days, “it was a matter of opening the door and getting out of the
way.” The culture was pushing people into the church. Now it’s pulling them
out. There are so many other things to do on Sunday and many of those things
seem more attractive than getting dressed up and going to church. I talked with
someone on Friday who has been living in London for the past few years. He said
that only three to five percent of the population of England goes to church
these days and agreed with me that what has happened there will happen in this
country eventually, maybe sooner than we think.
You may look around and
wonder what I’m talking about. There are hundreds of people here, even at the
early service, even on this rainy day. It certainly doesn’t look as if this
church is on its way out. I agree. But I would also say that this church has
been blessed with the kind of leadership and resources that have kept it ahead
of the curve. Just a few blocks away from us is another Baptist church that had
to close its doors last year. In the fifties that church was thriving. In the
fifties this church was booming. Look at the membership records and you can
almost see the line on the graph going up, up, up until our membership topped
4,000. These days we still claim a membership of more than 3,900, but I have to
wonder where those members are, don’t you? There are a lot more names on the
rolls than there are people in the pews, and that’s not only in this church—it’s
everywhere.
So, what do you do in
times like these? Do you try to dream up bigger and better gimmicks to get
people into church? Do you put in a coffee shop, a multiplex, a fitness
center? Or do you go to the desert for forty days and listen for the voice of
God? I’ve been wondering: What would we have to do for Jesus to say, “You are
my beloved church, in whom I am well-pleased”? But I haven’t had to wonder
long. As the book of Micah says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good.” But
rather than ask us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God Jesus
asks us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength
(Mk. 12:30). He asks us to love our neighbors just as much as we love ourselves
(Mk. 12:31). He asks us to love one another as he has loved us (Jn. 13:34). He
asks us to go into all the world and make disciples of every nation, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Mt. 28:19). And finally
he asks us to teach those disciples to obey all that he has commanded us (Mt.
28:20).
These five things fall
into the general categories of service, outreach, fellowship, education, and
worship, and as you’ve heard me say before these five things make up the
essential purpose of every Christian church. I’ve told you that “SO FEW people
know the purpose of the church,” and then I’ve asked you to tick off those five
letters on your five fingers—S.O.F.E.W: Service, Outreach, Fellowship,
Education, and Worship. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray that God’s
kingdom would come on earth I believe he wanted them to help him bring it in
through worship, by loving God with all their heart, soul, mind, and
strength; through service, by loving their neighbors just as much as they
loved themselves; through fellowship, by loving one another as he had
loved them, through outreach, by going into all the world to make
disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and
finally through education, by teaching them to obey all that he had
commanded. I think he believed that if they would just do that, faithfully,
with the help of the Holy Spirit, the kingdom would come!
It’s interesting to me
that three of those things have their focus inside the building: worship, and
education, and fellowship. And it’s interesting that during the churchgoing
boom in America those were the buildings that were being built: sanctuaries, and
Sunday school classrooms, and fellowship halls. That’s what you do when the
culture is pushing people in through your front door. You try to take care of
them. You build new buildings. You add on staff. You create positions for
children’s ministers, youth ministers, ministers to young adults and to
families.
But, what do you do when
the culture is not pushing people into the church anymore, when instead it is
pulling them out?
Do you panic?
Do you change your worship style to make it more compatible with the culture?
Do you ask your staff to come up with exciting programs to reverse the tides of
change? Do you go to church growth conferences hoping to fill those emptying
pews? Or do you take a deep breath, relax, and return to the essentials, to
those things Jesus asked us to do in the beginning: service, outreach,
fellowship, education, and worship? And when you do, do you notice that two of
the essential ministries of the church take place outside the building: service
and outreach? How thoughtful of Jesus to anticipate this time in history, so
that when there were more people outside the building than inside he could
remind us to go (out) into all the world and make disciples of every nation, go
(out) into the neighborhood and love our neighbors as ourselves.
If we did that
faithfully I think we would soon discover that it doesn’t matter how many people
are inside the building or outside the building, that instead, wherever people
are, we minister to them in the same way Jesus would. We throw ourselves into
the joyful work of service, outreach, fellowship, education, and worship, and
when we do God’s kingdom comes, God’s will is done, on earth as it is in
heaven. And if we listen carefully we can hear Jesus say, “You are my beloved
church; in you I am well pleased.”
—Jim Somerville, © 2009
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