Enjoying Our Strengths

Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26

Bob Eckles shared a favorite quotation with me some time back.  I began this series with it and I want to end with it.  Educator Herbert Kohl says that “the key to sustaining joy is perceiving and enjoying strength, rather than being overcome by powerlessness and failure.” 

Each week we confess our sins together.  You confess that yes, you are a mixed bag, a tangled mess of instincts, drives, habits, demons, and dreams.  But your life is full of amazing strength, impressive skill sets, wonderful ranges of powers and capacities.  What you are able to do when God gathers and focuses your energies is utterly wonderful.  You will find joy not by obsessing over your weaknesses and failures.  You will find joy only by learning to tend to your strengths. 

 

Our reading today centers on the selection of Matthias to be the apostle who will take the place of Judas.  Notice a few things about Matthias and his role:

1.     It’s a story about the Holy Spirit, not so much about Matthias.  Casting lots – sort of like rolling the dice or drawing straws – isn’t the way we normally make important decisions in life.  But the early leaders of the church sought to open themselves to the voice and guidance of the Holy Spirit.  They understood the growth of the Jesus movement as the initiative of God’s Spirit, not as testimony of their own cleverness.

2.     Matthias disappears from view in the rest of the narrative, suggesting that the key thing was not his status, the attention he received, or recognition.  He was faithful, and overlooked.  So if you feel like you do your thing, you play your role, and no one really notices – no one ever thanks you . . . well, you’re in good company with Matthias.  That’s the way it often is with faithful people.

3.     The driving reason for electing Matthias is the symbolic number 12 – 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles.  Replacing Judas with Matthias was about symbolically affirming the communal nature of God’s purposes.  We might be tempted to think in consumer terms – does this community meet my needs, does it help me solve problems and provide what I want?  And yes, God wants you to flourish and thrive individually.  But God’s purposes – open to those willing to grow and deepen in their baptisms – is more communal.  It’s about others.  You’re called to be here not simply for your own healthy development, but for the well-being of others in the congregation, and for our shared witness to our wider community.

I wanted to point out the symbolic importance of this story because I think symbolism is important in much of what we do together as a congregation.  In fact, our Sunday Serve next week is a symbolic act.  Our elders and deacons have placed a priority on setting aside three Sundays a year for working together outside the walls of the church building.  It doesn’t solve the world’s problems, but it does make a difference.  It reminds us who we are and invites others who want to make a difference to join us. 

Here’s what’s happening at 8:45am:

·      Denise Needham and Amber Marsh, elementary kids along w Rachel Thompson in nursery;

·      Kathy Reed leading team preparing soup/chili for lunch at noon;

·      Jeanne Randles leading a team making visits to our home-bound members and friends;

·      Jim Barrows, Alesha Martin, and Leah Bowman each leading yard-work teams;

·      Craig Campbell and I are leading a team that will help scrape and primer a house (in coordination with the city codes, GNAT, and CCC).

One great side benefit of Sunday Serve is that it puts a spotlight on different areas of your life.  It’s good to gather to sing and pray, confess our sins and read Scripture and listen to a sermon.  But to be quite honest, some of us have gotten addicted to that rhythm.  We’re comfortable in that “zone”.  So it’s also good to roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty helping those who need it.  It gives us all a chance to express the range of our gifts, and it provides an opportunity for different people to take leadership roles.

Much of what we do is a symbolic acting out of the story of the good news.  That’s true of our work weekends.  It’s true of our support of the Beacon Food Pantry.  It’s true of the way we sing and pray and what we talk about when we’re together.  Jesus started something.  And what he started – a life of healing, connecting, forgiving, helping, and blessing – what he started now continues in us.

You might think of it in terms of a business succession plan.  Any organization or corporation or business has to think about what’s next.  Good leaders and key players are wonderful.  But what will you do when that person dies, or retires?  Is there a plan in place for how the organization will carry on doing the work?  If there’s not a plan, chances are the organization will lose focus, the sense of mission will dissipate, and effectiveness will wane.  So when Jesus is crucified, buried, raised, ascended to heaven and pours out the Spirit – is there a succession plan in place?  Yes, and it’s you.  God’s succession plan involves all kinds of groups large and small, people gathered around Jesus Christ who will continue his work in the world.

So we might worry a bit when we hear reports that church affiliation is trending down.  Today I’m talking about enjoying our strengths as people called to live and work together as people gathered by the good news of Jesus Christ.  And I do this fully aware that church affiliation is on a downward trend in our culture.  If church was a stock, the general consensus in our culture would be “sell.”  It’s past its peak and is now in decline.  Fewer and fewer young people are choosing to belong to churches. 

Fifty years ago, more people went to church.  Were people just naturally more godly and faithful fifty years ago?  Of course not.  Fifty years ago, the currents of the river called “culture” carried most people to church.  Most people belonged to some kind of church.  It didn’t take much thought or planning.  It just sort of happened by default.  So more people used to belong to congregations, but it meant less.

Now fewer people belong to congregations like ours, but it means more.  Now the currents of our culture are carrying people away from congregational life.  Actually the currents are carrying young people away from belonging to almost anything.  Young people aren’t “joiners.”  They tend not to like or trust or value institutions and organizations, including congregations.  It’s just part of the cultural atmosphere. 

Now part of this lack of commitment to the rhythms of gathering for worship – by young and old and in-between, is a bit foolish and self-indulgent.  To be a person who gathers for worship infrequently is to be a person who doesn’t quite get what’s going on.  You don’t get better at loving God and loving other people by being here once a month.  Just like you don’t get better at dance, or playing piano, or painting, or math, by doing it once a month.  So yes, part of what I need to say is to remind us that deepening our friendships, that sharing our lives, and confessing our sins together takes lots of time, and a commitment to being together - often. 

But we also have to realize that there are larger forces at play in how we shape our lives. 

The rhythm of life in the 21^st century is different.  Weekends are no longer special.  Life happens across all seven days.  No one is pushing pause on the weekend anymore.  Many of you work on weekends.  Quite frankly, because many of us have done well economically, we have disposable income so that we can and do travel on the weekends.  We travel to experience new things, to be in a different place, to share time with friends elsewhere, or to follow our kids’ activities. 

I don’t think this is any sort of apocalyptic tragedy.  I do think it’s unlikely to change.  And as a pastor, I honestly have no idea what to do about it.  My guess is that in years to come we’ll need to offer a variety of smaller services during the week for those who will be away on the weekend.  And we’ll have to invest in technology and provide more digital resources for people who can’t connect physically this week but who do want to stay connected to the congregation’s life and ministry.  We have to learn to embody the good news in ways that make sense for our culture.  We’ll need to change and adapt creatively.

I too am part of the younger generation that tends not to join organizations like churches.  And so I’d like to defend them a bit here.  I don’t think the trend against joining organizations like churches suggests a lack of virtue or character in young people.  I think it’s an understandable response to a pretty merciless and dehumanizing economy.  Young people grow up fully aware that large employers have no loyalty to employees in a cutthroat economy.  Corporations in a market economy view employees not as whole, complex people but instead as “labor cost,” a liability to profitability.  So young people respond to a lack of loyalty with their own lack of loyalty.  If you can cut me loose at any time, then I’ll respond by hopping from job to job for slightly better wages whenever it suits me.  It’s a vicious circle.  But the result is – young people aren’t very romantic or trusting about organizations of any kind, including churches.

The other feature of culture I’d like to point out is an attention shift.  Both in terms of news and entertainment, our attention has shifted away from local relationships to global and digital realities.  You might not think the rise of 24/7 news has altered your life and imagination, but it has.  It teaches you that what matters is what makes the news.  And what makes the news is always something happening somewhere else, in a bigger and more important place.  Your attention is drawn away from local matters – where you could actually make a difference – to some other distant place.

The same dynamic is at work in entertainment – social media platforms, fascination with celebrity culture, and the availability of digital connections to anyone anywhere tends to draw our attention away from where we are.  All this makes us less present, less available to our friends and neighbors.  We know more about political candidates and Hurricane Patricia than we do about the struggles of people closer to us, the ones that we could actually do something about. 

All this makes it harder to be a church in the 21^st century.  We have to work much harder to make a compelling case that God is in the business of gathering local people together in face to face situations to share their lives and make a difference in the places where they live.  So it’s a bit of an uphill battle.  It’s more counter-cultural.  But it makes it much more interesting and exciting, much more of an adventure.  To be gathered by God’s Spirit, to share our lives with other people learning what good news means for us and our neighbors, this is something you can’t get anywhere else. 

God’s succession plan is us.  We are the ones chosen by God, empowered and gifted by the Holy Spirit, to continue Jesus’ ministry of healing, caring, feeding, forgiving and blessing one another.  Local little congregations like ours are God’s answer to our thirst for meaning and purpose in life.  This is the strange thing about the good news: only by tying yourself to the life of a congregation will you ever find real freedom.  Only by making significant sacrifices for the good of a community will you ever find deep joy.

Politics are important – because good governance, wise leadership, and a just distribution of resources are necessary for life.  The economy is important – a framework for nurturing creativity and innovation and productivity and unleashing people to use their gifts to make the world a better place and to earn a living by doing good work – that too is necessary for life.  But God didn’t choose politics, empires, or governments to carry on Jesus’ work in the world.  God didn’t choose economies or corporations to carry on Jesus’ work.  God chose little bands of friends learning to love and care for each other as they gather around the crucified and risen Christ.  God chose you and me.

And thank heavens people don’t show up here out of guilt or obligation anymore!  We gather here because we want to be a part of something big and beautiful and powerful.  We want a way of life that connects us to others in healing ways.  But we also want a project large enough to unleash our best gifts and our deepest energies.  We want to be chosen by God’s Spirit – like Matthias – to bring our gifts and energies into the life of a people who are all about good news.