An Old Church Doing New Things [Faith+Hope+Love Week 2]

Isaiah 6:1-8

I Cor. 15:1-11

  

We are an old church doing new things.  And both parts – the “old” and the “new” – are important.  We are an old church doing new things.

The building we’re sitting in was built in 1925.  But this is our third building.  This congregation was founded in 1859.  But we’re older than that.  We’re part of a network of Reformed Protestant congregations that emerged from the European Reformations in the middle of the 16^th century.  But we’re even older than that.  Together with the worldwide church, we confess the Apostles’ Creed together and we read Holy Scripture together every week in a way that connects back to the very earliest followers of Jesus.

 

We’re an old church, but we’re doing new things.  We’re not trying to become a perfect imitation of a first-century church.  We’re after a vibrant, meaningful way of life that connects us to the living Christ in our midst.  The questions we’re asking are about what the good news of Jesus Christ looks like for ordinary people like us in the early part of the 21^st century.  We cannot simply keep repeating all the answers that worked for generations before us.  We’re looking for fresh expressions of faith for our time and place. 

In today’s reading, the Apostle Paul reminds us that we have the good news about God’s love because it has been “traditioned” down to us.  Paul writes, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance . . . “ (v. 3).  Paul’s language here – about “passing on” or “passing along” is the language of “tradition.”

Now in the ancient world, “tradition” was a positive word.  To live within a tradition was a good thing.  But in our world - where change and discovery and innovation are just part of the air we breathe – “tradition” might worry some of us.  For many of us, the word “tradition” has a bad reputation.  It represents what’s past, what’s old and stale and lifeless.

So it might be difficult for us to hear that living with tradition is at the very heart of a healthy way of life.  Living with tradition is at the very heart of being a church that gathers around Jesus Christ.  So what is it that Paul claims has been “passed on” or “traditioned” to us? 

“For what I received I passed on [traditioned] to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Aramaic for Peter], and then to the Twelve” (v. 3-5).

This early Christian summary of the faith is short.  According to Paul, this is the only interesting thing the church has to say: the Christ who died and was buried was raised on the third day and is now with us and among us as the living Christ.  This means that God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s grace, and God’s power are not something confined to a distant past.  This old story continues to be the newness that shapes our lives and opens new possibilities for us and for all others.

So how can this old tradition inspire contemporary creativity?  How can what’s old energize us for what’s new and what’s next?  Before we can even answer that, let’s at least try to be honest about the massive changes that we’re experiencing as people of the 21^st century.

Last week Oliver came downstairs and asked me if I’d heard of a DJ named “Marshmallow.”  “No,” I said.  “Well, he’s playing a concert within the digital world of the videogame Fortnite,” Oliver said.  So in other words, if you have ever been to a live musical performance where someone is playing an actual instrument, this is not like that.  This is a DJ, which means that he digitally samples and manipulates music on a computer.  And the place where you can see him do this isn’t a geographical place.  It’s a digital place.  You have to know where to go within a new digital world called “Fortnite” in order to listen to the music.  I am not sure whether you can buy a concert t-shirt.  But I guess you save money on parking. 

The digital world is changing, but so are demographics.  The Kansas Health Foundation produced a report last year pointing to changes in the makeup of future Kansas residents.  The report predicts that Kansas will get bigger, browner, and more urban.  Over the next several decades, our state population will grow. But most of that growth will happen in the Hispanic population.  And most of that growth will happen in city centers. 

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, corporate executives shared plans to automate as much of their labor force as possible.  “A 2017 survey by Deloitte found that 53 percent of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72 percent by next year.”  One technology executive predicts “that artificial intelligence will eliminate 40 percent of the world’s jobs within 15 years.”

We could go on and on about the pace of change, about how different our lives are from the lives of our grandparents; about how different our grandchildren’s lives will be from our own.  But all these changes do not cut us off from the ancient traditions about God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.  These changes make it crucial that we stay connected to these visions of a new way of life.

The Christians in Corinth were far enough removed from the actual life of Jesus that they needed to receive the tradition and to make creative use of it in their own day. 

When you read the words of the Apostle Paul, writing about a tradition that is of “first importance,” you are already witnessing an early Christian effort to make sense of the old tradition in a new way.

One of the unique things about being Presbyterian is that we take seriously the call to keep listening for the new things God’s Spirit wants to do in our time and place.  The slogan for this is “Reformed and always reforming.”  That is a confession by Presbyterians that the work of “reforming” – of changing, adapting, and innovating – is part of what faithfulness looks like.  Many of our more conservative friends read the Bible as a book with all the final answers about life.  For them, the Bible is the end of every conversation.  For us, the Bible is a record of the witness of the earliest Christians to the living reality of Jesus Christ.  For us, the Bible is the beginning of the conversation. 

We take the Bible seriously by entering into conversation with the earliest Christians about what the good news of Jesus Christ should look like in our own situation.  We welcome the ancient tradition.  But we take responsibility for the creativity that faithfulness requires. 

Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan put it this way: Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized [total agreement] tradition.

The tradition is not a set of doctrines or beliefs.  It is nothing other than the living Christ.  That’s why Paul recounts all those to whom the risen Christ appeared.  The risen Christ appeared to ordinary people who had bet their lives that God’s new kingdom is the way of hope; that the hard work of forgiveness is better than anger and revenge; that care for the poor and the sick is what makes our lives important.

But don’t miss this: Christ is as alive and real for us as he was for those early followers.  We too have our own experience of the risen Christ.  You may have felt this risen Christ as a new energy in our midst.  You may experience the risen Christ as a pulsing aliveness.  This Christ might appear to you as a buzzing, life-shaping reality in, with, and under your ordinary life.  Christ may appear to you in disguise – simply as the resilience and determination to keep going, keep loving, and stay open when life is hard.  Christ may appear in the softening of something hard and unforgiving in your life; or as a growing ability to love those who are difficult to love.  Christ can appear to us as a challenging call into service and compassion; or as a peaceful warmth that washes over us in times of distress and pain; or as an encounter with Holiness that calls you into a new life (Isaiah 6).

The risen Christ can appear to you in these ways and in many more.  “By the grace of God I am what I am,” says Paul.  “And God’s grace to me was not without effect.”  God’s grace comes to us in the risen Christ and flips a switch, turns us on, brings us to life, energizes us for the work of love and friendship and care and forgiveness.

We keep innovating because faithfulness to the living Christ requires it.  The very establishment of Reformed congregations in the 16^th century was a daring and creative project.  So was the full inclusion of women in the life and leadership of the church in the past century.  So was the full inclusion and blessing of same-sex couples and LGBTQ persons more recently.  And the living Christ will continue to lead us out into new territory.

We are an old church doing new things because we know that old churches repeating the old things is not a faithful way for us to live.  And so sometimes we mix it up.  We gather on a Sunday morning in work clothes to take on community projects and share God’s love by painting and weeding and cleaning and visiting and encouraging.  (Our next Sunday Serve is planned for May 5, by the way).

Sometimes we gather around tables down in Zimmerman Hall and worship together over breakfast and conversation.  (We call that Breakfast Church, and our next one is coming up March 3).

We’ve started a series of Friday night conversations we call “Theology on Tap.”  We’re still experimenting with this model – but it’s a welcoming environment over food and drink where people can talk about things that matter to them.

We’re on our third or fourth installment of 4X4 Dinner Groups, because people want to share their lives with others.  And eating dinner together is the simplest way to meet new people and develop lasting relationships.

Our Media Task Force will be making an initial recommendation to Session this week about how to best invest a $50,000 grant from our Presbytery to upgrade the media capabilities of our building.

This is a place for people who want a mixture of rootedness and exploration; who want to be both ancient and modern.  This is a community for people who want something with roots, with depth, a way of life anchored in something large and holy and ancient.  And yet we want this old faith to be new.  We want something fresh, alive, energizing, vibrant, and real.  We want a faith that directs us to the future.  May God help us pay attention to the living Christ here among us.