Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
September 21, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

As most of you know, I usually preach from the Scripture selections contained in the Revised Common Lectionary. Sometimes the lectionary strings together related passages in consecutive weeks in such a way that a pattern emerges. We’re dealing with such a situation this week. Those of you who were here last week may recall that the Gospel lesson from Matthew featured Jesus asking the Disciples who they said he was. Peter answered "The Messiah, the Christ," then proceeded to prove that although he said the right words he had no clue what they meant. When Jesus said it meant he must undergo suffering, death, and resurrection, Peter argued with him. Last week we talked about how Peter was stuck in the wisdom of the world and didn’t get how different from that "wisdom" God’s alternative, paradoxical, divine wisdom is.

When I looked at the Gospel lesson for this morning I thought it was déjà vu all over again, to quote that sage Yogi Berra. Our lesson this week begins with something virtually identical to part of last week’s lesson. Last week we had: "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." This week we have: "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again." Last week we had Peter proving he had no idea what Jesus was talking about by trying to talk Jesus out of fulfilling this destiny. This week we once again have Disciples proving yet again that they were clueless. Jesus has just told them that being the Son of Man, that is, being the Christ, means not earthly greatness but rather suffering and death at the hands of the world. Only then could the triumph of resurrection come. So what do they do? They start arguing about which of them is the greatest. Jesus the Christ, who truly is the greatest of them all, has just told them that he’s not about greatness, at least not in worldly terms. His destiny is not to be exalted but to be tortured and crucified, and they just don’t get it. We’re told they did not understand what he said, and then they proved that fact beyond any reasonable doubt. They went off on a tangent directly opposed to the teaching of their leader. Like Peter last week, they were stuck in the wisdom of the world. Jesus was teaching and living a radically different, paradoxical, divine wisdom, and they didn’t get it.

Well, I thought, that’s all very well and good; but I preached on those themes last week. Why is the lectionary giving me the very same themes again the very next week? Haven’t those guys ever had a pastor gig that called on them to preach every week? Haven’t they ever had to struggle with how not to keep saying the same thing over and over again week after week? Why are they doing this to me?

Well, that little moment of narcissism passed quickly enough. It passed when I remembered that this afternoon our church renewal taskforce is hosting an all church potluck with presentations by the taskforce members on three possible areas of mission focus for our church. When I remembered that, I took another look at this week’s Gospel lesson with an eye toward whether there might be something there that could teach us something about what it means to be church, that could shed some light on the work the renewal taskforce has been doing and offer some explanation of why they are approaching their task the way they are. Fortunately, of perhaps providentially, it turns out that there is. That lesson is found in the way this week’s Gospel passage presents a nuance to Jesus’ teaching that wasn’t present in last week’s lesson. Let’s take a closer look.

Clearly, Jesus knew that his Disciples had been arguing about something or other as they passed through Galilee on the way to the Jesus’ movement’s home base in Capernaum, but he didn’t know what they had been arguing about. Or at least he didn’t let on that he did. He asked them what it was, and they realized how silly their argument had been, how out of touch with the master’s teachings, and they were ashamed to say anything. Well, as is so often the case in the Gospel stories about Jesus, it turns out that he really knew what the others were thinking all along; and he sat down once again to try to set them straight. Can’t you just hear him saying "Shish! Aren’t these guys ever going to get it?"

He said to them: "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." Here’s Jesus once again saying things that at first blush are utter nonsense. To the world, first and lass are opposites. You can be one, or you can be the other; but being one doesn’t make you the other. To the world, absolutely the worst way to go about being first is to set out to be last. Absolutely the last way to become the master, that is, to become successful, to become someone the world looks up to, admires, and respects, is to act the servant. Servants are of low estate in the eyes of the world. Our goal, the world says, should be to have servants, not to be one. Jesus knew better. Jesus knew that with God it is different. Being the servant of all makes you first-maybe not in the eyes of the world but where it counts, in the eyes of God.

So what does that have to do with the work of the renewal taskforce? I originally called that group the ad hoc committee on church growth and evangelism. (You can see why I’ve changed it to renewal taskforce. My native verbosity had gotten the better of me I guess.) The idea is to work on ways to grow this church, to make it more "successful," to attract new members to make the church bigger, to increase pledges and other giving. We may never be first in Monroe in terms of size, but we can’t help but think of the work of the renewal taskforce as coming up with ways to move us in that direction.

Tonight, when the renewal taskforce folks make their presentations to us, they will not talk about ways to make the church bigger, richer, more successful. Rather, they will talk about ways in which this church might become more of a servant to this community. They will, in other words, focus on mission. There really are two reasons for that emphasis. One is quite worldly. All the best literature on church growth tells us, and tells us so repeatedly and consistently that we get sick to death of hearing it, that if a church just sits on its hands and worries about attracting new members it will fail. The experts tell us that if our principal concern is attracting new people to the church we will fail. That has been the experience of every recognized expert on church growth. The way to grow a church, they say, is not to sit in the church and worry about how to get more of the community into the church but to get the church out into the community. In other words, the way to grow a church is through mission and faithful outreach.

The second reason for the renewal taskforce’s focus on mission is theological, and it is stated quite bluntly in this morning’s Gospel lesson. Jesus told us: Don’t worry about making yourselves the first, the best, the biggest, the most "successful." That is not your calling as Christians. Rather, make yourselves the last of all. I think we should understand that part of the directive as meaning that we are not to think of or worry about ourselves. That’s the wrong emphasis for a faithful follower of Christ. Rather, be servant of all. Seek to know not how to make yourselves great but how to serve God and God’s creation. This divine wisdom coincides perfectly with the worldly wisdom of the church growth experts. Don’t fixate on church growth. Rather, strive to be more faithful servants of Christ and of God’s world.

The experts say that will grow a church. Well, maybe it will, and maybe it won’t. I certainly pray that it does. From the perspective of the faithful, however, it really doesn’t matter if it does or not. What matters is whether we as a congregation become more faithful disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ. Following any or all of the possible areas of mission focus that you will hear about this evening will do that. And, I think, they will also grow the church.

So I hope all of you will be here tonight. The presentations tonight are the beginning of the taskforce’s work, not its culmination. The three possible areas of mission focus you will hear about-senior citizen issues, justice issues in the local Latino community, and open and affirming issues-are suggestive and not exhaustive of the possibilities. The taskforce will almost certainly have other presentations for you in the future on other areas of social and mission concern. Still, this small group of faithful, committed people, has made a wonderful start. I want publicly to express my thanks to them for their dedication and effort. I want to invite others of you to join us. We are doing good work, and we actually have fun doing it. As we discern how we might better be servants of God’s people and God’s creation here in Sky Valley and in the world, we will be growing as disciples of Christ. That’s the main thing. God willing, we will also grow as a church.