2009-03-22 - "A Great Time to Live"

"A Great Time to Live"
Living in the trenches of life
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. David McMaster
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Text: Psalm 4

“Will you be okay?” I asked.

“Hopefully,” he replied, “I've weathered downturns before but this one has me a bit concerned.”

That's one of a number of conversations I have had over the past few months with individuals who have been affected by the economy. A year ago, many people had never heard of asset-backed-commercial-paper, sub-prime loans, and Ponzi schemes. For months now, they're all the talk at the water cooler, in the coffee shops, and at evening dinners. The economic blight has hit businesses, investors, workers and we should probably expect the downturn to worsen as unemployment exacerbates the problems of already low consumer demand.

In the face of potential depression, the spectre of John Maynard Keynes has risen as governments attempt to stimulate the economy. The sheer size of the bailout is resulting in not only deficit spending but printing money and those things have long term consequences. Eventually, they will push interest rates up, result in higher taxes, and feed inflationary fires. All things that are sure to curb future growth so that not only these days but the next few years are looking a little problematic. John and many others are already feeling it and getting concerned. People are already echoing the thought of a line in the psalms, “Who will show us any good (4:6)?” Are things ever going to get better?

As the psalmist penned Psalm 4, he could look back to a time when people were happy, “when their grain and wine abounded (4:7).” But things had taken a turn for the worse. For whatever reason, whether war or famine, the economy had turned. People were hurting and were looking for someone to blame. They questioned God. They questioned the psalmist who was probably a priest, and the psalmist's role (4:2). He was being unjustly accused, the subject of vain words and lies (4:2). People were struggling and sat around, complaining about him and saying, “O that we might see some good (4:6; NRSV).”

Life has not been that much better in many churches these days. Over the past ten days or so, I have had two conversations with individuals lamenting the state of the church. Both could look back a generation or two and see a strong powerful organization that was engaged and engaging. One looked back and spoke of a church that was packed on Sunday mornings. “Growing up in that environment,” he said, “we had the feeling that it would always be. But I guess if the Berlin wall can come down, so too can a church.” With heaviness of heart he continued to speak of decline and the closing of the doors. The other man could look back to the day when his church had 1,200 members. “Now,” he says, “We have 26. We cannot afford to keep the building. I love this place but the roof needs fixed and we can't afford it. People just don't seem to be interested in church anymore.” And as I was working on this text, I could almost hear him say, “O that we might see some good.”

In a number of ways, the tide has changed. We are entering a period when these days may not be the easiest of days in which to live. But, less we become too disheartened, it is intriguing to think about how different individuals have handled adverse times and how they made them into great times, reaching new heights of success.

One thinks of Victor Hugo, for instance. During his early years, he enjoyed tremendous success. He was called the “pet of the populace,” the “pride of the theatre,” the “glory of Paris.” Then Napoleon III rose to power. During his time, tyranny began to grow and Hugo stood against it. Of course, when one tries to do such things to people in power, there are risks, and for Hugo an edict of banishment meant nearly 19 years away from his beloved city. His life became a shadow of its former self. Living was much more difficult for him. His biographer wrote that, “It was a deplorable experience” and yet, out of those years came his greatest work. He said that fateful period was “miraculously inspired. “Books that were far stronger than everything that had gone before …came from his hand,” and “he became twice the size of the man he had been.” Even Hugo himself exclaimed, “Why was I not exiled before!” Whereas many would sit back in tragic times and say, “Who will show us any good?” Hugo made a difficult time a great time and accomplished a great deal.

One thinks of Martin Luther. In the early 16th century, Luther was a faithful man living in the midst of an errant church. The church had fallen prey to the problems associated with power and wealth. It had fallen ill and was leading individuals astray, preaching inter alia that peace with God could be bought through support of the grand building schemes in Rome. Just send in your money and heaven awaits you no matter what. Taking on the church hierarchy, however, was a dangerous move in those days. Many had faced the Inquisition and lost. It was a difficult time for a man of faith to live. Yet Luther stepped up to the plate of life. He named the abuses and nailed his 95 theses onto the door of the church in Wittenburg. When opposition came, he stood strong. While others sat around saying, “Who will show us any good,” Luther stood up and made a difficult chapter in the life of the church into a great chapter as the winds of reformation blew right across Europe. You can think of Winston Churchill bringing encouragement to the British people during the war. You can think in Canada of Terry Fox and how he handled adversity and taught us all something about life.

What I would like to suggest to you today is that difficult as these days may be or become, whether we speak of the economy or the church, or anything else that can affect us as individuals, we have choices. We can sit around and complain and say, “O that we might see some good,” or we can use these times to effect something significant and great.

You can apply this to any kind of difficult days, but I want to speak to you for a few moments longer about the church and what it is, and what it has become, and the decline, and churches closing, and many even in our own presbytery which are struggling. Maybe we are sheltered from it a bit here at TEMC, but things are difficult for the church at large. If we compared attendance 30 years ago with now, if we compared the demographics of the congregation then and now, we'd notice the issues. We can sit around and do nothing, or we can take stock, perhaps shake off the shackles of past, and enter into a new day of being the church.

Perhaps for too long now the church has trusted in the past. It has relied on the work and patterns of former generations. The former generations did good work. They were successful in their own day. But success in that day does not translate into success today. The world has moved on and the same forms and methods that worked in the 19th and 20th centuries do not seem to address the culture of the 21st century.

Maybe we have to start asking some big questions. In the past, for instance, it was fashionable to have denominations. We had Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. Within Protestantism, we had United and Anglican, Presbyterian and Lutheran, Baptist and Pentecostal, Mennonite, Brethren, a few independent Methodists and a host of others, each one claiming to have a corner on the truth and be the true church. These denominations continue, yet there are knowledgeable people in every congregation who know that the church's real issue is not with the Baptists or the Anglicans or any other denomination around the corner, but with the world and with the secular worldview that excludes God. Some people are saying that denominationalism is a thing of the past. What are we to do with that?

I'm asking questions here, food for thought. What about ministry? In the past, we had a model of ministry that dictated that ordained persons did the work of ministry whilst the laity were ministered to and were more passive. In The United Church, of course, we have come a long way in that regard, but is there further to go? And if there is, what is to become of ordination?

What about worship styles? Are traditional models of worship working? Not that we need to let go of cherished forms of worship, but do we need to provide other forms that would work for others and, seemingly, other generations to glorify God in ways that they appreciate? Why is it that the worship in more evangelical churches is attracting so many? Why are some churches attracting young people and not others? Do we need to take what is important about worship from the past, mix it with something new and come up with something that will address a new generation and glorify God in refreshing ways? Worship in the future may be more multiform, incorporating various styles.

What about outreach? This may be a great time for the church to think about being relevant again. In being relevant, we need to take stock of what is commonly called post-modern culture. We need to recognize that our great city is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultured, multi-faith, post-modern, complex, mosaic of individuals and peoples. The assumptions and notions of yester-year do not work for all of them. The evangelical notion of walking up to some kid who is wearing headphones and throwing a basketball and telling him, “you need to be saved,” will not work. They don't have the context to deal with it. The more liberal church notion of just going out and doing some good in the world probably won't work either. People will take our acts of kindness, be thankful and then carry on. We no longer live in a world that connects service with Christ and the church. We are part of an environment that completely lacks the context to understand what we do or any talk of Jesus and salvation. Most people today do not have half a dozen years of religious education, i.e. Christian teaching, from Sunday schools or from ministers dropping into the local public schools. Most do not step into a church regularly enough to get any real sense of what God is all about. This is a different world and the church needs to gear up for it. We need to gear up to work with people of various backgrounds, people of various beliefs, people who are so influenced philosophically by pluralism and relativism that they cannot conceive a god in any absolute sense. This is a time when the church needs to go out with no assumptions whatsoever. It needs to go back to talking about God and simply telling the story of Jesus without theological jargon. We need to go with grace and love into the highways and the byways of life, into the pubs and the restaurants and the arenas where people are … because they are not here. We must walk as Jesus walked among “tax collectors and sinners,” and when opportunities arise share the story in relevant ways. Some would sit around and ask, “Who will show us any good?” This is a great time for the church to get out of its shell, recover its mission, and be relevant with God's message in a complex age. It is a difficult order, but if we will seek to fill it, this may be a great time in which to live and be the church.

Finally, I want to suggest to you that this could be a great time for conviction and trust. We live at a time when issues abound. We live in a time when individuals want answers to the countless moral and ethical questions and to the dilemmas they face in life. We live at a time of economic downturn, at a time of war, when Canadians soldiers are coming back in caskets. We live in a time where there seems to be more violence on our streets and on our televisions, things that influence our children. Christianity can speak to these things. It can speak if we are moved by strong convictions.

A couple of years ago, I was speaking with a bishop and superintendent of a United Methodist Conference in the north eastern part of the U.S. They had just closed a number of churches and even though they themselves would be classified as part of the liberal church, they said to me, “The liberal experiment that we have had over the last 50 years is over. We can't afford it any longer … we keep closing churches.” I was reminded of something that Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote in the early 1940s. He, a champion of liberalism, was concerned that the liberal church had undercut the word of God too much, simplified the gospel too much, told the intellectually perplexed, “You need not believe this to be a Christian and you need not believe that.” We have pared down the gospel, he said, shrunk and reduced it until some preachers seem to be playing a game to see how little a person can believe and still be a Christian.

That being said, we cannot embrace fundamentalism either, that which would champion the Bible, but present a theology and practice so out of date and poorly thought through, so at times, ungracious, at times militant, that few today can accept it.

But is there a middle ground? Is there a balance where we pay attention to our world, pay attention to our universities and scholarship, and biblical scholarship and theology, yet still hold fast to what it means when we read something and say, “this is the word of God?” Is there a place for us to appreciate that we are a part of a confessional body, the church whereby we hold some things to be sacred because they are concerned with God? Can we once again stand alongside the church throughout the ages and with it speak from the word of God with integrity and conviction about the issues of the day? If we do otherwise, we assign ourselves to reflecting the ebbs and flows of societal opinion. But this, this day, may be a great time to re-claim our foundation, to reconnect with the Word and from it garner great convictions about God, about Christ, about ourselves, about the church, about the world and to go out and offer hope to people.

So I am saying today that difficult as this world may be and may become, this is an era in which Christianity can speak! Maybe the church has been faltering, maybe we're experiencing a difficult time. But we have choices and with God's help it can be a great time in which to live. We can choose to sit and say, “Who will show us any good?” Or we can choose to cast aside the prevalent mood which, like a fog, has settled down around us. We can tackle it, we can be active and be like a northerly wind that blows the fog away and give us a clearer day. We can turn this day into one of potential. We can rise, work with the past but cast off the shackles of the past, to take what is good and remould it in relevant ways to meet the new day, and armed with strong convictions, convictions from the word of God, we can rise and be the church again, God's arm in the world, in our nation, in our communities.

To close, there are a couple of things that I would ask you to think about: The church needs God, the church needs the Spirit of God to be working in our midst. In your prayers, ask God to be with the church in a new and fresh way. Ask God to be with our church in particular, we have a long range planning committee that is working on some of these things. Ask God that they be given insight. Then ask God, “What can I do in this age to make this a great age in which to live, a great age in which to be the church?” Amen.