Over the years, lots of people have
asked me why I go to church. I have asked myself that question from time to time. In both cases, the question is particularly
awkward when the answer is that I had
to come because I was the preacher.
Of course, that may not be much of an
answer. After all, people do not need to
come to church to be bored by me—I can bore you over dinner, at a baseball
game, during a long car ride, or in any number of locations at the Chelsea
Fair. Attending church just allows you
to be bored by me while you’re seated uncomfortably.
Indeed, it
might seem as though there is very little we can do inside of church that we can’t do outside of it. Outside of
church, we can still sing, pray, worship, read the Bible, celebrate life, and
praise God. There are certain
ceremonies and sacraments that are usually observed with the trappings of a
church around us—like marriage, baptism, and the Lord’s supper—but most of us only receive communion once a month and, with any luck, we get married with even less
frequency.
This point holds true for our desire to
do good in the world as well. By mobilizing our energies and pooling our resources we
are able to do things through the church that
would be difficult or impossible to do individually. Every year, this church touches the lives of
thousands of people we don't even know by serving them breakfast on Saturday mornings, by feeding them through Faith
in Action, by visiting them at homeless shelters, by sustaining them through
donations to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, by providing them with Christmas presents as part of the "angel tree" program, and so on and so on.
But someone
could argue that this isn’t a good enough answer to the question “Why
church?” After all, we could also do this
sort of good in the world by contributing to and working with countless worthwhile secular
organizations, like the American Red Cross, Oxfam, UNICEF, and Doctors Without
Borders. Indeed, if our goal were only to make that sort of difference in
the world, then the question “Why church?” might seem very hard to answer.
Whenever this
question comes up I am reminded of a story about the great Zen teacher Shunryu
Suzuki. Suzuki wrote a famous book
called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and
over the years he attracted many students.
On one occasion, after an evening lecture, a man raised his hand and said:
“You say that Zen is everywhere. So why
do we have to come to the Zen Center?”
“Zen is everywhere,” Suzuki
replied. “But, for you, Zen is right here.”
This morning, I want to suggest that, while possibilities for making a
difference in the world are everywhere, for us
they are right here. This is true for at least four compelling
reasons.
First: by making a difference in the world through the church we convey the message of God’s deep and abiding
love to those who badly need to hear it.
Like all of you, I have been on the receiving end of many kind and
generous gestures. They are wonderful
things, even when taken only as evidence of someone’s good and gracious
heart. But such acts are especially powerful
when we sense that they reflect something else as well: that God is present in our
lives, here and now; that we are loved beyond describing by a force
beyond imagining; that we are never alone, never abandoned,
never ever forgotten.
Second: by making a difference in the world through the church we glorify God.
This does not just mean that we give God the credit; it means that we give
people a deeper and clearer sense of who we believe God actually is—something that matters immensely
these days. Please permit me for a
moment to overcome my natural shyness and to be blunt. If people see a church that is remote,
disconnected, exclusive, judgmental, humorless, and joyous only in its sense of
smug self-superiority—and, let’s be honest, people do see churches that are like that—then they will understandably conclude
that this may be what God is like, or, at least, that this is what “church
people” think God is like. On the other
hand, if people see a church that is involved, engaged, welcoming, inclusive, loving, forgiving,
celebratory, and joyful, then they will conclude that this might be what
God is like, or, at least, that we sure think so.
Third: by making a difference in the world through
the church we unite the church. We can and do disagree about all sorts of things: the kind of music
that moves us; the proper structure of worship services; the best way to
interpret the scriptures; how we should pray; etc., etc. Major fissures develop in some churches over
the color of the carpeting in the sanctuary.
But we can absolutely unite behind our efforts to fulfill the commands
of Jesus that we serve others, that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that we
feed the hungry, that we welcome strangers, that we clothe the needy, and that
we visit the sick and downcast. We can absolutely unite behind our desire to be a "Matthew 5:14 church," shining our light out into the dark corners of the world.
In fact, this
turns out to be not only a powerful way to unite the church, but to help it
grow. In prior sermons, I have talked
about Sara Miles, the author of the wonderful book Take This Bread. As you may recall
or otherwise know, in the year 2000 Sara Miles founded a food pantry at an
Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The
endeavor grew and grew, until it now buys and gives away somewhere between nine
to twelve tons of food each week. And do you know where they give it away? In the sanctuary. As the pantry has grown, the volunteer base
has grown right along with it, bringing countless people to church who might
otherwise never have found their way inside.
In this
spirit, I want to issue a friendly challenge.
Perhaps you’re reluctant to invite people to join you at church because
you’re unsure about where they stand on spiritual matters. Or maybe you’ve extended such invitations
without success. Well, how about asking
them to join you in volunteering to help with one of our church’s many service
activities? Sometimes this cuts through
concerns and sensitivities that might otherwise exist. I recall an instance many years ago, when I asked
someone to join me on a Habitat for Humanity work day sponsored by the church I
was then attending in Ann Arbor. My friend
said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure
whether I believe what the Methodists believe.”
I smiled at him and said, “For purposes of this Saturday, the Methodists
believe that you should know how to hit a nail with a hammer.”
Finally, here’s
a fourth reason: by making a difference in the world through the church we strengthen each other to do God’s work. There are, of course, many ways that each of
us takes sustenance from the community of this church. In fact, it's quite an amazing and magical thing to watch: people walk through the front door as strangers and discover they have a community; they walk through the front door alone and discover that they have a family; they walk through the front door weighted down with burdens and the members of this congregation grab whatever they can of it ... and lift. Perhaps the world is, as C.S. Lewis suggested, occupied territory--a battlefield of sorts. Church, if we do it right, can say that this hill has been taken by angels.
But today I want to focus on one way church helps sustain us that might not
yet have found its way into our hearts as fully as it should and that can help
us prepare us to go out into the world and fight the good fight. It is something we do every Sunday. It is the passing of the peace.
For thousands
of years, Christians have passed the peace from one to the other. Of course, this has biblical roots in the way
in which Jesus greeted his disciples, saying “Peace be with you.” (Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 26) But, from the beginning, these words became a
sign—a coda among saintly troublemakers, if you will—exchanged between the followers of Christ before they
got down to the daunting tasks at hand. Thus,
every letter of Paul—every letter—begins
with an invocation of the peace of the Lord.
Think about
that for a moment. Here are the early
disciples of Jesus. They are in the
distinct minority. They are
vilified. They are persecuted. They are seen as enemies of the Roman
Empire—one of the most expansive and powerful empires in the history of the
world. They face insurmountable odds. They understand that any day could bring them
oppression, torture, or even death. And
how do they prepare for this? They say
to each other: “For the struggles of this day, in order to go out and face the
world and make a difference in it, you will need
the peace of Christ. I pray that you
might find it; I pray that you might feel it; I pray that you might share
it with others. Let it be with you.”
Let me be
clear: I am not a passing-of-the-peace-party-pooper. That people in this church pass the peace
with joy and vigor and enthusiasm seems to me entirely appropriate. But I think it is also appropriate—if not
terribly important—to remind ourselves of what we are doing. We are doing something with a storied
and ancient history. We are doing something profoundly
holy. We are helping each other get
ready to do the Lord’s work wherever it needs doing—which, last time I checked,
was everywhere.
So, for today,
when the time for the benediction comes, we are going to pass the peace to one
another—that’s why we didn’t do it earlier.
We will say those ancient words—“May the peace of Christ be with you,”
“And also with you.” And we won’t utter
them out of habit or by way of saying hello or as a prelude to complimenting
someone on their dress or their necktie or their new eyeglasses. Instead, we will exchange these words because
in that moment we will see each other for what we are: ordinary people, living
differently because of the love of Christ, trying to help each other make a
difference in a world that needs all the difference-makers it can find, and that can spare not a single one--especially you.
Amen.
