Sermon Notes for January 14th
January 14th, 2007
“The Fountain of Life”
Psalm 36:5-10; John 2:1-11
1. The scripture reading from John about the miracle at the Wedding feast in Cana can be discussed in a variety of ways. For this morning, I have chosen to look at it in terms of change -- or, more correctly, TRANSFORMATION.
Coming to the wedding feast, Jesus discovers a major problem – there is not enough wine. This would have been an embarrassment and a detriment to a proper celebration of what was supposed to be a joyful event.
And so, after thinking about, Jesus transforms the water into wine. A sign, we are told, of his Divine Power. After that, the party goes on and Jesus goes on his way.
Among other things, what this event indicates for the readers is that Jesus has the power to transform things. Even ordinary everyday things. For this is no dramatic earth changing miracle. It takes place in the commonplace everyday world in a small village among ordinary people.
In other words, the story indicates that Jesus can be anywhere and everywhere. Even here among us in Bemidji. And the power of God is such that it can transform even us …even our church in small ways and perhaps even in large ways.
2. We live in a world that is rapidly being transformed right around us in so many ways that it makes us dizzy at times.
This past week I was talking with some clergy friends who are all my age. We were discussing and lamenting how difficult it is to keep up with things.
For instance, the recent development of YouTube which is an internet device for downloading home produced videos. It only came on the market less than 2 years ago.
During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[9] and was ranked as the 10th most popular website. According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings,[11] where around 44% are female, 56% male, and the 12- to 17-year-old age group is dominant.[12] YouTube's pre-eminence in the online video market is staggering.
On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for $ 1.65 billion.
This event was particularly disturbing to my daughter who happens to have been a classmate at Central High School in St. Paul of one of the young men to who invented YouTube. He is now a multi-millionaire. And he is only 28 years old!
3. Youtube is already having a tremendous impact on the world. Last fall, for instance, the Republican candidate for senate in Virginia made a racial comment to a person who was videotaping him on the campaign. Within a day the video was on YouTube and was seen by thousands and millions of people when the major news networks picked it up. Because of the closeness of that election, many think that this one incident may have cost this person the election. And, not only that, but because of the closeness of the national election – it may have cost the Republican Party control of the United States Senate. All, because of YouTube.
As we know, change is often more difficult as we get older and set in our ways. Young people, it seems, have an easier time learning new technology because they don’t have to overcome old habits and patterns of behavior.
Take the cell phone, for instance. Young people live by it. When my daughter and her friend were here last weekend – they both had cell phones and they were going off every 30 minutes.
Lyle Schaller, a church consultant, says, in his most recent book (he writes a new book every 12 to 18 months) that with cell phoneswe will very soon be able to withdraw cash from ATM machines; purchase items on the internet; watch television; buy and sell stocks; and even listen to sermons!!! Imagine that!
We haven’t gone that far at our church, yet, but the other day Alice Collins emailed me to say that I hadn’t updated my sermons on my blog site (since I was gone over the holidays and have gotten behind). In fact, that is one of the problems … it is hard to keep up nowadays.
4. Yes, the world is being transformed right around us in many, many ways. And this is causing problems for many institutions in our society. For instance, how about newspapers. Statistics show that especially among young people – they get their information from the internet. This last year, alone, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune was sold twice – and the day may be coming when printed newspapers as we know them – may be obsolete.
Or, at least, only limited copies will be produced for us older folks who still feel that there is nothing more relaxing, as one of my clergy friends put it, than “to sit in your chair in the morning with a good cup of coffee reading the paper.” How nostalgic that may be some day.
Yes, things are changing. As we were talking last week, two of the pastors were reminiscing about Star Lake Wilderness Camp down near Pequot Lakes. Star Lake, unlike the other Methodist Camps, like Northern Pines is more rustic and outdoors. And it still features outdoor toilets – or outhouses – as we used to call them. Well, many kids nowadays don’t even know what they are and some are so used to modern indoor plumbing that they can’t handle it all. Let’s face it, the outhouse is a thing of the past. Although, I am not sure anyone is that nostalgic about that piece of technological change.
5. Schools and Universities are being changed, medical practice is changing, and now some cars have GPS systems and actually can talk to the driver and tell them when to stop and exit the freeway.
And so, it is not to be unexpected that religious practices and our theological understanding is also affected by change. And this was the topic of the conference I attended last week. It was interesting and very exciting, really.
The topic was in response to the downward trend in membership in main line Protestant denominations (Lutheran, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian) which has been going on for the last 30 years and what to do about it.
The presenter’s (Diana Butler Bass) main point was that the conventional idea -- that the main line churches are losing out to the more conservative/evangelical churches because we are too liberal and don’t make enough demands on our members is not correct. Not necessarily – at all.
The real reason she said is that we have been moving away from a tradition based society to an intentional society in many ways. And now, the locus of authority is no longer in institutions but in individuals.
6. This was not true during the hey-day of American Protestantism when the church was the guarantor of American values such as hard work (the Protestant Ethic); patriotism; respect for parents; public education; and all the rest. All of this, she said, was beginning to be challenged in the 1960s and 70s for a wide variety of reasons. Then, as I mentioned, came the advent of television and now the internet and cell phones and all the rest.
In short, we are living through a time of unprecedented change which is impacting us in the way we live, think, and understand the world.
As a result, everyone is having a hard time keeping up.
And these changes are often subtle and yet critical to how we understand the church, our faith, and the role of the minister in our life.
And it can be very stressful – as expectations change and we become confused and unable to adapt.
7. For instance, the rate of clergy burn-out is higher now than at any time in the last 60 years. In fact, as I returned to the ministry, I met many of my colleagues leaving the institutional ministry at the same time. Now wonder, I think now, that the Conference was happy to see me!
When I came to Bemidji in 1999 I asked one of my good friends what was the biggest change in the ministry in the last 20 years. And he said, “It’s all about relationships. It’s all about relationships.”
Seems pretty obvious, today, but how many of your remember the days when the minister was supposed to be rather above everyone. You know, someone set apart, who was respected but kept a little at arm length. And who was supposed to act in some sort of “religious way” – being overly pious or talking kind of funny and letting you know all the time that he was probably a lot closer to God than you were.
In fact, when I first came here I went to visit a long time member in the hospital. And the first thing he asked me was, “Are you another one of those phony ministers?” And I said, “Well, I am about as phony as the rest of them!” After that, we got along great.
8. But, this little anecdote reveals a great deal about how the church has and is changing. Imagine saying that to a minister 40 or 50 years ago. It would have been unthinkable.
No, whether we realize it or not, or whether we like it or not, the church is changing, being transformed right around us … and, naturally, it is making us confused, uncomfortable, and wondering where this is all going. And it is not helping that so many younger people, born after 1960 or 70 or 80 have left the church or at least find it somewhat irrelevant to their lives. And some of those are looking elsewhere for spiritual guidance.
Others, naturally have responded by blaming society or the change in values or liberals or television or feminism or the decline in the stability of marriage or any number of things. But, according to Diana Butler Bass, “IT’S NOBODY’S FAULT.” And this is the most hopeful thing, because instead of trying to blame it on something or trying to hold on to the past she suggests that we need to go forward into the future with faith and hope and the willingness to try new things, experiment with new ways, and, at the same time to look back to the past, not the recent past, but to spiritual practices that were part of the church a long time ago and are now been rediscovered like meditation, contemplation, hospitality, and the renewal of the sacraments in worship.
9. About five years ago, a young man walked into my office who I had never met before. Inside of an hour he told me he had grown up in the Presbyterian Church, left it, become a born again evangelical Pentecostal charismatic, graduated from Oak Hills Christian College and after long and careful thought he had decided to join the Methodist Church. He then proceeded to tell me that he had come the conclusion that John Wesley’s doctrine of the Quadrilateral (Reason, Tradition, Scripture, and Experience) was the best way to function theologically in the Post Modern World. At first, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
Well, you all know that this was Brian Manly, and now he is a Duke Seminary in Durham, NC. Brian also was instrumental in starting the EPIC postmodern worship which has now evolved into a blended contemporary postmodern worship on Wednesday nights. And it is still evolving.
When I got back last week, I emailed Brian about Diane Butler Bass and he replied (via the internet):
Butler Bass and others are writing about the postmodern world and the renewal movement among mainline churches.
And he goes on to say:
And you thought I was just some crazy ex. Evangelical coming to his senses by joining a mainline church). Nope, I'm riding the wave man. The emerging church is about to explode and I want to be among the pastors in the UMC who are apart of the renewal movement. Some call it a renewal movement, some call it the emerging church, others just say that it is reclaiming our heritage and practicing old traditions while using 21st century technology. Either way the mainline churches are on the verge of a revival.
Yet, I don't think this movement will catch on everywhere. Some churches are too established in their current methods and models to be renewed. I see a lot of Methodist Churches here in the South that are doing very well financially and will not be so inclined to change anything. I think the renewal will really only happen in those churches that are struggling financially and willing to take some risks with the hopes of attracting more people.
By the way, Brian is doing quite well – and got a 3.0 in his first semester.
The big question, I think, is whether the Methodist Church is ready for Brian.
10. Turning water into wine. Transforming the church. This is at the heart of the question for the church as we move into the postmodern world of the twenty first century.
We can react to it with despair and pessimism and blame others or we can go forward with excitement and accept the challenge to be transformed in our thinking and our practice of Christian life and grow in our hospitality toward others.
Diana Bass spent over two years interviewing and studying 50 mainline churches all across the country that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, we growing and reaching out to others – in other words – were successful. This included all the major denominations. And none of these churches were fundamentalist/conservative evangelical churches – whatever that means.
These were moderate to liberal churches that included conservatives as well as liberals in a new kind of post-traditional church model. Among the characteristics of these churches were the following attributes:
a. they were intentional rather than traditional … in other words while they retained certain values and beliefs of the past they also were willing to go in new directions if they weren’t working any more.
b. They practiced radical hospitality – welcoming people from all walks of life
c. They involved as many members as possible in some kind of personal bible study, prayer, meditation or other spiritual practice outside of Sunday worship
d. They were committed to helping others in the surrounding community through outreach to the poor and other disadvantaged minorities
11. But, intentionality seems to be the key. For instead of saying, “we always done it this way … and repeated the customs of the past, they said, “is it working?” – and if not, created new programs that met the needs of today’s changing world.
Let me illustrate by giving you some examples right here in this church of how we have been and are being intentional:
a. Easter breakfast becomes Palm Sunday dinner
b. Abandoning the monthly church council meeting
c. Changes in UMW
d. Men’s group – Romeos
e. EPIC worship becomes Wed Nite Live
f. Secret Prayer Partners
g. Home communion by lay people
h. Extending our Building Use to a variety of groups including the soup kitchen, yoga, Zen meditation, Evergreen house, the Quakers – in other words – practicing radical hospitality – even to groups we may not understand or agree with completely.
i. And last week we had our first annual meeting without the District Superintendent being present. And it was a lot of fun with a puppet show and better attended than any annual meeting in a long, long time.
12. What is radical hospitality? The author, Dr. Bass, presented two extreme examples that occurred during her research.
A. First – at one church in Arizona that prided itself on its hospitality they pad a male cross dresser to attend church. Afterward he said he was amazed that they treated him like a "real human being."
B. Second – they also studied a big successful mega church where they had a big marketing campaign to recruit new members saying that they were a hospitable church (and they even had signs all over the church which proclaimed how open they were) and yet no one talked to them. And, in addition,they built a $ 750,000 fence all around the property to keep out the poor and homeless in the neighborhood.
Now these are pretty extreme … but you get the idea …
13. And the other thing she talked about – which Brian is so big on … and which I have been getting more and more into is the way in which the changing world is altering our basic assumptions about how we understand God and Who Jesus Christ was and is…
Now, notice I didn’t say that I think we or I should begin to question our basic faith in God or anything like that … not at all … but, what I said was that we may be forced to transform the way we think about and experience who God is and how we practice our Christian ways of spirituality in order to survive as individuals and as a church in the new world we are beginning to live in.
And I am not even saying that Postmodernism is the answer, as some in the secular world seem to being saying. Postmodernism is not THE answer – it is just a way of seeing things which seems to make sense in an increasingly post-traditional world.
And it is hard, if you are older (like me) to get your hands around it. But, let me tell you another story.
The speaker said that she had recently attended a program at a large Episcopal Church on the east coast. It was well attended. After the presentation there was a Q & A time. Suddenly, the group got into a big arguement about Bishop Spong who is extremely liberal and has written books about how the Virgin birth didn't really happen etc. etc. Some accused him of being a heretic. Other defended him saying that he was a hero. Finally, things calmed down. Just then a young boy about 16 came to the microphone and asked the speaker what she thought of the Virgin Birth. But the speaker responded by asking the boy what he thought. And here is what he said:
"I don't understand what this arguement is all about because I think that it is such a beautiful story that it must be true WHERE IT HAPPENED OR NOT.
Now, if you understand this concept -- then you begin to understand postmodern thinking. Because the truth of the story is not in the facts or in the literalness of the Bible -- but in the story itself -- for the story contains a window into Divine Truth told in a narrative form and it has nothing to with the facts because God cannot be explained by facts.
14. Whether it happened or not! And does it really matter? Because what really matters is how we relate to one another:
Do we love and care for each other and for the poor in the world. Are we committed to spreading the good news that God is hear among us in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, healing, teaching, reconciling, and forgiving … that we might become more whole in body, mind, and spirit.
That’s what it is all about. That’s what the Kingdom of God means in our midst … not whether or not we have the Easter Breakfast on Easter or a week early.
The Gospel message, then, for today is that Jesus did turn water into wine … and as far as we are concerned – we are the water – waiting to be transformed again and again.
And, just in case you think I am totally out of it, I just learned on Friday how from Charity (our secretary/bookkeeper) how to do text messaging on my cell phone. Onward and upward!
“The Fountain of Life”
Psalm 36:5-10; John 2:1-11
1. The scripture reading from John about the miracle at the Wedding feast in Cana can be discussed in a variety of ways. For this morning, I have chosen to look at it in terms of change -- or, more correctly, TRANSFORMATION.
Coming to the wedding feast, Jesus discovers a major problem – there is not enough wine. This would have been an embarrassment and a detriment to a proper celebration of what was supposed to be a joyful event.
And so, after thinking about, Jesus transforms the water into wine. A sign, we are told, of his Divine Power. After that, the party goes on and Jesus goes on his way.
Among other things, what this event indicates for the readers is that Jesus has the power to transform things. Even ordinary everyday things. For this is no dramatic earth changing miracle. It takes place in the commonplace everyday world in a small village among ordinary people.
In other words, the story indicates that Jesus can be anywhere and everywhere. Even here among us in Bemidji. And the power of God is such that it can transform even us …even our church in small ways and perhaps even in large ways.
2. We live in a world that is rapidly being transformed right around us in so many ways that it makes us dizzy at times.
This past week I was talking with some clergy friends who are all my age. We were discussing and lamenting how difficult it is to keep up with things.
For instance, the recent development of YouTube which is an internet device for downloading home produced videos. It only came on the market less than 2 years ago.
During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web,[9] and was ranked as the 10th most popular website. According to a July 16, 2006 survey, 100 million clips are viewed daily on YouTube, with an additional 65,000 new videos uploaded per 24 hours. The site has almost 20 million visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings,[11] where around 44% are female, 56% male, and the 12- to 17-year-old age group is dominant.[12] YouTube's pre-eminence in the online video market is staggering.
On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for $ 1.65 billion.
This event was particularly disturbing to my daughter who happens to have been a classmate at Central High School in St. Paul of one of the young men to who invented YouTube. He is now a multi-millionaire. And he is only 28 years old!
3. Youtube is already having a tremendous impact on the world. Last fall, for instance, the Republican candidate for senate in Virginia made a racial comment to a person who was videotaping him on the campaign. Within a day the video was on YouTube and was seen by thousands and millions of people when the major news networks picked it up. Because of the closeness of that election, many think that this one incident may have cost this person the election. And, not only that, but because of the closeness of the national election – it may have cost the Republican Party control of the United States Senate. All, because of YouTube.
As we know, change is often more difficult as we get older and set in our ways. Young people, it seems, have an easier time learning new technology because they don’t have to overcome old habits and patterns of behavior.
Take the cell phone, for instance. Young people live by it. When my daughter and her friend were here last weekend – they both had cell phones and they were going off every 30 minutes.
Lyle Schaller, a church consultant, says, in his most recent book (he writes a new book every 12 to 18 months) that with cell phoneswe will very soon be able to withdraw cash from ATM machines; purchase items on the internet; watch television; buy and sell stocks; and even listen to sermons!!! Imagine that!
We haven’t gone that far at our church, yet, but the other day Alice Collins emailed me to say that I hadn’t updated my sermons on my blog site (since I was gone over the holidays and have gotten behind). In fact, that is one of the problems … it is hard to keep up nowadays.
4. Yes, the world is being transformed right around us in many, many ways. And this is causing problems for many institutions in our society. For instance, how about newspapers. Statistics show that especially among young people – they get their information from the internet. This last year, alone, the Minneapolis Star and Tribune was sold twice – and the day may be coming when printed newspapers as we know them – may be obsolete.
Or, at least, only limited copies will be produced for us older folks who still feel that there is nothing more relaxing, as one of my clergy friends put it, than “to sit in your chair in the morning with a good cup of coffee reading the paper.” How nostalgic that may be some day.
Yes, things are changing. As we were talking last week, two of the pastors were reminiscing about Star Lake Wilderness Camp down near Pequot Lakes. Star Lake, unlike the other Methodist Camps, like Northern Pines is more rustic and outdoors. And it still features outdoor toilets – or outhouses – as we used to call them. Well, many kids nowadays don’t even know what they are and some are so used to modern indoor plumbing that they can’t handle it all. Let’s face it, the outhouse is a thing of the past. Although, I am not sure anyone is that nostalgic about that piece of technological change.
5. Schools and Universities are being changed, medical practice is changing, and now some cars have GPS systems and actually can talk to the driver and tell them when to stop and exit the freeway.
And so, it is not to be unexpected that religious practices and our theological understanding is also affected by change. And this was the topic of the conference I attended last week. It was interesting and very exciting, really.
The topic was in response to the downward trend in membership in main line Protestant denominations (Lutheran, Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian) which has been going on for the last 30 years and what to do about it.
The presenter’s (Diana Butler Bass) main point was that the conventional idea -- that the main line churches are losing out to the more conservative/evangelical churches because we are too liberal and don’t make enough demands on our members is not correct. Not necessarily – at all.
The real reason she said is that we have been moving away from a tradition based society to an intentional society in many ways. And now, the locus of authority is no longer in institutions but in individuals.
6. This was not true during the hey-day of American Protestantism when the church was the guarantor of American values such as hard work (the Protestant Ethic); patriotism; respect for parents; public education; and all the rest. All of this, she said, was beginning to be challenged in the 1960s and 70s for a wide variety of reasons. Then, as I mentioned, came the advent of television and now the internet and cell phones and all the rest.
In short, we are living through a time of unprecedented change which is impacting us in the way we live, think, and understand the world.
As a result, everyone is having a hard time keeping up.
And these changes are often subtle and yet critical to how we understand the church, our faith, and the role of the minister in our life.
And it can be very stressful – as expectations change and we become confused and unable to adapt.
7. For instance, the rate of clergy burn-out is higher now than at any time in the last 60 years. In fact, as I returned to the ministry, I met many of my colleagues leaving the institutional ministry at the same time. Now wonder, I think now, that the Conference was happy to see me!
When I came to Bemidji in 1999 I asked one of my good friends what was the biggest change in the ministry in the last 20 years. And he said, “It’s all about relationships. It’s all about relationships.”
Seems pretty obvious, today, but how many of your remember the days when the minister was supposed to be rather above everyone. You know, someone set apart, who was respected but kept a little at arm length. And who was supposed to act in some sort of “religious way” – being overly pious or talking kind of funny and letting you know all the time that he was probably a lot closer to God than you were.
In fact, when I first came here I went to visit a long time member in the hospital. And the first thing he asked me was, “Are you another one of those phony ministers?” And I said, “Well, I am about as phony as the rest of them!” After that, we got along great.
8. But, this little anecdote reveals a great deal about how the church has and is changing. Imagine saying that to a minister 40 or 50 years ago. It would have been unthinkable.
No, whether we realize it or not, or whether we like it or not, the church is changing, being transformed right around us … and, naturally, it is making us confused, uncomfortable, and wondering where this is all going. And it is not helping that so many younger people, born after 1960 or 70 or 80 have left the church or at least find it somewhat irrelevant to their lives. And some of those are looking elsewhere for spiritual guidance.
Others, naturally have responded by blaming society or the change in values or liberals or television or feminism or the decline in the stability of marriage or any number of things. But, according to Diana Butler Bass, “IT’S NOBODY’S FAULT.” And this is the most hopeful thing, because instead of trying to blame it on something or trying to hold on to the past she suggests that we need to go forward into the future with faith and hope and the willingness to try new things, experiment with new ways, and, at the same time to look back to the past, not the recent past, but to spiritual practices that were part of the church a long time ago and are now been rediscovered like meditation, contemplation, hospitality, and the renewal of the sacraments in worship.
9. About five years ago, a young man walked into my office who I had never met before. Inside of an hour he told me he had grown up in the Presbyterian Church, left it, become a born again evangelical Pentecostal charismatic, graduated from Oak Hills Christian College and after long and careful thought he had decided to join the Methodist Church. He then proceeded to tell me that he had come the conclusion that John Wesley’s doctrine of the Quadrilateral (Reason, Tradition, Scripture, and Experience) was the best way to function theologically in the Post Modern World. At first, I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
Well, you all know that this was Brian Manly, and now he is a Duke Seminary in Durham, NC. Brian also was instrumental in starting the EPIC postmodern worship which has now evolved into a blended contemporary postmodern worship on Wednesday nights. And it is still evolving.
When I got back last week, I emailed Brian about Diane Butler Bass and he replied (via the internet):
Butler Bass and others are writing about the postmodern world and the renewal movement among mainline churches.
And he goes on to say:
And you thought I was just some crazy ex. Evangelical coming to his senses by joining a mainline church). Nope, I'm riding the wave man. The emerging church is about to explode and I want to be among the pastors in the UMC who are apart of the renewal movement. Some call it a renewal movement, some call it the emerging church, others just say that it is reclaiming our heritage and practicing old traditions while using 21st century technology. Either way the mainline churches are on the verge of a revival.
Yet, I don't think this movement will catch on everywhere. Some churches are too established in their current methods and models to be renewed. I see a lot of Methodist Churches here in the South that are doing very well financially and will not be so inclined to change anything. I think the renewal will really only happen in those churches that are struggling financially and willing to take some risks with the hopes of attracting more people.
By the way, Brian is doing quite well – and got a 3.0 in his first semester.
The big question, I think, is whether the Methodist Church is ready for Brian.
10. Turning water into wine. Transforming the church. This is at the heart of the question for the church as we move into the postmodern world of the twenty first century.
We can react to it with despair and pessimism and blame others or we can go forward with excitement and accept the challenge to be transformed in our thinking and our practice of Christian life and grow in our hospitality toward others.
Diana Bass spent over two years interviewing and studying 50 mainline churches all across the country that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, we growing and reaching out to others – in other words – were successful. This included all the major denominations. And none of these churches were fundamentalist/conservative evangelical churches – whatever that means.
These were moderate to liberal churches that included conservatives as well as liberals in a new kind of post-traditional church model. Among the characteristics of these churches were the following attributes:
a. they were intentional rather than traditional … in other words while they retained certain values and beliefs of the past they also were willing to go in new directions if they weren’t working any more.
b. They practiced radical hospitality – welcoming people from all walks of life
c. They involved as many members as possible in some kind of personal bible study, prayer, meditation or other spiritual practice outside of Sunday worship
d. They were committed to helping others in the surrounding community through outreach to the poor and other disadvantaged minorities
11. But, intentionality seems to be the key. For instead of saying, “we always done it this way … and repeated the customs of the past, they said, “is it working?” – and if not, created new programs that met the needs of today’s changing world.
Let me illustrate by giving you some examples right here in this church of how we have been and are being intentional:
a. Easter breakfast becomes Palm Sunday dinner
b. Abandoning the monthly church council meeting
c. Changes in UMW
d. Men’s group – Romeos
e. EPIC worship becomes Wed Nite Live
f. Secret Prayer Partners
g. Home communion by lay people
h. Extending our Building Use to a variety of groups including the soup kitchen, yoga, Zen meditation, Evergreen house, the Quakers – in other words – practicing radical hospitality – even to groups we may not understand or agree with completely.
i. And last week we had our first annual meeting without the District Superintendent being present. And it was a lot of fun with a puppet show and better attended than any annual meeting in a long, long time.
12. What is radical hospitality? The author, Dr. Bass, presented two extreme examples that occurred during her research.
A. First – at one church in Arizona that prided itself on its hospitality they pad a male cross dresser to attend church. Afterward he said he was amazed that they treated him like a "real human being."
B. Second – they also studied a big successful mega church where they had a big marketing campaign to recruit new members saying that they were a hospitable church (and they even had signs all over the church which proclaimed how open they were) and yet no one talked to them. And, in addition,they built a $ 750,000 fence all around the property to keep out the poor and homeless in the neighborhood.
Now these are pretty extreme … but you get the idea …
13. And the other thing she talked about – which Brian is so big on … and which I have been getting more and more into is the way in which the changing world is altering our basic assumptions about how we understand God and Who Jesus Christ was and is…
Now, notice I didn’t say that I think we or I should begin to question our basic faith in God or anything like that … not at all … but, what I said was that we may be forced to transform the way we think about and experience who God is and how we practice our Christian ways of spirituality in order to survive as individuals and as a church in the new world we are beginning to live in.
And I am not even saying that Postmodernism is the answer, as some in the secular world seem to being saying. Postmodernism is not THE answer – it is just a way of seeing things which seems to make sense in an increasingly post-traditional world.
And it is hard, if you are older (like me) to get your hands around it. But, let me tell you another story.
The speaker said that she had recently attended a program at a large Episcopal Church on the east coast. It was well attended. After the presentation there was a Q & A time. Suddenly, the group got into a big arguement about Bishop Spong who is extremely liberal and has written books about how the Virgin birth didn't really happen etc. etc. Some accused him of being a heretic. Other defended him saying that he was a hero. Finally, things calmed down. Just then a young boy about 16 came to the microphone and asked the speaker what she thought of the Virgin Birth. But the speaker responded by asking the boy what he thought. And here is what he said:
"I don't understand what this arguement is all about because I think that it is such a beautiful story that it must be true WHERE IT HAPPENED OR NOT.
Now, if you understand this concept -- then you begin to understand postmodern thinking. Because the truth of the story is not in the facts or in the literalness of the Bible -- but in the story itself -- for the story contains a window into Divine Truth told in a narrative form and it has nothing to with the facts because God cannot be explained by facts.
14. Whether it happened or not! And does it really matter? Because what really matters is how we relate to one another:
Do we love and care for each other and for the poor in the world. Are we committed to spreading the good news that God is hear among us in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, healing, teaching, reconciling, and forgiving … that we might become more whole in body, mind, and spirit.
That’s what it is all about. That’s what the Kingdom of God means in our midst … not whether or not we have the Easter Breakfast on Easter or a week early.
The Gospel message, then, for today is that Jesus did turn water into wine … and as far as we are concerned – we are the water – waiting to be transformed again and again.
And, just in case you think I am totally out of it, I just learned on Friday how from Charity (our secretary/bookkeeper) how to do text messaging on my cell phone. Onward and upward!
posted by Anonymous at 10:43 AM
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