Finding Our Purpose

The session of Faith Presbyterian Church has recently adopted a purpose statement for our congregation.  This is the first of three sermons on "Finding Our Purpose."

John 2:1-11    On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

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Bloomsburg, the town where we lived for 20 years, is a small town – with all the good and bad qualities that go along with that.  One of the funny things I noticed, that I consider a small town quirk, is that when a new restaurant opened in town, everyone in town flocked to it – everyone.  In a small town, there is only one novel thing happening at a time, so everyone is paying attention to it.  And a new restaurant – well that was about as exciting as it gets.  Kim and I learned to hold back and wait awhile before trying out a new place.  Check our excitement, exercise patience, and just wait for the crowds to dwindle after everyone had their curiosity satisfied.

I worked in restaurants for a while when I was in graduate school; I learned a little bit about the business during that time.  One of the terms I learned was the “soft opening.”  Sometimes an establishment will have what they call a soft opening before a grand opening.  A soft opening might be a friends and family night, where guests are invited for a trial run, to test out the equipment and the staff.  Or it could be just quietly opening for business without any advertising and fanfare.  The point is to ensure that if things go wrong the impact will not be too great, because not too many people will notice. 

By the way, I don’t know if you could pull off a soft opening in Bloomsburg, because if something new is going on, everyone is noticing it.  Huber Heights may be a little like a small town in the same way.  I think of how people have been watching and discussing the progress on the new Panera opening this week up on Troy Pike. 

So just thinking all week about the wedding at Cana, I began to wonder:  Is this sort of like a soft opening for Jesus?

On first read, it kind of looks that way.  According to John, it is the first miracle he performs – or the first sign, as John calls them.  And he does it at a private party where he is simply a guest – not the main attraction.  He does what he does quietly and behind the scenes.  And what's more, his action seems fairly inconsequential.

They go to the wedding – Jesus, his disciples, and his mother – as guests.  The wine runs out, which I don’t think rates as a world-class catastrophe.  Nowhere near the level of a tsunami or drought.  No lives will be lost for a shortage of wine.  It may be regretful but surely not a real crisis.  And yet, Jesus’ first miracle is to make more wine.

All the evidence combined might suggest that it was something like a soft opening for Jesus – except for one thing.  John thought it was worthy of inclusion in his gospel as our introduction to Jesus the Christ.  And he frames it in powerful language –

It happened on the third day.

My hour has not yet come.

And it revealed his glory.

The story has surprised readers more than most stories of Jesus’ ministry, and we need to take it seriously.  Creating wine out of water is the world’s introduction to the Savior of the world.  Therefore, it must say something about his purpose.

I have had a lot of conversations about purpose lately.  It has been a significant part of the session’s work during the last year, and it has also become a part of the conversation at the presbytery level, in the Leadership Council on which I serve.  We are in deep discernment about our purpose – as a congregation, as a presbytery, as the Church of Jesus Christ.  It is time for us to talk about purpose – because, frankly, the church of the last century, in its comfortable complacency, has all but lost its sense of purpose.

The 20^th century was, by and large, a pretty good time for the church in America.  Attendance was great; growth was great.  The church held a place of honor in the American culture, just by virtue of being the church.  Many people came to church because that was what you were supposed to do.  And people would notice.

There was the baby boom, and church nurseries and Sunday school classrooms were filled to overflowing.  The pews were crammed with worship-goers.  Do you remember the days when the ushers had to actually help you find a place to sit?

Offering plates were full because the church was full.  We didn’t really have to think too much about our purpose.  But obviously things have changed.  And in a certain way, maybe that change is a good thing.

Because if we aren’t thinking about our purpose, if we don’t know what our purpose is, we are surely not fulfilling it.

There is no doubt that Jesus had a purpose when he began his ministry in Galilee.  We hear it in a variety of ways in the four gospels.  He came to give us power to become children of God. He came to save us from our sins and to bring in the kingdom of God, to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things. 

The miracle at Cana certainly says something about his purpose – and I will say more about this later.  But the thing we struggle with is not so much Jesus’s purpose as the church’s purpose.

The gospels tell us that the church’s purpose, in the broadest sense, is to make disciples for Jesus Christ.  There is not one way to do this any more than there is one kind of disciple.  It is the task of every congregation to discern their particular purpose in their particular location.

It was more than 15 years ago that this church went through the process of writing a mission statement.  The statement is thoughtful, carefully crafted, and says much to us about our beliefs, our vision, and our mission.  To some degree, it has guided this congregation over the years, but it has not been enough.

Now we are taking the next step.  We are establishing a statement of our purpose, which attempts to do these things:

It tells us what we aspire to.  A purpose statement is not just a bullet list of what we do; it’s much more.  It perceives what we hold to be most valuable and then puts that value before us as an ideal.  We will probably not fulfill our purpose statement completely, but we will hold it out as a reminder every day of what we are all about.

It gives us something to share with others.  Please understand me – a purpose statement is not a marketing slogan.  It is primarily for internal use.  But it gives us one very important thing: Our purpose statement gives us tools, words to use when we talk to others about our church and why it matters to us.

One of the hardest questions for church people to answer is the question of why.  Why do you come here?  Why is it an important part of your life?  Why might it be of value to someone else?  It can be very hard to answer the why questions about something that has always been a part of your life, such that you don’t even have to think about why you do it.  Why is not terribly important to insiders.  But it is very important to those standing outside.  It is the question that becomes most important when we are standing at the gap between the church and the community, and we are trying to build a bridge. 

Many of us have struggled to find answers to the why question.  But the purpose statement gives us words with which to begin.  And it gives us one more thing –

It captures who and where we are at this particular time, but we are not going to carve it on the cornerstone of our building.  A congregation’s purpose may change, because the congregation and the community may change.  There may come a time when our purpose statement no longer helps us to live and grow as faithful disciples.  It will be necessary to revisit our purpose in a few years time and see if it still resonates, or whether it is time to discern anew, with enthusiasm and trust that God will lead us.

So, you may be wondering, what is our purpose statement?  It is this:

Our purpose is to be Christians growing in faith by caring, connecting, and serving community. 

In the next few weeks we will begin to break down and unpack this statement, to understand and explore the ways everything we do serves our purpose. 

Jesus understood his purpose, and everything he did served that purpose – yes, even making wine.  He went to a wedding feast, a celebration of the union of two people, and he provided the wine – the best wine.  A lot of it.  He filled their cups to overflowing with joy and life.  We don’t have to work too hard to see that the kingdom of God Jesus brings to us, the reconciliation he offers between the world and God, is a joyful celebration.  Out of his love for us his life is poured out as a libation.  He asks us to continue the celebration in his name. 

There’s a word we don’t use often enough about church: Celebration.  Let it be the place we start as we begin to find our purpose.

New Beginnings – Being There

Acts 8:26-40   Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

Revelation 3:8           “I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

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In last Sunday’s New York Times there was an article about serendipity.[1]  So, as I have been preparing for today this word has been on my mind.  It’s not a word that is easily defined.  Many people tend to think of serendipity as a happy accident or dumb luck.  But the actual root of this word is rather different.

I’ll bet you didn’t know – unless you read the same article I did – that the word serendipity comes from a Persian fairy tale about three princesses from the Isle of Serendip.  As the princesses traveled around they were always making discoveries of things they were not searching for.  The word serendipity came to be used to describe a skill, such as these princesses had, to find new and unexpected things.  Some people are good at it, and others not so good.

Some people are more serendipitous than others.

So, of course, someone asked the question: is it possible to identify certain characteristics shared by people who are especially serendipitous?  She carried out a research project and actually found something.  She discovered a type of person she called the super-encounterer.  These people find interesting surprises everywhere.  Why?  Because they are looking everywhere – deeply and widely and with an attitude of fascination about whatever they are encountering.  These people are discovering things because they are looking.

Serendipity does not just involve dumb luck.  It involves skill; practice. 

To this you might say, who cares?  You might wonder if any of this really matters.  To the rest of us, the super-encounterers might look as though they are wasting a lot of time.  But then again, maybe not.  Another study found that as many as 50% of patents resulted from what could be called a serendipitous process.  The engine behind so much growth and progress in the world is this thing we call serendipity. 

In the church we have our own terms for this sort of process.  We talk about the Holy Spirit, who gives us nudges or visions, opening our eyes to what is possible and how we might engage in God’s work in the world.  We use the word discernment to describe a kind of holy listening – listening and looking for the will of God in our lives.  And just like serendipity, discernment is more than just an accident.

Take the example of Philip in the story we heard from Acts.  The angel said to him, “Get up and go,” so he got up and went.  The spirit said to him, go over to that chariot, so Philip approached the chariot and thereby set a wonderful process in motion.  In this encounter, the Ethiopian received the gospel, was baptized, and went on his way, spreading the good news to Africa. 

All of this occurred because Philip was paying attention.  None of this was on his agenda.  None of it.  But when he woke up that morning there was a discovery to be made. 

It is important to know that these things are real, but they are not fantastical.  We don’t need to imagine a human-like creature with wings and halo standing in front of Philip delivering a message.  And we don’t need to assume that there was some transparent, ghostly creature beside Philip whispering in his ear.  The scriptures use inadequate words to convey something beyond description, and that happens everywhere, everyday, to ordinary people.  Yes, there are angels ready to give us messages, and the Holy Spirit is here now, ready to give us a glimpse of the divine intentions.

As we complete our three-week series on New Beginnings we come to the moment where we are.  These last two weeks we talked first about the importance of remembering, and that there is also a time and place for forgetting – letting things go.  Simply put, there are some things from the past we bring along with us and there are some things we choose to leave behind.  But ultimately, we find we need to live in the present moment, where we are.  Today we confront being there.

Without actually being there – in the place and moment where we are – no angels will be heard, no gifts of the Spirit will be received, no discoveries will be made.  Without being there, no new friendships will be forged, no growth will occur.  But in being there, the possibilities are limitless.

There is a little story I read about Martin Luther King, Jr. as a young man.  When he was first starting out, he candidated at a tall steeple church, a very prestigious pulpit.  It was to be a fine feather in his newly ordained cap.  But the congregation voted no.  They simply said this was not the pastor they wanted.  He must have been crushed, humiliated. 

So he ended up accepting a call at the Dexter Avenue church in Montgomery, Alabama.  The next year, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery city bus and a whole movement was set in motion.  King was right there. 

If he had been offered that prestigious pulpit, he would have been somewhere else.  Who knows what would have happened with the bus boycott or the whole Civil Rights Movement.  But he was there, where he needed to be for the work God had prepared for him. 

And the most important thing you need to know:  it wasn’t just an accident.  It wasn’t bad luck followed by good luck. It wasn’t a fantastic coincident.  Nor was it the hand of God moving people around like pawns on a chessboard.  It was serendipity in the best sense of the word.

King was disappointed, surely, but he moved forward in faith, trusting that God had something for him.  He put down his roots in Montgomery, the Dexter Avenue Church and began the work of day-to-day ministry.  And when something happened on the bus, he was paying attention. 

As I said last Sunday, sometimes we need to let go of the past for the sake of living, really living, in the present.  That is precisely what Dr. King had to do – and he did.

We make it a lot harder for God to do good work with us if we are not paying attention.

The story of Philip and the Ethiopian is a story about paying attention – and then responding.  He followed the road to Gaza.  He approached the chariot and spoke to the Ethiopian.  He listened and responded with the good news.  And when the Ethiopian said, “Look – here’s some water.  What is to prevent me from being baptized?  What, indeed!  Born anew of water and the Spirit, this Ethiopian man carried the gospel into new territory.

Then Philip, it seems, was teleported to a different location.  “Beam me up, Scottie – my work here is done.”  Honestly, I don’t know what to make of that, but I don’t lose any sleep over it either.  The point is that these two men had a serendipitous encounter because they were ready to encounter something new.

In this New Year, I don’t know what God has in store for us.  We have plans, but sometimes the best plans have to be put aside for the sake of some wonderful new opportunity that God sets before us.  And we want to be ready for that.  We want to be giving priority to developing our spiritual antennae.  Listening in prayer, speaking to one another about how God might be working with us – individually and as a congregation.  It’s important for us to have these conversations, and yes, we must include God in all these conversations.  We must grow in our ability to speak of God – with one another as well as with those we might encounter on the road who are seeking God.  None of us is too old – or too young – to grow.

This church is about the same age I am.  You might call us middle-aged.  We are at that stage in life when we begin to wonder what God still has in store for us.  A few years ago I found this prayer that seemed to be written for me – called A Prayer for the Middle Years of Opportunity.[2]  Maybe it speaks for you, too.

Lord, help me now to unclutter my life,

To organize myself in the direction of simplicity.

Lord, teach me to listen to my heart; 

Teach me to welcome change, instead of fearing it.

Lord, I give you these stirrings inside me,

I give you my discontent,

I give you my restlessness,

I give you my doubt,

I give you my despair,

I give you all the longings I hold inside.

Help me to listen to these signs of change, of growth;

To listen seriously and follow where they lead

Through the breathtaking empty space of an open door.  Amen.

God has set before you an open door, which no one can shut.  Imagine yourself walking through that open door.

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[1] Pagan Kennedy, Cultivating the Art of Serendipity.  NYT 1.3.16

[2] http://www.hellojubilee.com/2011/01/prayer-for-mid-life.html

New Beginnings – Forget

Philippians 3:12-13  Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

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Graham Greene was a great English novelist, and among the many wonderful books he wrote was a little story called Monsignor Quixote.  It’s about a priest who is traveling with a companion with whom he does not always agree.  They have very different beliefs and somewhat different values, and after a night of heated disagreement, his companion comes to the priest sheepishly, somewhat apologetically, about last night.  Father Quixote says he has no idea what he is concerned about, for he hasn’t any recollection of whatever they discussed the night before.  “I am trained to forget what I am told,” he says.  Even when it’s not in the confessional?  “It’s much easier for a priest to treat everything as a confession.  I make a habit of never repeating anything to anyone – even to myself, if possible.”

Most people, including his bishop, seem to find Father Quixote to be rather simple – simpleminded.  You know, not too bright.  He certainly is unsophisticated, having lived in the same poor village his whole life, except for the time he attended seminary. 

I don’t believe I know anyone who makes a practice of forgetting.  Most of us are preoccupied, even obsessed with remembering.  When we are younger remembering is easier – but the bar is set pretty high, with all the things we are expected to learn.  As we get older the expectations are lower, which is a good thing.  Our ability to remember things is increasingly challenged, as our mental filing cabinets get overly full and disorganized. 

Last week as we began our series on New Beginnings we focused on remembering – a worthy goal, I’m sure you agree.  Remember the successes, and even remember the failures for the sake of knowing what we did wrong and trying to avoid that particular wrong in the future.  Remembering where we have been, with hearts of gratitude, will surely help us determine where we are going.  But is there also a place, as we move forward, for forgetting?

The Apostle Paul seems to think so.  In his letter to the Philippian church he speaks of forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.  One thing we should know about this:  it was probably one of the last letters Paul wrote.  This was a letter written late in his life.  There was a great deal behind him, which he was choosing to forget for the sake of what lies ahead.

For everything we remember there is also a way in which we would be better off to forget it.  Allow me to suggest three things.

Forgetting the ways in which we were wronged.  It is a temptation to remember every slight, every offense, every abuse we have suffered.  Some of us are very good at holding grudges.  We seem to think remembering these things will somehow bring balance to the universe – or at least, maybe, protect us from ever suffering such an insult again.  There’s that old saying: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. 

And it is not altogether wrong that we should remember the offenses, for the sake of being aware of how we may be hurt.  Jesus advised his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves when he sent them out into the world.  Be wise to the sinfulness of the world in which we live, and the ways we may be hurt.  But at the same time, remember what is good and pure and worthy of our time and effort.  It is too easy for thoughts of past wrongs to poison our minds and hearts.  To the extent that you are able, forget the wrongs of the past.  It will free you to live in the present and move into the future.

I always remembered those words of Monsignor Quixote more than anything else in the story, because it explains so much about the Father – why he walks around so sublimely happy so much of the time!  Happy are those who don’t remember the ways they have been slighted, cheated, or offended by others, for they shall be content.  They shall have the gift of living in the moment.

Forget the ways in which you have been wronged and be at peace.

Forget, also, the way things are supposed to be.  We all know how things are supposed to be, and this will cause us more grief than we care to deal with.  More arguments are caused by people who know how things are supposed to go than anyone or anything else.  I haven’t actually researched this, but I’m saying it anyway because it feels true.

I don’t think I need to remind you of the seven most exalted words in the life of the church:  We’ve never done it that way before.  Or its close cousin:  This is how we’ve always done it.  I would bet that every one of us has said these words at least once.  And while it can sometimes be helpful to know how we have always done it before – especially for a new pastor trying to figure things out – it’s also a way of closing off imagination, conversation, even possibility.  The problem with doing things the way they are supposed to be done is that things actually change. The world changes – everything in it changes.  And the truth is we don’t know how the Spirit will be at work in our lives; we don’t know what God has in store for us.  When you think you know how things are supposed to happen, you close your mind to the possibility of how things might unfold.

Forget how things are supposed to be, and look for the way things are.

Finally, let’s forget our successes.  I know what you are thinking.  Forget our successes?  Why in the name of all that is good would we want to do that?  This can be a harder thing to make sense of.

Last week we talked about remembering that we have been through hard times in the past, that we have weathered storms and survived to tell the tales.  Remembering can help us to believe that the hardships we are experiencing will pass.  Remembering can give us assurance that because we have made our way through storms in the past we can make our way through it again.  Remembering the past can give us strength for the present and hope for the future.

While all that is true, remembering can also get in the way.  I used to work at a church that was seeing a drop-off in attendance, especially among younger people.  We were having a hard time getting youth involved in the church, and there was some growing anxiety about the situation.  We weren’t just sitting around doing nothing – we were trying to do faithful ministry for all ages, but not seeing a lot of results.  And I began to notice something happening.  I was hearing the same sentiment expressed by many people:  If we could just have SALT again! 

SALT was the name of a youth choir that had been active in this church about 20 years earlier.  SALT was a great program.  The choir had attracted youth from all over the community – not just church members. They had traveled all over the region, bringing the good news in song and bringing fame to themselves and the church.  SALT had been a phenomenal success – at least as it lived in people’s memories.  And the darker our current situation looked, the brighter SALT shone in people’s memories.  “If we could just have SALT again” became a sort of mantra.

But we would never have it again.  It was a different time in the church and our culture.  We could have hired a director and designated some funds and resurrected the name, but we still would not have had SALT again.

Sometimes we need to forget the things of the past for the sake of living – really living.

Recently, I heard someone say, “It seems like the more I let go of, the more I get.”  And I have been considering just how true that might be.  We spend so much of our time and energy in the past, holding on to good memories we wish to return to, or bad memories we wish to protect ourselves from or even avenge ourselves for.  We spend too much effort trying to maintain control of things, keeping them the way we like and feel comfortable with.

Imagine all these things as stones you are holding in your hands.  They’re attractive stones, sure, and they seem worthy of our efforts to hold on to them.  But one day you might get a glimpse of a stone of such beauty as you haven’t seen before – just a brief glimpse, really, because you are mostly preoccupied with keeping your grip on the stones in your hands.  But when you happen to glance up and see this new stone, you immediately know that it is worthy of taking hold of.  Yet, you can’t.  Your hands are too full already.

Sometimes you need to let go for the sake of something better.  As we begin a new year, let us consider forgetting those things that lie behind and strain forward for the sake of what Christ is opening before us.