We are in trouble! The Episcopal Church is in trouble! St. Peter’s is in trouble! At its meeting in Omaha in February the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church heard a report showing that church membership and Sunday attendance has continued to decline. Overall, we saw a drop of 2.8% in membership and 3.1% in average Sunday attendance over the previous year. According to the report, parishes that lack a clear mission and purpose, that do not follow up with visitors, that engage in “rote, predictable and uninspiring” worship, that lack strong leadership, and that do not engage in outreach and mission are especially declining. At the same time that the Executive Council was hearing this report, many of us were sitting in Hobson Hall at the Procter Center hearing similar news. Church growth and development specialist Tom Ehrich told us that the high point for membership and attendance in the Episcopal Church – and for most mainline denominations – was actually 1964. In 1964, the US population was about 125,000,000. It now stands about 300,000,000. In 1964 the Episcopal Church had about 3.6 million members; it now has about 2.2 million. If you’re quick with your arithmetic it won’t take you long to figure out that in 1964 the Episcopal Church claimed about 1.67% of the US population, and that now we claim about .68%. If we had just held on to the same share of the population that we had in 1964, Ehrich told us, we would be a denomination of about 5 million, rather than one of 2.2 million. Of course, we can relate to those numbers right here. In our history day last year at St. Peter’s we heard about the sixty children in Sunday School, the raft of teenage acolytes, the vested choir, the ice cream socials, the youth groups, and, most importantly, the way in which the church was the center of everyone’s social life. And yet, though the faces shine out for us from the photos on the walls, we know as clearly as we know anything, that those days are behind us. 1964 will not come again. We will not be that church again. And there are all kinds of reasons why this has happened. Episcopalians have fought too much over trivial issues, most especially the desire of some to continue worshipping in sixteenth century English. In the last decade or so, Episcopalians have probably put too much emphasis on Sunday morning and too little on formation and mission. But most of our decline, and the decline of our sister churches, can be summed up this way: we live in a different world from the world of the middle of the 20th century. We may not like it, we may bewail and bemoan the dethronement of the church in the US and Europe, but there is no arguing with the cultural changes that have taken place around us.
The Christian communities who first heard the Gospel according to John were also living in difficult times. Scholars tell us that this Gospel was written between 90 and 100 AD, probably for Christians in Ephesus. These Christians, like many other early Christians, were in conflict with the wider culture around them, most especially the Roman Empire. They were also in conflict with the Jewish communities that began emerging in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD. And they were also dealing with conflict within their communities. Some felt an affinity with Greek philosophies, others didn’t. Some wanted to stay connected with Jewish communities and others were for making a clean break with Judaism.
Facing such external and internal tensions, these early Christians could only have been encouraged and emboldened by today’s passage in John’s Gospel. Today’s reading comes out of the section that begins in chapter 13. You remember that on the last night of his life in this Gospel, Jesus washed the disciples feet, giving them a concrete model of loving service. He gave them a new commandment, to “love one another as I have loved you,” he answered their questions, and he promised that after his death he would be with them in a new way, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Then finally, Jesus turned away from his disciples. He “looked toward heaven,” and he began to pray. The whole seventeenth chapter, of which we hear today the last six verses, is Jesus’ prayer. And let’s be clear: this is Jesus’ prayer, Jesus’ intimate conversation with his Father, which the disciples in effect were privileged to overhear in this Gospel. This prayer is not addressed to them, it is not an exhortation to them to love or to be in unity with each other, as desirable as unity might be. This is Jesus’ prayer. And on the eve of his death, Jesus prayed for the Church. He entrusted to God the Father the disciples he had then, and those who would believe through them, i.e., the entire church to come. He prayed boldly for the Church: in one translation Jesus says, “I want those you have given me to be with me….” In effect, Jesus was asking God to make good on God’s promises to create, through the Holy Spirit, a community of love that would share the same divine life that Jesus shared with the Father.
Sisters and brothers, this is good news! Jesus prayed for the church on the eve of his death. Forty days after his resurrection from the dead, he disappeared physically from the Christian community, an event the church marked on Thursday in the feast of the Ascension, and now he continues to pray for the Church that he had entrusted to the Father’s hands. We know something about that God to whom Jesus entrusted the church in this prayer. Jesus in the flesh showed us something about his Father. He’s the kind of God who openhandedly welcomes back a lost son. He throws the ball back in the court of a woman’s accusers, telling them, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.” He’s the kind of God who dares to break bread with “all sorts and conditions of men and women,” who promised “living water” to a woman who’d had five husbands. He charged his friends, even those who had abandoned him to the religious and civil authorities, to “feed my sheep.” The God whom Jesus revealed to us, the God to whom Jesus entrusted the future of the church, is a God of lavish love, whose love for all people extends to us, and whose love we are impelled to share with others.
That church, which Jesus entrusted to his Father’s loving care, and for which Jesus continues to pray will grow and flourish. Make no mistake about that. We may not recognize the church that emerges from this current period of transition, any more than seventeenth century Anglicans would have recognized the church of 1960. And God willing we will be part of the birthing process of that new church. Tom Ehrich and other commentators strongly believe that growth is possible, even for the “frozen chosen.” We have a lot of work to do as partners with God in that process. We need to ask God for a clearer vision of what our parish is called to do. We need to commit our resources, our “souls and bodies,” to the task: we need to be willing to offer up to God our time, our talent, and our treasure. And we need to be willing to change how we do things. Perhaps we need to embrace different kinds of worship times and approaches. Perhaps there are new missions that will help us be more effective “fishers of people.”
Most important, we are called to join our prayers to Jesus’ prayers, to pray for our parish, our diocese, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and ultimately the whole Body of Christ. We are called to trust in the Father’s continuing love for the church, fractured and fractious as we may currently be. A well-known preacher told of an experience he had when, as a young man, he went to become pastor of a church in Philadelphia. After his first sermon, an old gentleman said to him, "You're pretty young to be pastor of this church. But you preach the Gospel, and I'm going to help you all I can." The new preacher thought, "Here's a crank." But the man continued: "I'm going to pray for you that you may have the Holy Spirit's power upon you. Two others have covenanted to join with me in prayer for you." The preacher said, "I didn't feel so bad when I learned he was going to pray for me. The three became ten, the ten became twenty, the twenty became fifty, and the fifty became two hundred who met before every service to pray that the Holy Spirit might come upon me. I always went into my pulpit feeling that I would have the anointing in answer to the prayers of those who had faithfully prayed for me. It was a joy to preach! The result was that we received 1,100 people into our church in three years, 600 of whom were men. It was the fruit of the Holy spirit in answer to prayer!"
My friends, we at St. Peter’s are about to enter a new phase in our relationship together. We trust that by God’s grace we can grow and flourish again as a parish. We are certainly called to do all that we can humanly do, and we do have our work cut out for us. What is more important, we must continue to pray, and we must continue to pray especially for this parish. As we join our own prayers to Jesus’ prayer for the church, we rest in God’s lavish love, trusting in God’s goodness and knowing that the Father will empower us for the work we have been given to do.
Almighty God, your only Son was taken into heaven and in your presence prays for us. Receive us and our prayers for the church and for the world, and in the end bring everything into your glory; through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
No comments:
Post a Comment