Credo: Why Is the Church?

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Last Sunday at Decorah
Last Sunday Before Retirement
Ephesians 1:15-23
June 24, 2018

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Well, here we are. This is my last Sunday under appointment as your pastor, my last Sunday as an active elder of the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Fifteen hundred sermons preached over a thirty-eight year career and it all comes down to this.

You know what? That's far too much pressure to put on you or me. It took me a long time to learn that a sermon should say one thing and one thing only. It should be focused. My first preaching professor said, "Think rifle, not shotgun." He was right. I might update that and say, “Think laser, not floodlight.” Any attempt to cover it all means not covering any of it. That is a lesson I still sometimes forget. But today, more than most, it's important to remember: Say one thing. Say one thing.

Okay.

In the first sermon in this series I approached the question, "What is the Bible?" In the second, "Who is God?" Now it's time for, "Why is the Church?" Those with good memories will notice that I have changed this last title from when I announced the series. I'm fond of why questions. My mother said of her experience trying to raise me that she could the answer question, "Where are the stars?" The question, "What are the stars?" she could handle pretty well, too. But when I asked "Why are the stars?" she threw in the towel. I guess I was asking theological questions even at the age of four.

Why is the Church? Asking "Why?" is better, I think, than "How?" or "What?" or "Who?" about the Church. "Why?" focuses more sharply, I think. And we need the focus because there are quite a few answers, especially to the question of "What?" is the church, that are making being the church harder and harder for all of us.

I'd say that there are three theories about what the Church is:

1) It is a kind of social club that does charity work, sort of like the Lion's Club, only with singing and more prayer. Membership requires that dues be paid in both money and volunteer work. But it also confers privileges, like being able to borrow folding chairs for a graduation reception or having your children's children baptized, even though those grandchildren are unlikely to be in a church until they get married.

2) The Church is a kind of co-op that provides religious goods and services and its member/owners are its inner circle of customers. They seek the services that they need and they pay on a fee-for-service basis. Members are entitled to complain about poor service. We give volume discounts to member/owners.

3) A very old answer is that the Church is the custodian of salvation. The sacraments or the Gospel message, depending on whether we are thinking of Catholics or Protestants, belong to the Church. They are the paths that lead to heaven and the Church is the toll-keeper. The Church has a monopoly over salvation. Those who are in the Church can walk the path. Those who are outside are doomed.

It has been easy for me to reject the first two models. The Church with membership that confers privileges has never really squared in my mind with Jesus' call to discipleship.

And the Church as a non-profit co-op with customers to please just rubs me the wrong way. I hate the phrase, "church shopping," with the white-hot passion of a thousand suns. It's not that I don't get the need to chose a church wisely. I get that the brand name of the franchise doesn't always tell us what we need to know. It's just that church shopping leads to choosing a church that pleases us, to choosing a church where we'll be comfortable. In my experience church belonging is more about finding a church that will challenge and support me (and expect the same of me) in the process of "being perfected in love," as we Methodists say.

In recent years I've grown more and more suspicious of the third model, too. When I came to believe that God loves us in a way that does not privilege church membership or even Christian faith, I had to change my thinking. I have become what is sometimes called a universalist. That is, I believe no one is excluded from God's love in this world or the next, except by their own choice, and even their choice is not a once and forevermore sort of choice. I believe in the theoretical possibility of hell as our choice to exclude ourselves from God's love. But I think that practically speaking hell is mostly pretty sparsely populated. To put it perhaps a little too cutely, when people realize that they have pretty much been idiots when they were alive and that God has loved them and always will love them, they mostly change their minds and stop being idiots.

I don't mean to make light of the process of changing our minds either during this lifetime or the next. It's hard. We embrace ways of being in the world and ways of relating to ourselves and to each other because we think we get some benefit from them. To give up those ways is scary and painful. We depend very much on God's love to be able to do it at all. In the case of people who are seriously evil, say, Osama bin-Laden and Adolf Hitler, this work of repentance will be excruciating. But I believe that God's grace will enable even them to do that work. It is God's intention, in short, that everyone experience salvation, whether in this life or the next. "God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it" isn't just a cute slogan; it has real consequences. We can try, but I just don't think that any of us can hold out against God's love forever.

You do not have to join a church to be saved. You do not have believe a list of things to be saved. You do not have to have any particular experience to be saved. You are always already saved. We no longer live under an economy of salvation that depends on our persuading God to forgive us. God has always already forgiven us. Seeking God’s forgiveness is not what our life is about.

So, I have come to believe that the Church is not the dispenser of salvation, whether through its rituals or its message. Cyprian of Carthage was wrong when he wrote that “there is no salvation outside the Church.”

If that is the case, then "Why is the Church?" And here is my answer and it resonates with Paul whom we heard in today's reading from Ephesians. When I read this text, I see an image of something like a fountain. God's love overflows and fills Jesus; Jesus' love overflows and fills us; we overflow and fill the world. God's dream is made real in human history in the life, ministry, and teaching of Jesus. God's dream becomes Jesus' dream. As Jesus' dream is made real in human history in us, his dream becomes our dream. As we labor to transform the spaces around us our dream is made real in the world. This out- and over-flowing of God's love and God's dream is what the Church is all about.

Why is the Church? In order to be the presence of Jesus in the world. We are the prototype, the pilot project, the beta release of God's dream. It's not that God's dream can't be found in other places, even in some unlikely places. But here is where it is labeled as God's dream. Here is where the dream comes with the stories. It is not that Christ has no other hands but ours, but ours are the hands that are labeled as Christ's hands.

The Christian tradition is unique in this way. If you ask a Muslim where God's will can be seen and known, I'm pretty sure that their answer will be “in the Qu'ran.”

I'm not sure what the Jewish answer to that question might be. In fact, I imagine that this question might provoke an argument. One might say "the Torah" and another might say "the Messiah." And maybe the real answer is in the dispute itself, in two Jews seeing and defending different answers knowing that the result is better than the sum of its parts. Maybe.

But if you ask a Christian this question, I think the answer should be, “Sometimes you can see God's dream in the life of the Church.” That doesn't mean we always get it right. The failures of the Church over the centuries have been spectacular and tragic. We are too slow to learn from our mistakes. But when God's dream appears among us, it is gorgeous.

The test of the Church and the test of a church is whether it makes God's dream real in its midst and in the world. Models of ministry come and go. But the core reason for the Church's existence does not: it is to make God's dream real. It's all right there in the prayer that Jesus taught us.

At First United Methodist Church we have certainly not always gotten it right. A beta release always has bugs. A prototype doesn't always live up to the hopes of its designer. A pilot project will uncover unforeseen problems. We have had ours. And I have made more than my fair share of contributions to our crashes.

But God's dream has appeared among us. In the determination to welcome the stranger, even when they come without the proper documents as they do to the Justice for Our Neighbors clinics we host, or come from another tradition as our Muslim students guests during Ramadan, I see God's dream made real. In the shared hilarity of the Puppets of Praise, I see God's dream made real. In the dogged stubbornness of the UMW who somehow carry on doing ministry, I see God's dream. In the solidarity fostered by Sister Parish, I see God's dream. In Silas's exuberant joy as he slides into home plate and the children's sermon, I see God's dream. In the consistently good music of the choir that is never the same choir for two rehearsals or worship services in a row, I see God's dream. In the white steeple that rises like a beacon beside the other buildings of our neighborhood, I see God's dream. God's dream has appeared among us. And those moments have been gorgeous. Those gorgeous moments are my answer to the question, Why is the Church?”

So, thank you. Thank you for being who you are. Thank you for allowing me to share those gorgeous moments. Keep making those gorgeous moments with Pastor Mee. But in the meantime, thank you. Thank you. Amen.

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