Come with
me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination; take a look and you’ll see
into your imagination…
Imagine if you would, a church that gave too much. A church that gave too much to the community;
spent too much on feeding the poor; donated too much to organizations that
serve the least of these; contributed too much to disaster relief programs like
Week of Compassion. A church that sent
its people on mission trips, a church that paid money for new wells to be dug
in African communities where children currently die from drinking polluted
water, a church that built houses for the homeless.
Imagine a church that was more concerned about
giving to these causes than it was about meeting its own needs. What if that church gave so much to causes
outside its own walls, that its walls were literally in danger of falling
down? What if a church gave so much that
it had to sell its building, its property?
What if a church gave so much of itself that it eventually died?
It’s not so hard to plunge into this particular
world of imagination, because every year when we plan our budget, we stand on
the edge of that world; and we gaze into it; and we wonder: How much can we give – how much can we do –
before our own existence is threatened?
If we give too much today, who will be around to give tomorrow? We need to preserve the church, take care of
the church, so that it can keep doing the things it should be doing. And even if we can only do a little, we can keep doing a little, year after
year, and isn’t that better than doing a lot all at once, and then dying?
What do you think?
Questions like this do tend to make us a little
anxious. Especially as we prepare to
bring forward our pledges and make a church budget for the coming year. Fortunately the questions I’m asking are just
hypothetical, right? They’re just
imaginary…
Come with
me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination; take a look and you’ll see
into your imagination…
Imagine that you are God. I know, some people go around thinking that they are God all the time,
but that’s not the same as what I’m asking you to do. I want you to imagine, for just a moment,
that you are God, looking over the earth, and seeing a world full of all kinds
of brokenness: mental illness,
inequality, depression, people who feel less-than-human, people who feel
un-valued, as if they are nothing more than numbers in a system….
You see people who are suffering from natural and
man-made disasters, suffering from war, from climate change, from drought and
famine and floods… You see people who feel alone, lost, forgotten; people who
just want to find a connection that unites them with something bigger than
themselves; people who need love.
Imagine that you are God and you see, in this
same fragmented world, thousands of churches, mosques and synagogues, all
claiming to speak and act in your name.
What would you – God – have them do?
What would you have those houses of worship be?
How would it make you – God – feel to have church
‘A’ more concerned about raising money for a new roof, church ‘B’ caught up in
trying to figure out how to protect its property from burglars, and church ‘C’
just trying to get more people in its doors on Sunday mornings. Which of these churches is working to
directly address the brokenness and fragmentation of the world in which we
live? Are any of them working to bring
wholeness to the world; or are they more concerned with their own welfare than
with the welfare of the world around them?
Imagine…
Come with
me, and–
No, wait; I don’t have to sing the song this
time. Because this next one, the
prophets have already imagined for
us.
Imagine a church that is not giving of itself, a church that is not working to bring wholeness to a fragmented world, a church that
does little or no outreach or mission work … because it wants to make sure that
it takes care of its own needs first.
This is the church of Isaiah 5. It is a church that Isaiah pictures,
metaphorically, as a vineyard, a vineyard that had everything it needed to
produce abundantly. God hoed the soil
and pulled the weeds, and planted the very best vines. God built a lookout, built a winepress, and
made it a vineyard to be proud of. God
did all this, expecting a yield of grapes, but for all God’s work, all that
appeared was wild, tasteless, inedible fruit that had to be thrown away.
The vineyard didn’t produce good fruit. So what else could God do but tear it
down? Because a vineyard is supposed to
produce good fruit, and that fruit is meant to be given away. Some of it goes to the birds. Some of it goes to the animals. Most of it goes to the one who planted the
vineyard, the abundant crop to feed him, his family, and his community.
And from some of the fruit come the seeds that
will allow the vineyard to renew itself.
This fruit is for growing new vines.
None of the fruit is for the old vines to hold on
to.
So what about the “fruit” that a church
produces? Do we hold on to it? Or do we give it away?
And if you really pay attention to Isaiah’s
metaphor, you see that a church that holds on to its fruit out of fear it might
not survive, well, God is going to tear down that church because it’s not doing
what it’s supposed to be doing. A church
– like a vineyard – is meant to produce fruit that goes beyond itself.
So a church that clings to what it has out of a
sense of self-preservation is actually just hastening its demise.
Jesus understood this. He once told his followers, “If any want to
become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me. For those who want to save
their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the
sake of the gospel will save it.”
Think about that in the context of congregational
ministry. “Those who want to save their
life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake
of the gospel will save it.” Many small
congregations spend a lot of time trying to save the life of their
congregation. According to Jesus, what
we should be doing is giving our life
away.
Our faith tells us that, after the crucifixion,
there is a resurrection. After death,
there is new life. And yet so many
churches are still afraid to die.
They’re afraid of a financial death more than anything else. So they hold on to what they have. They refuse to give to causes beyond
themselves. They’re more concerned with
their own needs and getting people in the doors and in the pews.
But here’s the thing: imagine that you are an unchurched person
living in the community. All around you
are various places of worship. Most of
them go about their religious lives quietly.
Every once in a while you see some people going in and out, but you
never hear anything about the congregation, and you never hear about them doing
anything for the community outside their walls.
But imagine that there is this one congregation…
it’s a small congregation, and its building is kind of worn out… but it is
always doing things for the community.
It’s always reaching out to those outside its walls. It’s working for the good of the community in
which it is located.
Now, which church will you be attracted to? Which church will it seem is doing the best
job honoring God? The church that is
constantly reaching out, of course.
The people in that church are concerned about the church’s future. But they are even more concerned about the future of their community and those who
live in it; especially those who are the poorest, the “least of these.”
And this church, more than the others, has
faith. This church, more than the
others, believes in the resurrection.
Because in its ministry, it risks dying.
It follows Christ’s example in giving so much of itself, that death is a
very distinct possibility. And yet, the
people of that church know that Christ’s death was followed by
resurrection. They know that the fruit
produced by the vine, when it falls to the ground, the seed is planted and a
new vine emerges. So they don’t worry
about death too much. The only thing
they worry about is doing God’s will.
This is part of the new economy – God’s economy –
that I talked about last week. It’s like
those colored index cards. If you
weren’t here last week, ask someone about the colored index cards: The more you
give away, the more you realize that what you end up with is even better than
what you started with.
In order to focus on excellence, we must excel at
mission work. We must excel at
outreach. We must excel at serving the
community.
Some of the most important work we do, we don’t
talk about much. I’m not saying we need
to brag about these things, but we do need to recognize their
significance. It’s feeding the homeless;
preparing food for Christian Outreach in Action; donating to Centro Shalom;
collecting school supplies for Love in the Mirror; supporting Week of
Compassion and Church World Service; building houses with Habitat for Humanity;
picking up litter off our streets and sidewalks.
Everything we do to bring wholeness to a
fragmented world, to serve our community, moves us toward excellence in mission
and outreach. It may be risky. It may call on us to give more than we feel
comfortable giving. But it allows us to
grow in faith, to renew our trust in God, and to produce an abundance of good
fruit… which is what God calls us to
do.
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