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A sermon preached at
Westmoreland Congregational United Church of Christ
Bethesda, Maryland
by the Rev. Rich Smith
January 22, 2006
Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Mark 1:14-20
The Board of Trustees decided that the church needed some painting. Actually it had needed painting for some time, but being financially challenged, they kept putting it off, until the Bazaar ladies laid down an ultimatum, and so they let out bids, and naturally took the lowest one. One bid particularly stood out, and only later did they discover why – seems the painter had a habit of thinning the paint so that it would go further and he wouldn’t have to use as much and could win the bids by charging less.
Apparently God was watching over this particular church, and so one day, when the painter was up on the scaffolding -- the job almost finished -- he heard a horrendous clap of thunder, and the skies opened.
The ensuing downpour washed the thinned paint off the church and knocked the painter off his scaffold and onto the lawn among the gravestones and puddles of thinned and worthless paint. He knew this must be a warning from the Almighty, so he got on his knees and cried: “Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I do?” And from the thunder came a mighty voice: “REPAINT! REPAINT! AND THIN NO MORE!” (Out of courtesy to the guilty, I won’t reveal who sent this to me – you know who you are!)
You may have thought the time for repentance was long past, liturgically speaking – a “been there, done that” that we left behind when John the Baptist showed up on his annual Advent visit, something we had to deal with before we could sing Happy Birthday to the baby Jesus. But now in the season of Epiphany this Jesus is all grown up and we read of the beginning of his earthly ministry, and what are the first – the first! – words out of his mouth? “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news!”
Repent! Far from being the exclusive territory of our more evangelical brothers and sisters, repentance is something that Christians of all stripes take seriously, or should, and it is always in season. There are plenty of things that we can repent of, lots of collective and individual sins that need addressing. But repentance is about more that “bewailing our manifold sins and wickedness,” as illustrated by what comes next in the Gospel lesson.
Jesus goes down to the Sea of Galilee and comes upon Simon and his brother Andrew going about their daily work, minding their own business, casting their nets into the sea. They are fishing – not like when I go fishing, which is purely for fun and re-creation, especially when I realize there’s a reason it’s called “fishing” and not “catching”. They are working, and if they don’t catch they and their families don’t eat. Jesus says, “Follow me.” And they do. They immediately leave their nets and follow him. A little further along the shoreline he encounters James and John, doing some maintenance on their tools, and the same thing happens. He says, “Follow me,” and they do.
There is no evidence or suggestion here that Simon and Andrew and James and John are flagrant sinners, in need of repentance. They appear in fact to be fine upstanding, hard working, good citizens who just have the good fortune – or maybe mis-fortune – to be in the right place at the right time when Jesus comes to them and invites them to repent – that is, to turn around and face in a new direction. That’s literally what repent means – to turn around. And so they turned from one life, a life that wasn’t necessarily bad, a life that may well have been responsible, productive, beneficial for their families and society, to a new life altogether – one that put them at odds with much of society and the powers that be, one that led them in an entirely new direction, a discipleship that proved to be quite costly, but one that ultimately transformed them and changed the world.
To repent simply means to turn around and go in another direction. That’s what Jonah, in our Old Testament lesson, discovered as well. I love this story, by the way, because it is one of the best examples of subversive literature in the Bible, a story that challenged the prevalent thinking and attitudes of its time, a time when Israel was building walls against outsiders, its citizens being commanded to have nothing to do with foreigners, and even those who had married foreign wives while in the Babylonian Exile and brought them back were ordered to divorce them and marry nice Jewish girls instead – This story challenged the official policy, and said God loves foreigners too, even the Ninivites, whom Jonah detested. In this story Jonah repents several times, usually with some assistance. At first he is presumably minding his own business when God speaks to him and commands him to go to Ninevah. He turns around, and runs in the wrong direction, because that was the last place he wants to go. He jumps on a ship to escape, but God speaks again through a storm. He allows himself to be thrown overboard to save the innocent crew, changes direction again when he is swallowed by a big fish, coughed up on dry land, hears the word of the Lord again, and this time decides to turn around and do what he is asked. He goes to Ninevah, reluctantly preaches the message, and the Ninevites themselves repent, in rather classic fashion with sack cloth and ashes. And then, even God repents, calling off the planned calamity, mapping out a new direction for divine dealings with humanity. The aim of the story of course was that Israel would see itself in Jonah, his prejudices and parochial attitudes, realize that God’s love was big enough for all people, and tear down the walls they had erected to keep the foreigners out, the barriers of whatever form that separated them from their brothers and sisters, and ultimately from God. That was the hope expressed in this subversive story – that there would be a repentance, a new direction, a turn around of values and attitudes and actions. It didn’t really happen. And, given the situation in the Holy Land today, it would seem to be a still relevant message!
Repentance is always a relevant message, in our world, our nation, our church, our family life. We are always called to be open to turning around and facing a new direction. And repentance should be celebrated wherever we find it happening.
Perhaps you saw the story in yesterday’s Washington Post, on the religion page, about the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church in Southern California. Beginning in 1980 in his living room with seven people, he now leads the church of some 80,000 members, and he has been touted as the successor to Billy Graham, as “America’s pastor.” He has sold 24 million copies of his book, The Purpose Driven Life. For much of the past twenty-five years his message was the classic evangelical one about coming to Jesus, confessing your sins and getting saved. He hasn’t completely given that up, but he is also facing in a new direction, and leading his church and his network of millions of the faithful there. As the story says, “Now he wants to use his growing influence – and wealth – for an ambitious global attack on poverty, AIDS, illiteracy and disease.”
“The New Testament says the church is the body of Christ,” he says, “but for the last 100 years, the hands and feet have been amputated, and the church has been just a mouth. And mostly, it’s been known for what it’s against. I’m so tired of Christians being known for what they’re against. One of my goals is to take evangelicals back a century, to the 19th century....That was a time of muscular Christianty that cared about every aspect of life.” Not just personal salvation, but social action. Abolishing slavery. Ending child labor. Winning the right for women to vote. It’s time for modern evangelicals to trade words for deeds and get similarly involved. As he told his affluent Orange County congregation on a recent Sunday, “Life is not about having more and getting more. It’s about serving God and serving others.”
Well, hallelujah! And Amen! Sounds like what we in the UCC have been saying forever. Not that he agrees with us on everything, and after all, we don’t even agree with us about everything, but this is repentance, a turning around and facing in a new direction, and that is worth celebrating, and making common cause where we can to make this world more reflective of the realm of God that Jesus came to point us toward.
So I rejoice in that, but what would really make me happy would be to witness a little repentance of our own! That doesn’t mean we’ll be passing out sackcloths and ashes, or set up confessionals. But it might mean that we’ll find ourselves thinking about the directions we are taking, and doing something about it.
Take for example, our liberal theology. Well, not so much the theology itself, but our attitude about it. There is no question in my mind, as I talk with you and listen to your beliefs, and your questioning of beliefs, that we are for the most part a liberal church, at least as churches go. Someone characterized us a “Unitarians with liturgy,” which is at least better than the standard line that UCC means “Unitarians Considering Christ.” But I think that anyone coming in here for the first time will encounter what I hope is a refreshing take on the faith, one that is questioning and questing, one that involves heart and head and hands, one that is open and welcoming and non-judgmental, muscular, free, life-affirming and celebratory. Now the tendency may be to look around at growing churches, those that are bursting at the seams, especially with young people, note their conservative theology, and wonder if maybe that’s the way to go. Or at least to not be too vocal about our liberalness. It’s okay to be an Open and Affirming church, just don’t advertise it, don’t put the rainbow on the sign, because that might turn some people off and keep them away.
The truth is that liberalness is the wave of the future, and always has been! People are not leaving liberal churches in great numbers and going to conservative ones in reaction to liberal theology or social or political outlooks. A recent study by Copernicus Marketing Consulting and Research reveals that “the popular perception....that the number of Americans who consider themselves fundamentalist is growing at a much faster rate that those with less orthodox views....has no basis in fact....Copernicus discovered that among the general population, the number of Americans who consider themselves religiously liberal increased much more dramatically over the course of 30 years while the number of fundamentalists increased only marginally. Liberals expanded from 18 per cent of the population in 1972 to 29 percent in 2002, while fundamentalists grew from 27 percent to 30 percent.” My experience is that when people do leave liberal churches, the mostly go not to more conservative ones but rather to the “Church Alumni Association.”
If our churches have been shrinking it has a lot more to do with simple demographics – being numerous in parts of the country with stable or declining or aging populations, and not being pro-active about starting new ones in the sun-belt – and the fact that we aren’t having the large families that we were in the golden age of the 1950's – and the fact that the more evangelical churches have taken their evangelical heritage seriously, and have done whatever they have had to do to appeal to a largely unchurched generation. This has to do with everything from music to church structure to excitement and energy, recognizing how to use culture as an ally. But I do not believe it has that much to do with a conservative theology and social outlook. As I said liberalness is the wave of the future and always has been. No church is going to use the Bible anymore to condone the institution of slavery. Some churches may not allow women to serve fully, but I don’t know of any who would seek to take away women’s right to vote. Not all churches are a welcoming and including of gays and lesbians in their communities, but few would advocate burning them at the stake. All of the great reforms of the past century that were considered liberal at the time are now pretty much accepted as the norm, as the way it should be, and we are not going back.
This is not to down play or dismiss the current power of the religious right, but to say that in the long run, they are an aberration! As a church, we ought to claim our liberal theological badge and wear it proudly, turn around from hiding that light under a bushel and proclaim loudly, This is who we are!
One church I know of that does that is the First Congregational Church of Long Beach, California, across town from where I served for 12 years (and where our organist today was once the interim organist!). Right on the website, it says upfront, “A Liberal Church, Welcoming of All, Passionately Committed to Social Justice.” And in the section for “the first time visitor”, it says, “When you walk into our sanctuary you will be entering the oldest church building in Long Beach, a place of incredible beauty and long tradition. You will find yourself seated amidst a diverse congregation - people of various ages, abilities and disabilities, races and sexual orientations......You may not agree with all that you hear from the pulpit in the sermon but you won't be bored and you will be challenged to think.” So don’t say we didn’t warn you. This is a church with its own float in the annual Gay Pride Parade. It’s a church who joins its pastor on the front lines of thought and action. It’s a church that has built housing for the elderly and the disabled of its community. It’s a church that is unapologetically liberal. And it is a church that is growing, turned around 180 degrees from when I first encountered it in the early 1980's.
Turn around, church, and claim who you are and what you believe. Turn around, and dare to try some new ways of thinking, of worshiping, of programming. Another way to do that might be to realize that you grow larger by growing smaller. That is, the more people there are, the more need there is for them to be together in smaller groups where that can get to know one another, build caring relationships, help each other along the journey. A church like Saddleback, with its 80,000 members has discovered this. It’s so easy to be lost in the crowd, and so they urge everyone to be involved in some sort of small group. It’s important in a church even of 5 or 600 members, like ours, because while people may come for the worship, they will stay for the fellowship, the connections, the sense of caring that comes only through personal relationships. I have long advocated and supported the creation and nurturing of small groups in the church – from choirs to generation-related groups, both of which we have – to groups that are task-oriented, mission-centered, gathered around study or prayer or maybe just plain fun – doesn’t matter. When we turn around the focus from growing larger to growing smaller, we grow!
One more turn-around we might want to consider – the truth that in order to fix your internal problems, you don’t focus on yourself, you look outward. It works as persons: if you’re depressed, maybe the best way to get out of it is not to focus on why you’re depressed – you will probably find your depression justified! – but to go outside yourself. In focusing on someone else’s needs and happiness, you somehow take care of your own, and it’s amazing how many of your own problems seem to melt away! Same with a church. We can spend so much time and energy worrying about our budgets and our bylaws, our staffing and even our Internet service – and all of these are necessary, but our real salvation will come when we spend our energy on mission, reaching out, making a difference, praying for others, working alongside them, again, helping to make this world a little more like the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to proclaim. Turn around, church, look outward, not inward, get mission-oriented, and you will indeed find yourself turned around!
I trust you see in all of this something of a vision for Westmoreland Church – on the Sunday of the Annual Meeting that’s something I’m supposed to present. I hope you sense a vision of a turn-around church, repentant in the best sense of the word---
—a church that claims and proclaims its liberal outlook,
—a church that offers a place for each person to be known and cared about,
—a church that spends its energy in mission, loving the world that God loves;
—a church that is repentant in the best sense of the word, that hears the voice of God Still Speaking, and responds in the same way that Simon and Andrew, James and John did when they heard Jesus’ invitation: “The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. And come, follow me!”
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