Mark 9:30-37
16 Pentecost / Proper 20 / Year B
24 September 2006
The Church of the Good Shepherd
Wareham, Massachusetts
Preached by The Rev. David Fredrickson
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all." (Mark 9:33-35)
Earlier this week I was reading in the Living Church, a weekly periodical serving our Anglican Tradition, that five of our Episcopal churches are closing back in the part of the country where I grew up, in the Diocese of Colorado. In a letter mailed to the clergy of the diocese this past August, the blame for these closings was pinned on the general decline of active membership within the diocese as a whole over the past 20 years. Interestingly enough, two of these five churches are located in the city of Colorado Springs the true epicenter of Protestant Evangelicalism for the entire country and perhaps even the world. The city is littered with churches that brag of having memberships of over 1000. Ted Haggard’s New Life Church has over 14,000 members. Ted Haggard is also the President of the National Association of Evangelicals. Hundreds of thousands of people every year make the pilgrimage to Colorado Springs to visit James Dobson’s Focus on the Family ministry. That organization is so large that it even has its own zip code. In a community where so many people go to church, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, it is amazing to me that we are closing two of the seven parishes located there, in a community that has nearly a half a million people.
It is true that the active membership in all Episcopal Churches across the nation has declined by about seven percent over the past ten years and that more of our churches are declining than growing. This is a trend that is affecting all mainline Protestant churches in this country. The peak membership in the traditional mainline churches came during the 1960’s.The trend has been downward ever since. There are many [quote; unquote] “experts” looking at these trends and asking “why” and there is certainly no shortage of opinions from the pews.
I believe that one of the dangers that we run into, however, is the idea being bandied about by religious leaders and pundits alike that somehow the decline of the Mainline Protestant Church is tied into God’s judgment upon us for the controversial positions we have taken on any number of theological issues. Congregationalists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, American Baptists; we have all taken unpopular or perhaps unconventional positions on an array of issues from homosexuality, to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, to racism and women’s ordination, to the plight of the poor. Since the 1960’s we have generally been out of sync with the wider culture and hence, have not been overly successful at attracting new membership.
The truth of the matter is, the decline of our mainline churches has not been the result of people leaving as much as it has been the result of our churches doing more funerals than baptisms. There is no question, however, that we have paid a price for making theological claims that have not been congruent with the moral values of the wider culture. The fact is, even though we all do our level best to get these things right, none of us has a God’s eye view and none of us is going to get it right all the time. Perhaps nobody put this better than did the great 16th-century reformer Martin Luther; “If any man believes that he has the right doctrine, [he said] let him reach up and feel his ears and feel that he has the furry ears of an ass.” I love that quotation and I have been waiting my whole life to use it in a sermon. But he is right; none of us gets it right all the time. Jesus, however, was never concerned with whether his disciples got it right or not; what Jesus was concerned about was whether or not they were faithful, to those they encountered along their journey, and ultimately faithful to him and the one who sent him.
Just because a church is big and growing or successful in the eyes of the world does not mean, necessarily, that it has everything right, that it is being faithful to the gospel that Jesus asked all of his disciples throughout the ages to be faithful to. And the opposite is true, just because a church is shrinking does not necessarily mean that it is being unfaithful to that very same gospel. What is at issue here is the desire to be great, to be first. People love a winner because winners finish first and at least at this time in our history we mainline Christians are not perceived as winners.
In today’s gospel we find the disciples arguing fame, about which of them was going to be the greatest when Jesus came into his Kingdom. You see, even after Jesus’ repeated revelation that he was going to die in utter humiliation, the disciples carried on as though nothing was wrong. There was a complete disconnect between what Jesus was saying and what the disciples were hearing for Jesus was not talking like a winner and the disciples so wanted to be associated with a winner. So they ignored him and continued to make plans for their place within the regime that would be set up once the revolution that Jesus was going to usher in took control of Israel; we too want to be associated with a winner, it is part of our human nature.
The focus for Jesus was not on being first, but on being faithful. The Holy Scripture is very clear that he too was tempted with greatness. When he was in the wilderness, he was offered all the kingdoms of the world in all their splendor a temptation that he ultimately understood would have derailed God’s redemptive plan for the whole created order. The focus in the gospel is not on being first, but on being faithful. Our losses in the Episcopal Church are not the end of the line. It is futile to jump into a survival mode while looking longingly at those churches that are growing by leaps and bounds. That is not what we are called to do. We are called to be faithful to the gospel that we have received and to trust that God will not forsake what God has brought forth. So this morning, let us be determined to live into our true greatness, to plunge ourselves with reckless abandon into the loving arms of a God that is waiting to redeem the whole world through the most unlikely of means, through those who choose to serve rather than those who choose to be served, through those who choose to be last and not first.
In Jesus Name. Amen.
