“IT’S NOT ALL UP TO US: DISCIPLES ARE EMPOWERED"

It is a grand goal for my ministry here. It will ask careful listening and prayer from me. But it is a noble and worthy goal. That with as many of you as I might get close to, and as many of you who care to hear from me, I would share with you the goal I have for your walk with God. Clearly, I can never fulfill such a mission.  But it is too much to expect people to spiritually find their way all on their own.

That is what Mark meant describing Jesus, as he looked with compassion on the seeking throng, as they seemed to him like sheep without a shepherd (Mk 6.34).

Perhaps a few examples are in order.  When I was pastor in Columbus, Ohio we had a weekly visitor named David. Over lunch, when I invited him to join, he said there was one problem.  David was an atheist.   That threw me for a bit of a loss. But I knew him well, so I laughed, “David, you’re here every week like clockwork.  If God is not real to you, what do you get out of it?  Why bother?”  I’ll never forget his answer: “There is no other place that talks about the things you talk about at church.  No other place that does the things you do here at church.” He was, of course, talking about our interest in the origin and destiny of life, our interest in living the virtues that make us the people we are supposed to be, our activities with the street people in those downtown streets and the homeless in Nicaragua. 
So what was my goal with David, the rational materialist scientific researcher? To help him see that we came from God, return to God, and that every goodness in between is a gift of God. And we humans can’t sustain the good apart from God.”

Well, I know, that is an extreme example. But more common varieties abound. Many feel as though because they don’t know the Bible by chapter and verse or the Christian belief structure from creed to confession, their faith is not legitimate. What is my goal for such a person?  Maybe something like, remember that Jesus put a child in the disciples’ midst to remind us that faith is a matter of simple trust. More essential than what we know about God is to trust what he knows about us. Hey, I’ve spent my whole life studying spiritual stuff, but it’s not the decisive thing.

One of the most common types of spiritual goals I suggest is with the affiliations we bring to church. For example, across the 28 years and the 5,357 members I have served in six churches, I recall a Zen Buddhist, a 12 step AA veteran, and a fervent America-first patriot.  What would such a diverse group have in common?  In each case, they would hear the Christian message and translate it into Zen Buddhism, AA language or American nationalism to make sense of it. In each case, I said, “I will know that you are getting somewhere in your walk with God when your following of Jesus makes sense of the helpful truths you’ve gleaned from Zen Buddhism, AA, or being an American, and not the other way around.”

I begin here today not because I’m so insightful or have any magic wand. I begin here to make the point that as your pastor, I know it is too much to expect you to spiritually find your way all by your lonesome selves. How do I know that?  I know that because I’ve been part of a circle of pastors for 22 years now. We’re accountable to each other. They help me see what I would otherwise miss. I could not find my way alone, but for how they and you help me see beyond myself.

Our mission of being and making disciples cannot be done in the vacuum of our own hearts and minds.  Christianity is a community thing, not an individual thing.  That’s why in the moment God created our Christian faith, God made the church.

This is worth emphasizing because we live in a culture advancing the lie that we can make it on our own. If you go deep within your heart of hearts; if you travel to far off Katmandu; if you get on a motorcycle and go to the Rockies, all will be revealed. And all is within your reach.  Such sentimental rubbish as this kills the spiritual impulse in our land, reducing faith to some self-serving lifestyle choice.

Let me ask you a question.  Would you trust a brain surgeon, a civil engineer, or a rocket scientist who claimed to be essentially self-taught, alone by themselves? I wouldn’t consent to that surgery, cross that bridge, or sit in that space capsule.
Well, guess what, being a Christian, I mean being a human being like Jesus was a human being, is much more difficult than any of those lofty and difficult callings.

Do you recall what we said last week as we promised our love, support, and care over the spiritual formation of little Ellie Rinkema at the occasion of her baptism? Only an entire church community can raise up the faithful from among our young.  That holds true for us not only as children but even across the sweep of our lives.

I’m thinking ahead to the autumn.  Because there is only one of me and 500 of you, it is not enough that I am slowly, over time, formulating goals for each of you. You need more than that.  You need the shaping that occurs within small groups. We shouldn’t wait until construction is finished to craft these spiritual foundations. 

So, yes, I will start up my Thursday morning Pastor’s Bible study, and Kathy will offer her class.    Maggie Bossi will preside over a renewed choir along with Bette Anne’s and Barbara’s stellar work.  Choirs powerfully shape us spiritually. I invite you to consider joining one of ours as this new era unfolds in our music ministry. 

But there are other small groups in the offing.  One of our members has talked of leading a group to help those among us suffering a grief that remains unresolved. Another member has talked of leading a group to help identify our spiritual gifts.  How can we know how God calls us unless we know how God has gifted us? Another member is interested in offering a Christianity 101 course, for those here who want more in the basics of faith whether a new member or here for 15 years. I might attend there. Another member is interested in leading a group in how we Christians relate to the larger powers and pressures at work in this warring world. Last spring the Harwich church was interested in teaming with us in a course on world religion, after the seminar I was a part of at Cape Cod Community College.

Of course, not all of these things are going to happen this autumn.  But this is the buzz setting up among us. They bode well to help us grow spiritually in ways that are flat out impossible as we’re alone off by ourselves, lost in our deep thoughts. We need nothing so much as empowerment, and that comes living in community.

I’m thinking ahead to autumn. Last Tuesday, thanks to Carol Pelton’s efforts, Council gathered a splendid search committee to find our new associate pastor. Some people call them search committees, but they are really find committees.  But maybe rather than an “associate minister”, what God wants for us is a “Minister of Christian Formation and Spiritual Care.”    Call it just semantics, if you like.  And maybe the search committee, having first listened to you and discerned the Holy Spirit will decide to go in a completely different direction.  But the situation of the church has changed in recent decades.  Pastoral leadership is no longer about programming a church in the sense of keeping it busy with general activity.  No, today we must be more intent upon making Christians and forming disciples.

We need nothing so much as empowerment, and that comes from leadership.

But here is where this sermon on empowerment is leading.  In the final analysis, it’s not about Dale as pastor, or finding a whiz-bang associate pastor, or having the wealth of lay leadership that we do around various important spiritual themes.

Seriously, if we seek empowerment, we learn to trust and depend on God’s Spirit. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus called this enduring Spirit of Christ he bequeathed upon us our “advocate”. Jesus promised this Holy Spirit would do many things for us: teach us, guide us, encourage us, unify us, convict us when we do wrong, assure us of our belovedness as God’s children, activate special spiritual gifts within us, give us boldness, energize us, empower us and transform us. Apart from the Spirit of God, apart from this power of God, friends, we can do nothing.

Next time you are on Cape Cod Bay or Nantucket Sound, do me a favor.  Take a moment and find a sailboat. Find it on the horizon and fix your gaze on its movement. They are silently elegant and beautiful in how they move, aren’t they?  The Spirit of God is like the wind animating them.  It’s invisible, you can’t see it.  But you see its results, the difference it makes, how it takes us to new places.  We heard about that in our lesson from Acts chapter three.  Peter and John, cowering and weak as Jesus needed him most, denying they had anything to do with him, now boldly teaching and healing despite the powers telling them to cease and desist.

So ask yourself this (now the homework portion of the sermon.)  Are you willing to inquire into new ways in which the Spirit of Christ might come alive within you? Are you willing to put yourself aside to let a group or leader come alongside you to see how God might work within you in ways to which you might now be blind? Would you consider practices like prayer, Bible study, contemplation, journaling, compassion as openings through which God’s Spirit might flow anew within you? For you and I to be disciples, we need empowerment.  We can no sooner give ourselves all that we need alone by ourselves than we can sit on our own lap.  Look at the profile of our sanctuary, friends, how God’s Spirit transforms us.  Our inner transformation is even more real, essential, and at the heart of the matter. Amen.

“IT’S NOT ALL UP TO US:

DISCIPLES ARE EMPOWERED”

Summer Sermon Series:

Firm Foundations in the Spiritual Basics

Rev. Dale B. Rosenberger

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

August 19, 2007