April 12, 2009                                                                           Isaiah 25:6-9

Easter                                                                                       Mark 16:1-8

A day of promise and possibility

          Earlier this week I saw in the news that Wall Mart is blaming our late Easter for poor sales this spring.  Imagine, the Christian church is being blamed for messing up the economy because it has the nerve to follow ancient traditions for determining the date of its highest and holiest day of the year!  By the way, in case you don’t know the formula, it goes like this:  Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the spring equinox.  Somebody had better give Wall Mart a head’s up because in 2011, Easter won’t come until April 24!

          So much for the business world. 

          I would like to welcome you this morning on this very special occasion.  You see, not only is it Easter, our traditional day of celebration and joy, it is our first Easter as a worshipping congregation!  How blessed we are to be in this wonderful building.  Just think of how far God has brought us in one year.  This is truly a day of promise and possibility! 

          Last year some of us met for the first time as we gathered on the shore of Mashpee Wakeby Pond for our first-ever Easter sunrise service.  That was a good year, by the way, for Wall Mart because Easter in 2008 was March 23. 

          Since then, we have grown as a worshipping congregation to the point that come next month, we will go to two services.  God has blessed us in so many ways!  We are offsetting our subsidy from the MA Conference considerably, which means that we are moving toward self-sufficiency.  We have expanded our outreach to include the Boys and Girls Club, the Prayer Shawl Ministry, the Mashpee Food Pantry, and most recently, career workshops for juniors and seniors from Mashpee High School. 

          We have just completed a full cycle of special offerings including Strengthen the Church, Neighbors in Need, The Christmas Fund, and One Great Hour of Sharing.  We held our first Bible Study class in March.  We’ve have amazing pot luck dinners and we have dined in celebration in several area restaurants.  We have baked cookies, had unbelievable coffee hours, created chaos at some of our area church meetings, been awarded preliminary standing by the Barnstable Association, and been blessed by a terrific music program under the direction of Cathy Bonnett. 

          In recognition of all our God-led growth and development, we can surely say that today is a day of promise and possibility.  As we celebrate the news of Christ’s resurrection, we can say with certainty that the living spirit of Christ has been with us this past year, is with us this morning, and will continue to journey with us as we face the prospects of outgrowing this building perhaps sooner than we might imagine!

          I have to share with you that being pastor of this new church start is a remarkable experience!  Each day unfolds like resurrection day as new people show interest in the congregation, while the people already committed demonstrate the courage to take this ship of faith out into deeper waters.  There is nothing like being the pastor of a new congregation and I wish to thank all of you for your enthusiastic support.  Not only is this a day of promise and possibility, but you are a people of promise and possibility!

          Pastors of settled, established congregations have a different experience.  Let’s look at a list one pastor compiled in reference to his ministry.  Then let me share with you how things are different here. 

          The pastors of settled churches bemoan the fact that they never hear the following in church:

          Hey!  It’s my turn to sit in the front pew!  In our church, front pews are first class seats offering generous leg room.  Occasionally snacks are served.

          The second thing settled pastors wish they would hear is this kind of a comment from a parishioner leaving after the service:  “I was so enthralled; I never noticed your sermon went 25 minutes overtime!”  In this church, everyone is enthralled every week not because the sermons are necessarily any good, but because your pastor follows the 12 minute rule!

          The third thing settled pastors yearn to hear from a parishioner is this:  “Personally I find witnessing much more enjoyable than golf.”  An organizing pastor knows that witnessing and golf can actually be the same thing!  One can witness while playing golf; in fact, golf is a necessary networking activity, almost as important as drinking a grande non fat cinnamon dolce latte, the man’s brew!

          Here’s a fourth thing settled pastors yearn for:  someone coming up to him in coffee hour and saying:  “I just love it when we sing hymns I’ve never heard before!”  Not so with this organizing pastor.  I hear this all the time, every Sunday.  “I just loved that new hymn, Reverend.  I was completely lost by the third verse but the tune is terrific!  When can we sing it again?”

          This is a fifth thing settled pastors yearn to hear:  “Reverend, isn’t it wonderful!  I couldn’t find a parking space this morning.  Praise the Lord!”  Organizing pastors see excitement on the faces of parishioners all the time, because parking attendants are needed to guide guests to an available spot.  New church starts love to create a buzz by having overflow parking problems!

          Here is the sixth and final thing settled pastors yearn to hear but seldom does it happen:  “Reverend, the congregation would like to send you to a Bible seminar next winter in the Bahamas.”  Well, Diane and I may not get all the way to the Bahamas in June, but we are going to have a getaway using the gift you so kindly and generously gave us last winter.  New church start pastors are blessed by their risk-taking, possibility-thinking parishioners who fill each day with promise.

          At six o’clock this morning there was a group of us on South Cape Beach eager to greet the rising sun, feeling that this day would be like no other.  We were not disappointed.  To stand there and watch the sun make a brilliant entrance is a breathtaking moment when you really stop to think about it. Each day of life brings with it a great capacity for promise and possibility.  Far too many people spend most of their lives worrying about tomorrow and fail to appreciate the moment they are in.  We’re busy planning for an upcoming trip, dreading an upcoming visit to the doctor’s office, worrying about bills that are about to arrive, stressed over what might happen “if.”

          We far too often miss the promises and possibilities of “now” because we are too focused on what bad things could happen tonight, or tomorrow or next week or next month.

          Quite a few years ago, I heard about a survey of a group of ninety-year olds.  Their wisdom still rings true today.  The key question they were asked was this:

“If you had it all to do over, what would you do differently?” (repeat)

          Here’s what they said:  first, they would take more risks.  Obviously, in hindsight, many of the people in the survey felt that they had been too conservative with their lives.  They missed out on opportunities by being too cautious in life.

          Second, if they could do it all over again, they would put more of their energy and time into things that really made a difference.  Obviously, people who live into their nineties enjoy a fuller perspective on the meaning of life and its value than those who die at a younger age.  They would put more of their time and energy into things that really made a difference.  Obviously, there was some regret for having wasted time on the more trivial issues of life, time which could have be given to something more important, more profound, more to the benefit of human kind.

          Thirdly, if these ninety-year-old people could do it all over again, they would take more time to smell the roses.  Obviously, you can read between the lines and sense the regrets that they had missed opportunities to enjoy life more fully by.  How sad that so many of us spend so much time focused on what is ahead of us while merely tolerating what we are doing at the moment.  We can miss so much of life by running ahead of ourselves.  We miss opportunities as we wait to get through so much of life, instead of being in life.

          We need an occasional sunrise viewing to help keep life in perspective. The introduction of each new day is a miracle.  Let’s never forget that!

          The growth of this new congregation is also a story of miracles.  Fully present and alive in Christ this morning and in this place, we are blessed to be part of a new church seeking to make a real difference in this community.  Two years ago, most of us didn’t even know one another!  What wonderful things have happened as we have taken the time to recognize and appreciate all that God has done to bring us together.  What wonderful things are happening as we, together, dare to take risks and to put our energies and talents into things that can make a difference. 

          This is a new day which the Lord has made.  This is a day of real promise and possibility.  Let us rejoice in it!   Amen.

Benediction:  Rejoice, people of God!  Christ is risen from the dead!  Go in peace to love and serve God.  Christ is with you always, even to the end of age.  Amen.