2nd Sunday after Pentecost

So, we had our first men’s fellowship and fundraising event last week! BBQ & Brew!! And by all accounts it was a successful event! We got to spend time in fellowship with one another, we had some great food, some great beer, a few cigars, and we raised money for a great cause!!

As the evening went on and things wound down, we found ourselves (a small group of us) sitting in a circle in some camp chairs. We were talking, kidding with one another… It was a warm, delightful atmosphere. And then, slowly, the conversation took on a more serious tone. What do we do about the church? Why are fewer and fewer young adults engaged with church?

I’ve actually done quite a bit of reading on this matter, because, let’s face it, it’s not a new issue. It is, however, an issue that becomes more pressing as the years go on.

So, why the decline? The reasons are complex and multiple but in general it can be attributed to the following. In general, there has been an erosion of trust in institutions in the United States. It took off in earnest with the generation that followed the Baby Boomers, Generation X, which includes me, by the way. The things that defined our generation were things like the Watergate scandal and the fallout from the war in Viet Nam. At about the same time, we saw the rise of televangelists and televangelism. And with their rise to prominence, they started taking a far more active role in the political process in the United States. And there was the rather apparent and often ostentatious displays of wealth that accompanied the rise of said personalities. Add to that the clergy sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptism Convention and other denominations and at the same time the fights over inclusion, or not, of our LGBTQ siblings… It’s the perfect recipe for disillusionment.

2 ½ years of isolation didn’t help either. A friend and colleague in Pennsylvania was making calls to parishioners after their church reopened for public worship. He recalled one conversation for me that he’d had with someone who had been a very active and visible member of the congregation, pre-COVID. The guy had even served as a congregational council officer. And when Andy asked the gentleman why he hadn’t been back the response he got was along the lines of: “You know, I didn’t go to church for 2 ½ years and I realized I didn’t miss it.”

And there’s the simple fact that the more industrialized, wealthy, and democratic a society becomes, the more secular they tend to become. In other words, it’s no surprise that a country like Yemen should be one of the most religious societies in the world and Western Europe and increasingly the United States should be among the least. 

That is, of course, a gross oversimplification of highly complex issues. Nevertheless, they are the issues that led to those anguished questions in our circle a week ago on Friday night. But here’s the thing: the very thing that happened in that circle is also one of the things that can well be instrumental in not just our recovery, but in our flourishing.

What we experienced that night was a powerful moment of deep vulnerability. The men in that circle were able to honestly and openly share their anxieties, their worries, and their fears. Faith always involves vulnerability, as does spiritual growth and, honestly, anything else that’s worth doing well. And that includes hope. Not just wishing for something, but true, prophetic hope. The kind of hope expressed by the prophet Jeremiah, for example, when he writes:
18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:18-19).

You can’t express hope without expressing vulnerability, because when we express hope, it is expressing implicitly if not explicitly that things are not as they ought to be. Just look at the exercises in hope that we see in today’s Gospel reading:

·        Matthew who, at the call of Jesus, casts aside his entire way of life; just walks away from it, placing his hope in the man who calls to him.

·        The temple leader whose daughter is not merely ill, is not in the process of actively dying, but is already dead! Her status is decidedly deceased! And yet the temple leader comes to Jesus, asking him to raise her again.

·        And the woman with the hemorrhage. For twelve years she has suffered. For twelve years she has been forced to live as an unclean person; an outcast; an untouchable. And yet despite those twelve long years of suffering, she still possesses an audacious hope! “If I can just touch the fringe of his cloak”, she says to herself.

In all three of these instances, the love of Jesus has the power to radically define who and what these people are.

When we are baptized, we likewise undergo a radical redefinition. We may by all outward appearances look no different than before, aside from the dampness in our hair, but we emerge from the baptismal water as a very different creature indeed. We emerge as a child of God. We emerge as a minister in the name of Jesus. We emerge as a worker in the kingdom of God. In Holy Baptism, we are called, no less than Matthew was called, to set aside our uninformed, unreflective way of being, and we are called join ourselves to Christ on the Cross; We are called to die with Christ in the waters of Baptism and to be reborn as an heir with Christ to the Kingdom of God: A Kingdom that we strive to co-create with God as we serve in the name of Jesus. Jesus calls us out of the busy, over-saturated, ordinariness of our lives. And we respond not because we don’t have anything else to do, but because we don’t have anything more important to do than to hear and heed Jesus’s command. Jesus call to be co-creator of the Kingdom of God makes a compelling, life-altering claim upon us. It says in effect “Since there is nothing more important for you to do, drop what you are doing and follow me.” The most fitting response to such a command is: “And he got up and followed him.” 

Matthew did not choose Jesus, Jesus chose Matthew. And Jesus didn’t ask him if he would take some time to think about the possibility of considering going along with him. The call to follow is in the imperative mood, which is the mood of command.  At the command of Jesus, Matthew got up and followed him. The German title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s much beloved book, The Cost of Discipleship, considered to be a classic of Christian thought, consisted of one word in its original 1937 publication: “Nachfolge.” Translated into English, nachfolge literally means “following after.” Jesus calls Matthew to “follow after” him. In a simple act of obedience, Matthew obeys. Jesus calls us to do the same.   

The call from Jesus is not a multiple-choice test. The command is simple, yet profound and the answer is: “yes, I will” or “no I won’t”. The power of that call compels us to answer immediately and obediently. The call is action-oriented. It requires us to live now as if the Kingdom of God is already fully established. It requires us to live now as if the lion and the lamb are already lying down together. To live now as if adversaries have already beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. To live now as if justice has already begun to roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).

Prep time to heed the call is minimal. On-the-job training is the preferred modus operandus. Not surprisingly, this is also how we save the church. Or rather, this is how Jesus saves the church through us. By living as much like Jesus as possible. And I don’t mean toiling quietly in our own little corner of Carroll County, Howard County, Montgomery County, or Frederick County. Nor do I mean that we should actively draw attention to ourselves, in self-aggrandizing ways. But when we engage in public ministry that is Jesus based, people notice.

There are benefits and burdens to obedience. This is not an easy choice to make, trying to be authentic in expressing faith through your life. Jesus calls Matthew, this socially outcast man, and he gets up and follows after him. In following Jesus, he leaves his desk, the symbol of his profession and the comfort and stability that it represents. God never calls us to something, without first calling us away from something. Some people will never fully come into discipleship because they find themselves unable to let go of the commitments in which they are engaged before the call of God comes into their lives. You can never get to the next thing that God has for you until, in an act of simple obedience, you let go of where you are and follow after God.

It’s a journey that begins with baptism. And it ends? Well, for each of us personally, it ends when we end. And we transition to the church triumphant. But for the world, in its ever on-going transformation, it ends when the love, grace, justice, and righteousness of God’s Kingdom are finally and fully realized. AAMEN