Messenger and Message

For some people, the to-do list is the bane of their existence.  It is a reminder of all the things that are yet undone, a list that lengthens rather than shortens, a list that points out all of one’s flaws with time management and organization, a list of shame.  For others, that to-do list is a help, a way to organize life, a marking of tasks accomplished.  For yet others, there is no such thing as the to-do list, time and activity are more free-formed, unconstrained by lists and check marks.

For some, the to-do list is a description not only of what there is to do, but also of who the list maker is.  For others, identity is completely separate from task.  It’s that eternal question of how ‘who I am’ relates to ‘what I do’.

As Christians, the core of our identity is not about what we do but about who we are.  We are children of God.  I might add that we are beloved children of God.  That is first and foremost who we are, and if in our lifetimes we did nothing that displayed a faith or a call or a divinely-inspired love, we would still be children of God.  That is our core identity, affirmed in baptism, and nothing we do or don’t do can diminish that identity.

Which is not to say that as children of God, we just sit on our hands.  Many of us do feel that God calls us not only to a way of life but also to some tasks, a divine to-do list that accomplishes the purpose of extending God’s love to the world.

So this morning I would like to look with you at the relationship between who we are and what we do, both in terms of the lesson from Mark’s gospel and because today is our annual congregational meeting, a time when we look back at who we are and what we have done even as we look forward to those same things.

Let’s start with gospel of Mark.  We are in Year B of the lectionary schedule of scripture readings, which means most of our gospel lessons are from Mark, dipping into John’s gospel once in a while.  Mark’s is the oldest gospel, written around year 80, and it is the shortest gospel.  There is an immediacy to this gospel – you will hear and read lots of “and then”s, “immediately’s and “suddenly”s, giving the sense that Jesus is always on the go, moving from one significant moment of ministry to the next with not a lot of fluff in between.  Mark’s gospel has no birth story at the beginning and no sighting of the risen Christ at the end.  You could say that Mark is all meat and potatoes, no appetizers or dessert and no palate cleansers.

 This morning’s text is the third event in the gospel.  Jesus has been baptized by John.  He has gone into the wilderness and survived his time of testing, and he is now ready to begin his ministry.

Now it’s interesting to break this text down into events.  The lesson begins with a crisis: John the Baptist has been arrested.  In Mark’s gospel, John serves as an Elijah figure who will usher in the messiah, and John did that.  But now he is in Herod’s clutches, and the people of God must turn to a new figure who is Jesus.

So we begin with a crisis, and from that crisis emerges Jesus, who is a messenger with a message; the kingdom of God is here.

Crisis, message, and then command: repent and believe.

Crisis, message, command, then call: follow me.

We could stop there, finish off the text with the language of following Jesus and becoming fishers of people, but there’s a coda in this story I don’t want to miss.  Crisis, message, command, call, and then… a leaving behind.  For some reason, this time when I studied the text I was so aware of that last verse, in which James and John leave their boats, leave their nets, leave their father Zebedee.   Maybe we are to understand that when we answer the call, we leave something behind.

Crisis, message, command, call, leaving behind - maybe the rhythm of this text forms a pattern for as we consider who we are and what we do as beloved children of God.  How might this pattern imprint on our individual faith experience?
We experience a crisis, which causes us to look at everything, and we ask if there is a benevolent being overseeing the universe.  We’re in a crisis – is there a God who is in that crisis with us?

Should we answer yes to that question, we move on to look at what message this God has for us.  Is it a message of hope?  Is it a message of condemnation and judgment, or a message of grace and love?

Perhaps what follows the message is a command, and that command echoes those words of Jesus in Mark: repent and believe.  The Greek word we translate as ‘repent’ has a sense of turning around, turning away from the shadows and destructive forces in the world, turning to the light and those things that build up.

And believe – believe what exactly?  Believe that God exists? Believe that God loves?  Believe in a particular dogma or theological system?  Believe in the sense of trust?  Is the command really to turn around and trust God?

And if we turn around and if we trust God, is there more – is there a call from God beyond those things?  What is our call – can all calls be summed up by the words “follow me?”

And if answer the call to follow Jesus, what do we leave behind?  We could leave behind old patterns, habits, behaviors.  We could leave behind an attitude about the world, or about humanity.  We could leave behind things, or people.

Crisis, message, call, command, leaving behind - that’s what it might look like if we allowed today’s scripture to imprint a pattern on our individual lives of faith.  But I am even more interested in looking at our congregational identity, to see if this pattern can be imprinted on our communal life together.

Crisis.  A year ago, this congregation was in a bit of a crisis as it was discovered that 2010 had ended with a $67,000 budget deficit.  There were other crises, too – the crisis of cherished members dying, the crisis of the departure of the interim pastor, the crisis of a longer-than-anticipated completion of the search for a new pastor.

That crisis, one could say, was followed by a message: God is not done with Westminster, not by a long shot.  And from that message grew maybe not commands or even imperatives as much as commitments.

Last year you said to each other,  Let’s commit ourselves to enlarging the Finance Committee so that more of us have a better grasp of some of our administrative details.  Let’s commit ourselves to throwing our full support behind David and Laurie who graciously and wonderfully stepped up to fill in the pastoral leadership void.  Let’s commit to maintaining our ministries of outreach and music and our programs for children and youth.  Let’s commit to being faithful and prudent stewards of our resources.

Crisis, message, command, and then call.  As I, as an outsider for the most part, look back on all that Westminster experienced last year, I believe that God was calling this congregation to hope and trust.  Those are big words to throw around in the midst of a crisis, and I don’t know if you used that particular language.  Hindsight is always 20-20, of course, but when I look back I am amazed by the hope you all had and by the trust you had in each other, in God, and in the various processes that were taking place.

But then we come to the leaving behind.  I wonder if many of our folks last year left behind the luxury of staying uninvolved.  Some people left behind their relationship with a former pastor. Some people left behind an illusion of perfection at Westminster (which is not to say this is not an imperfectly great place.)

And I wonder if the pattern of today’s scripture might be imprinted on our hopes and visions for the coming year.

Crisis.  In some ways, embarking on the construction of Phase IA of the This Is My Westminster campaign will be a crisis in the sense of predicament.  There are many, many logistical details to attend to; things will be messy, some peoples’ offices will be unusable because of construction or noise.  Those among our faithful members who have believed that there was a different or better way to do this project will see it happening, and that might be hard.  And that is okay.

But this is a crisis that has been planned for a long, long, long time.  So I hope that in the coming year we will not spend time focusing on the predicaments resulting from the building project, but on other things.

Crisis, then message.  For Christians, the message and messenger remain the same:  Jesus Christ, the son of God, came to the world to love us and teach us and heal us, and in so doing, redeemed all that has gone wrong.  Christ is still redeeming all that goes wrong, and in that message there is hope:  hope that we are not alone; hope that God has not abandoned us to our messes; hope that goodness, and not evil, will prevail.

And so, girded with our hope in Jesus Christ, we receive our imperative.  Gregg and I hope that this year, we at Westminster commit ourselves to reaching out, to stretching, to going higher or broader or deeper in the many ways we do ministry, in the many ways we enact our faith.  Reaching out might mean getting more members involved in something.  Reaching out might mean leaving our beautiful walls and going out into the neighborhood, community, and world.  Reaching out might mean confronting those faith questions that are not always comfortable but can lead to a deeper understanding of who God is and what God calls each of us to do.

In the last few months, Gregg and I have shared our vision for Westminster, and we invite you to consider that vision as a call.  Some of what we envision could be put on a to-do list: engaging in classes and activities that deepen faith; becoming involved in hands-on mission that forges relationships among all of God’s children.  And some of what we envision could be put on a to-be list:  cultivating hearts of hospitality to whomever might come through our doors; being open to the presence of God’s spirit who may well take us places we never imagined.

And now we come to the last part of our pattern: leaving behind.  It’s the hardest, in some ways, because leaving behind acknowledges that change really is happening, and that change often comes with a cost.  I wonder what we as a congregation will leave behind, what we will lament losing, and what we will be glad to let go of.  It could be that we leave behind a particular way of doing things.  We could leave behind a reliance on those faithful people whom we always call on to do things, and invite new people to help lead us.  We could leave behind a hesitation to engage with those around us, whether they are like us or not.

Gregg and I believe this will be an exciting year for Westminster, but you could say that every year has the potential to be exciting in one way or another.  So often we pinch ourselves, feeling so grateful to be here among you all, even with the challenges and happy problems that we face.

If you are visiting with us today, and this sermon has felt like something for those on the inside, my apologies, but even more than that, my invitation to you.  Come back.  Watch how this year unfolds.  See what we’re about.  Follow Jesus with us.

And if, when the service is over, you attend what feels like your 1000th annual meeting of the congregation, and if this sermon has or has not touched you in some way, I extend you an invitation, too.  Keep coming.  Be a part of how this year unfolds.  Help define what we’re about.  Follow Jesus with us.  Amen.

The Reverend Beth Neel
Westminster Presbyterian Church
January 22, 2012