Don't Throw That Away!

In this sermon, I consider the question of what is useful for contemporary churches to keep in their search to remain relevant in today's world. To analyze today, I look at Christian history as summarized by Phyllis Tickle in her recent (2008) book The Great Emergence. Many ideas of the past have been thrown away as the Christian church has moved through history. If you choose to read this sermon, think about what the church of today should choose to keep -- and what it might choose to throw away!



Well, we made it through the garage sale, didn’t we? It’s been nearly a month now since our church garage sale took place, and I hope that we’re still rejoicing about the $1500 that we made for our new playground equipment. Some of us are also rejoicing about the newly de-cluttered rooms in our homes!

That garage sale wasn’t easy! Garage sales never are. They involve lots of all kinds of work: sorting, organizing, displaying, and cleaning up afterwards. And, of course, there are always disagreements – disagreements that seem to center around the question of what should be donated and what should be kept. A box might be filled with items that, in one person’s opinion, are great things to donate to the sale! But before that box can be hauled away, someone else appears out of nowhere. “What’s in the box?” he asks. “Can I have a look?” And waaaay down in the bottom, there is always sure to be something that person thinks should be kept. “Oh, don’t throw that away!” he says. Hmmmm….

What should be kept… and what should be thrown away? It’s not just a question that churches ask when they sponsor a community garage sale! In fact, Phyllis Tickle, a specialist of religion and society, claims that Christianity as a whole asks that question every 500 years. In her recent book The Great Emergence (Baker Books, 2008), Tickle has observed that “about every five hundred years, the Church feels compelled to hold a giant [garage] sale.” She claims that it takes that long for the faith to get cluttered up with all kinds of activities and traditions and doctrines that actually keep more people away from the faith than they do to welcome them in. And so, every 500 years, the Church gets rid of some of the clutter. Let’s take a quick tour through the past 2,000 years of Christian history, and see what our garage sales of the past have looked like. All you have to do is to step into my WayBack machine and fasten your seat belt. Here we go!

Our first stop is in the city of Ephesus (in what is now the country of Turkey) in about the year 55. Paul of Tarsus is preaching to a crowd of Jews and gentiles that Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Messiah, and that what God really wants of us is to follow Jesus and to model our lives after him. According to Paul, we can throw away all the Jewish ritual laws – temple sacrifice, keeping kosher, and circumcision. The Jews in the audience are objecting, “Don’t throw that away!” but Paul insists. The gentiles, on the other hand, are delighted to hear that Paul says they don’t have to keep all the Jewish laws! It’s ironic that Christianity itself was born in the midst of a garage sale of epic proportions.

Now let’s fast-forward the WayBack machine 550 years, to the year 600. The Roman Empire is dead; and the barbarian hordes that have overrun the city of Rome have decided to stay there. Quite a few have become Christian themselves; but most of them are illiterate. Their form of Christianity is as much magic and superstition as it is living in and through Jesus Christ. We are standing in the entrance to the cloister where a small group of monks live together. It’s dark and quiet here in the cloister; and we can hear the monks chanting as they join in worship. Unlike most Christians, these monks can read and write. (Their scriptorium is right over there, in fact, where they meticulously copy Bibles and other books by hand.) They have been organized by Pope Gregory I, who is now called Gregory the Great. Gregory understood that if Christianity was to survive, the treasures of its past must not be thrown out. Manuscripts, books, and church tradition must be preserved for the education of future generations. So, he organized groups of monks and nuns to do just that. Fortunately, in the garage sale of the 5^th century, Gregory the Great kept some real treasures from being thrown out in the dumpster!

Here we go again. We’re off to the year 1054. This time, we’re in the sanctuary of the Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, in the city of Constantinople (now called Istanbul). The bishop is announcing to his parishioners that their whole church has been excommunicated by the Bishop of Rome because of a theological disagreement. Today, we call this the “Great Schism”; and these two major sections of Christianity – Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox – have not yet been reconciled. In the garage sale of 1054, for better or for worse, Christian unity was the victim of the decluttering efforts.

OK, one last stop. The year is 1517; and we’re standing in front of the door of the church in Wittenburg, Germany. There’s a long piece of paper tacked on the door – a list of 95 theological points. A monk named Martin Luther wants to debate them with authorities in the Roman Catholic church. If this last stop is more familiar to you, I’m not surprised. Luther’s 95 Theses were the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Lots of old ways were thrown out in this garage sale! Traditional practices were reexamined in light of the corruption that had infiltrated the Roman Catholic church; and a new emphasis on opening the Bible to non-clergy sprang up.

And that brings us to today. It’s not quite 500 years past Luther’s time; so we’re about due for another Christian church garage sale. In fact, Phyllis Tickle argues that we’re in the middle of one right now! Churches are reevaluating all kinds of things that have been taken for granted until fairly recently. If we look at Christian churches around the country (and even around the world), we will find that there is no one way of “being church” any more. Congregations have thrown out all kinds of things as they move into the future!

·         Some churches have reinvented their worship practices. Many worship on days other than Sunday. Worship spaces have been redesigned so that the seating can fit the needs of any particular day’s worship experience. Ancient worship practices like Taizé worship (an experience of scripture, music, and meditation) have been rediscovered. Worship is no longer simply a keynote address with a few prayers.

·         Others have discarded “programming” in favor of “service opportunities.” These churches are organizing to work on Habitat homes, serve in soup kitchens, and help out in disaster-stricken areas. They are hear Jesus’ call as not to be “organized religion,” but to be “religion organized” in the service of others.

·         And Christian education is undergoing a huge change. The morning Sunday school model fits so few churches these days that many congregations have even donated it to the garage sale! These churches are integrating their Christian education into all aspects of their church life. All ages work, worship, and fellowship together; and in the process, they learn about Jesus and his call to love God and one another.

Yes, it’s all up for discussion these days. What shall we keep, and what shall we throw away?

Unfortunately, my WayBack machine can only travel to the past, so I can’t show you what Christianity will look like 500 years in the future. Who knows what things will look like then? But I do know that in the midst of our decluttering the church from everything that is holding us back, there is only one thing that we really need to hang on to. We can find it by getting in the WayBack machine one more time and going way back – all the way back to 15 years before the time of St. Paul, about the year 35. As we step out of the WayBack machine, we’re in a small upper room in the Middle East in the middle of a celebration. Men and women are shouting with joy, crowding around a young man who is standing in their midst. Just a few days ago, on Friday, they were frightened and grief-stricken – but today, on Sunday, their joy knows no bounds. Jesus, the one they thought was gone forever, has returned to them with his message of love and salvation. They are ready to do anything in his service, because Jesus is risen!

In this morning’s scripture reading (Revelation 2:1-5, 7), we heard a message to the church in Ephesus. In part, it warned, “Don’t lose the love that you had at first.” That love is the love that Jesus’ disciples felt on that first Easter Day when they realized that Jesus would be with them forever. It was the love that sent them to all corners of the known world, to preach the gospel to Jews and to gentiles, and even to go into the arena as martyrs! We dare not lose that love as we respond to today’s realities and to tomorrow’s challenges. Our identity as people of Jesus Christ must continue to be our foundation as we reevaluate what we do in our churches and how we go about doing it. Otherwise, we will have discarded our love for Jesus Christ – and that’s the one thing that we must never throw away!