From The Minister - Rev. Lee Parker
Friends:
The 19th will be another Sunday where our sanctuary will be quiet and empty. I am missing our time together and the worship time we share.
You will find attached the scripture lesson for this Sunday and the sermon you would have heard if we had been together. I hope your personal worship time will be enhanced by reading the words I offer. Debbie and I have shared communion using some sour dough bread and grape juice. I encourage you to break bread and share a cup of blessing (with whatever is available) till we can once again can celebrate together. Blessings!
Grace and peace, Lee
Timothy CC
4-19-2020
The Church With Nothing
John 20:19-31
(John 20:19-31 NRSV) When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." {20} After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. {21} Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." {22} When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. {23} If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." {24} But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. {25} So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." {26} A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." {27} Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." {28} Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" {29} Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." {30} Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. {31} But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
+++++++++++++++++
Check out the church ads on the religion page of the Saturday edition of most big city newspapers and you find some impressive sounding places of worship. There, with sleek graphics and Madison Avenue phrases, a few select churches boast of their assets -- their choirs, their friendliness, their powerful preaching, their singles ministries, their ample parking, their family life centers, their sensitive child care, and their compassionate spirit. Some churches, it seems, have it all.
Other churches, however, appear by contrast to have nothing, absolutely nothing. Take, for example, the church depicted in our text for today. Here, we get our first glimpse of the disciples gathered together after the resurrection, the first glimpse, in other words, of the church in its earliest days, and, all in all, it is not a very pretty picture. Near the end of his life, Jesus had carefully prepared his disciples to be a devoted and confident fellowship of faith. They were to be a community of profound love with the gates wide open and the welcome mat always out, but here we find them barricaded in a house with the doors bolted shut. They were to be the kind of people who stride boldly into the world to bear fruit in Jesus' name, a people full of the Holy Spirit performing even greater works than Jesus himself (John 14:12), but here we find them cowering in fear, hoping nobody will find out where they are before they get their alibis straight. In short, we see here the church at its worst -- scared, disheartened and defensive. If this little sealed-off group of Christians were to place one of those cheery church ads in the Saturday newspaper, what could it possibly say? "The friendly church where all are welcome"? Hardly, unless one counts locked doors as a sign of hospitality. "The church with a warm heart and a bold mission"? Actually more like the church with sweaty palms and a timid spirit.
Indeed, John's gospel gives us a snapshot of a church with nothing -- no plan, no promise, no program, no perky youth ministry, no powerful preaching, no parking lot, nothing. In fact, when all is said and done, this terrified little band huddled in the corner of a room with a chair braced against the door has only one thing going for it: the risen Christ. And that seems to be the main point of this story. In the final analysis, this is a story about how the risen Christ pushed open the bolted door of a church with nothing, how the risen Christ enters the fearful chambers of every church and fills the place with his own life.
What we are asked to recognize, of course, is that every church is finally this way; every church, no matter what it says about itself in the newspaper, if it is left to its own devices, if it draws only upon its own resources, is nothing. No liturgical mascara, no programmatic cosmetic, can conceal for long the fact that, apart from the presence of the risen Christ, the church is an empty place.
A while back before I retired I was visiting a congregation that was victimized by a worship leader who, since he evidently perceived God to be absent, felt it an obligation to make up for this lack by talking incessantly through the Lord's Supper. He prattled his way along, trying to transform the worship service into a "meaningful worship experience" by the sheer force of his personality. He quoted Scripture with a syrupy tone and told cute stories and oozed out pious bromides. In essence, he betrayed his conviction that nothing was happening here except himself, no dynamism in this worship except his own energy. There we were, the church, locked in a room, bolted behind his egotistic lack of faith.
Sometimes churches begin to think of themselves as useful social institutions in and of themselves. No one would say it out loud, of course, but the attitude hangs in the air that, sure, this is a place where God is worshipped, but if God were somehow to disappear from the scene, the church would still be a fine character-building contribution to the physical and emotional well-being of the community.
John's gospel pulls the skin off of this illusion. If we want to see what becomes of the church when it is deprived of its central holy presence, look at this picture of the disciples huddled defensively in a darkened room, peeking anxiously through the drapes to make sure the world isn't after them. In the absence of God, the church is hollow, empty of meaning and purpose, fearfully locked behind its own institutional facade. Indeed, the ceaseless and frenetic activity of many congregations -- with programs ranging from "Mother's Morning Out" to "Fitness for Faith" -- is often only the lonely attempt to fill in the void where God, "the most missed of all missing persons," 1 should be.
The good news is that into the midst of this void, into the center of this fearful church with nothing, the risen Christ came and said, "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). It is into the emptiness of their community -- and ours -- into the vacuum of confidence, into the void of discipleship that Jesus comes to fill the vacant space with his peace.
What Jesus says to the church is remarkable. Given the circumstances, we may have expected that the risen Christ would come with a scold. "Shame on you for your fear and failure. I sent you into the world, not into a locked closet. Now go!" Or perhaps the risen Christ would come to bail out these terrified incompetents and take over the task himself. "You obviously can't handle the job. I give you a divine mission, but here you are, only hours after I leave, in a hideout shaking in your boots. I'll take it from here."
But no, Jesus neither scolds nor relieves them of their duty. To this church with nothing, Jesus provides a strange set of words and actions, a string of seeming non sequiturs. He says "Peace be with you"; he shows them his hands and his side; he says again, "Peace be with you"; he tells them that he is sending them into the world, just as he, Jesus, was sent; he breathes on them, saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit"; and he commissions them to perform binding acts of forgiveness.
To our eyes, this is an odd collection of sayings and deeds. But to the earliest readers of the Gospel of John, their meaning would be clear. Each of the things that Jesus said and did is a clear symbol of some aspect of the church's life. "Peace be with you" comes straight from the liturgy, from Sunday worship. Likewise, being shown Jesus' hands and side, Jesus' body, is a reference to the Lord's Supper, and the breathing of the Holy Spirit comes from the early church's practice of baptism. Being sent is, of course, the church's mission, and forgiving sins is the texture of the church's inner life of fellowship and reconciliation.
Put them all together, and what this means is that the risen Christ comes to call the church to be the church. He comes to the church with nothing and gives it everything, provides it with what it needs truly to be the church: worship, mission, and forgiveness. Without his presence, there is cowering fear. In his presence there is open praise, bold mission, and healed community.
Theologian Karl Barth once remarked that to say the old line from the creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church" does not mean that we believe in the church. It means rather to believe that God is present and at work in the church, that "in this assembly, the work of the Holy Spirit takes place. ... We do not believe in the Church: but we do believe that in this congregation the work of the Holy Spirit becomes an event." 2
A Methodist minister wrote about a holy experience. Barth's words rang true for me some years ago, when I was invited by a church in a nearby town to be the worship leader at a special evening communion service. The church staff had planned this service to be educational as well as worshipful. The idea was that, first, the congregation would gather in the sanctuary and I would give a brief talk about the meanings of the Lord's Supper. Then, we would go into the fellowship hall and be seated around tables for the service itself.
At each table there would be the flour and other ingredients to form the dough for the communion loaves. The plan called for each table to prepare a loaf and, while the loaves baked in the ovens of the church kitchen, the people at each table were to engage in various exercises designed to get them talking about their experiences in the faith.
It was a good idea, but like many well-planned events, things looked better on the drawing board than they turned out in reality. There were problems. Children at many tables began to play in the baking ingredients, and white clouds of flour floated around the room coating everybody and everything. There were delays in the kitchen, and the communion bread baked with agonizing slowness. Some of the tables ran out of things to say; children grew weary and fussy; the room was filled with commotion and restlessness. The planners had dreamed of an event of excitement, innovation, peak learning, and moving worship. What happened was noise, exhaustion, and people making the best of a difficult situation. In other words, despite the rosy plans, it was the real church worshipping down there in the church basement.
Finally, the service ended, and, with no little relief, I was able to pronounce the benediction. "The peace of Christ be with you all," I said, and just as I did, a child's voice from somewhere in the room called out strong and true, "It already is."
Just that -- "It already is" -- but with those words the service was transformed into an event of joy and holy mystery. That small voice captured what the Gospel of John is trying to say. In the midst of a church that can claim nothing for itself, a church of noise, confusion, weariness, and even fear, the risen Christ comes to give peace. The peace of Christ be with you? Because the risen Christ comes to inhabit our empty places, then, as the child said, "It already is," and the church with nothing becomes the church with everything.
__________
1. A phrase for which I am indebted to Frederick Buechner.
2. Karl Barth, Dogmatics In Outline (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), pp. 142-143.
Friends:
The 19th will be another Sunday where our sanctuary will be quiet and empty. I am missing our time together and the worship time we share.
You will find attached the scripture lesson for this Sunday and the sermon you would have heard if we had been together. I hope your personal worship time will be enhanced by reading the words I offer. Debbie and I have shared communion using some sour dough bread and grape juice. I encourage you to break bread and share a cup of blessing (with whatever is available) till we can once again can celebrate together. Blessings!
Grace and peace, Lee
Timothy CC
4-19-2020
The Church With Nothing
John 20:19-31
(John 20:19-31 NRSV) When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." {20} After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. {21} Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." {22} When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. {23} If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." {24} But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. {25} So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." {26} A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." {27} Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." {28} Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" {29} Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." {30} Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. {31} But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
+++++++++++++++++
Check out the church ads on the religion page of the Saturday edition of most big city newspapers and you find some impressive sounding places of worship. There, with sleek graphics and Madison Avenue phrases, a few select churches boast of their assets -- their choirs, their friendliness, their powerful preaching, their singles ministries, their ample parking, their family life centers, their sensitive child care, and their compassionate spirit. Some churches, it seems, have it all.
Other churches, however, appear by contrast to have nothing, absolutely nothing. Take, for example, the church depicted in our text for today. Here, we get our first glimpse of the disciples gathered together after the resurrection, the first glimpse, in other words, of the church in its earliest days, and, all in all, it is not a very pretty picture. Near the end of his life, Jesus had carefully prepared his disciples to be a devoted and confident fellowship of faith. They were to be a community of profound love with the gates wide open and the welcome mat always out, but here we find them barricaded in a house with the doors bolted shut. They were to be the kind of people who stride boldly into the world to bear fruit in Jesus' name, a people full of the Holy Spirit performing even greater works than Jesus himself (John 14:12), but here we find them cowering in fear, hoping nobody will find out where they are before they get their alibis straight. In short, we see here the church at its worst -- scared, disheartened and defensive. If this little sealed-off group of Christians were to place one of those cheery church ads in the Saturday newspaper, what could it possibly say? "The friendly church where all are welcome"? Hardly, unless one counts locked doors as a sign of hospitality. "The church with a warm heart and a bold mission"? Actually more like the church with sweaty palms and a timid spirit.
Indeed, John's gospel gives us a snapshot of a church with nothing -- no plan, no promise, no program, no perky youth ministry, no powerful preaching, no parking lot, nothing. In fact, when all is said and done, this terrified little band huddled in the corner of a room with a chair braced against the door has only one thing going for it: the risen Christ. And that seems to be the main point of this story. In the final analysis, this is a story about how the risen Christ pushed open the bolted door of a church with nothing, how the risen Christ enters the fearful chambers of every church and fills the place with his own life.
What we are asked to recognize, of course, is that every church is finally this way; every church, no matter what it says about itself in the newspaper, if it is left to its own devices, if it draws only upon its own resources, is nothing. No liturgical mascara, no programmatic cosmetic, can conceal for long the fact that, apart from the presence of the risen Christ, the church is an empty place.
A while back before I retired I was visiting a congregation that was victimized by a worship leader who, since he evidently perceived God to be absent, felt it an obligation to make up for this lack by talking incessantly through the Lord's Supper. He prattled his way along, trying to transform the worship service into a "meaningful worship experience" by the sheer force of his personality. He quoted Scripture with a syrupy tone and told cute stories and oozed out pious bromides. In essence, he betrayed his conviction that nothing was happening here except himself, no dynamism in this worship except his own energy. There we were, the church, locked in a room, bolted behind his egotistic lack of faith.
Sometimes churches begin to think of themselves as useful social institutions in and of themselves. No one would say it out loud, of course, but the attitude hangs in the air that, sure, this is a place where God is worshipped, but if God were somehow to disappear from the scene, the church would still be a fine character-building contribution to the physical and emotional well-being of the community.
John's gospel pulls the skin off of this illusion. If we want to see what becomes of the church when it is deprived of its central holy presence, look at this picture of the disciples huddled defensively in a darkened room, peeking anxiously through the drapes to make sure the world isn't after them. In the absence of God, the church is hollow, empty of meaning and purpose, fearfully locked behind its own institutional facade. Indeed, the ceaseless and frenetic activity of many congregations -- with programs ranging from "Mother's Morning Out" to "Fitness for Faith" -- is often only the lonely attempt to fill in the void where God, "the most missed of all missing persons," 1 should be.
The good news is that into the midst of this void, into the center of this fearful church with nothing, the risen Christ came and said, "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). It is into the emptiness of their community -- and ours -- into the vacuum of confidence, into the void of discipleship that Jesus comes to fill the vacant space with his peace.
What Jesus says to the church is remarkable. Given the circumstances, we may have expected that the risen Christ would come with a scold. "Shame on you for your fear and failure. I sent you into the world, not into a locked closet. Now go!" Or perhaps the risen Christ would come to bail out these terrified incompetents and take over the task himself. "You obviously can't handle the job. I give you a divine mission, but here you are, only hours after I leave, in a hideout shaking in your boots. I'll take it from here."
But no, Jesus neither scolds nor relieves them of their duty. To this church with nothing, Jesus provides a strange set of words and actions, a string of seeming non sequiturs. He says "Peace be with you"; he shows them his hands and his side; he says again, "Peace be with you"; he tells them that he is sending them into the world, just as he, Jesus, was sent; he breathes on them, saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit"; and he commissions them to perform binding acts of forgiveness.
To our eyes, this is an odd collection of sayings and deeds. But to the earliest readers of the Gospel of John, their meaning would be clear. Each of the things that Jesus said and did is a clear symbol of some aspect of the church's life. "Peace be with you" comes straight from the liturgy, from Sunday worship. Likewise, being shown Jesus' hands and side, Jesus' body, is a reference to the Lord's Supper, and the breathing of the Holy Spirit comes from the early church's practice of baptism. Being sent is, of course, the church's mission, and forgiving sins is the texture of the church's inner life of fellowship and reconciliation.
Put them all together, and what this means is that the risen Christ comes to call the church to be the church. He comes to the church with nothing and gives it everything, provides it with what it needs truly to be the church: worship, mission, and forgiveness. Without his presence, there is cowering fear. In his presence there is open praise, bold mission, and healed community.
Theologian Karl Barth once remarked that to say the old line from the creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church" does not mean that we believe in the church. It means rather to believe that God is present and at work in the church, that "in this assembly, the work of the Holy Spirit takes place. ... We do not believe in the Church: but we do believe that in this congregation the work of the Holy Spirit becomes an event." 2
A Methodist minister wrote about a holy experience. Barth's words rang true for me some years ago, when I was invited by a church in a nearby town to be the worship leader at a special evening communion service. The church staff had planned this service to be educational as well as worshipful. The idea was that, first, the congregation would gather in the sanctuary and I would give a brief talk about the meanings of the Lord's Supper. Then, we would go into the fellowship hall and be seated around tables for the service itself.
At each table there would be the flour and other ingredients to form the dough for the communion loaves. The plan called for each table to prepare a loaf and, while the loaves baked in the ovens of the church kitchen, the people at each table were to engage in various exercises designed to get them talking about their experiences in the faith.
It was a good idea, but like many well-planned events, things looked better on the drawing board than they turned out in reality. There were problems. Children at many tables began to play in the baking ingredients, and white clouds of flour floated around the room coating everybody and everything. There were delays in the kitchen, and the communion bread baked with agonizing slowness. Some of the tables ran out of things to say; children grew weary and fussy; the room was filled with commotion and restlessness. The planners had dreamed of an event of excitement, innovation, peak learning, and moving worship. What happened was noise, exhaustion, and people making the best of a difficult situation. In other words, despite the rosy plans, it was the real church worshipping down there in the church basement.
Finally, the service ended, and, with no little relief, I was able to pronounce the benediction. "The peace of Christ be with you all," I said, and just as I did, a child's voice from somewhere in the room called out strong and true, "It already is."
Just that -- "It already is" -- but with those words the service was transformed into an event of joy and holy mystery. That small voice captured what the Gospel of John is trying to say. In the midst of a church that can claim nothing for itself, a church of noise, confusion, weariness, and even fear, the risen Christ comes to give peace. The peace of Christ be with you? Because the risen Christ comes to inhabit our empty places, then, as the child said, "It already is," and the church with nothing becomes the church with everything.
__________
1. A phrase for which I am indebted to Frederick Buechner.
2. Karl Barth, Dogmatics In Outline (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1959), pp. 142-143.