ENGAGING THE WORLD
Psalm 93; Acts 1: 1 - 11; Ephesians 1: 15 - 23
"Do you like a good mystery?" I don't mean the 'cops and robber' stories we see on television which use the same standard formula over and over again. I mean the novels where you have to examine the background, visit the scene, interview the characters, sift the evidence, examine the clues and arrive at your conclusion. Well, on this Sunday after Ascension, have we a mystery to uncover! It is this: What does the Ascension story have to say to the Church today?
So first, let us examine the evidence.
Just about all scholars agree that both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the one person. The odds are on Luke the physician who accompanied Paul on his travels. These two volumes form two parts of the one book. The first tells the story of Jesus and the second discusses the progress of the early Christian communities from Jerusalem to Rome, mainly through the travels of Peter and Paul.
Acts begins with Jesus instructing the disciples about the Kingdom of God. He tells them that they will receive the Holy Spirit and then they will be his witnesses to the ends of the earth, i.e. to all peoples. Then he disappears in a cloud. The section finishes with two quite remarkable sentences. First, the two figures in white say to the apostles "Why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven." This question is as devastating as it is unexpected. The figures are saying 'Stop standing about! He is gone. You will not see his earthly form again. You have your task, get on with it! The Spirit will be with you.'
Luke is explaining how the teachings of Jesus are passed from the Christ to his apostles and to all humankind. He is saying: 'As God was with Jesus, so is God with the Church in the form of the Holy Spirit to the ends of the earth. The body of Jesus has changed from an earthly one to soon become the body of the Church' as Paul refers to it in Ephesians.
Let us now fast-forward 2000 years to the present.
I don't have to tell you that, for some time now, the number of attendees at Australian churches has been a cause for concern. The National Church Life Survey has reported an overall decline of 7% between 1996 and 2001. The attendance of the members of our own Church has declined by 11% in the same period. And yet, in the Australian Community Survey, two-thirds of people claim that a spiritual life is important to them and 33% pray or meditate weekly. 74% of Australians believe in God or a spirit, higher power or life force with 40% accepting conventional Christian beliefs.
There is clearly something very, very important going on here that must be addressed.
If we look into the statistics, it is apparent that the people in our Australian communities are saying, 'We know that there is more to life than material things. The transcendent is important to us.' Surely the great missionary task of the contemporary Church is this: How can we reach out to people and communicate the things of the Spirit to those in the present age?
I am going to suggest that there are four things we must do if we are to be witnesses to Christ in the modern world.
1. We must stop standing about.
2. We must engage the world.
3. We must use understandable language and symbols.
4. We must respect the intellectual capacity of people.
1. Stop standing about.
We in the Church today must take note of what these people are saying. They need a spiritual life but, according to the survey, they also have views about the Church. They say that the role of the Church is to provide social services, to be the moral guardians of society and to conduct public worship. All these things are important in times of change and we would probably expect people to want the Church to protect the weak, to give direction and to be there when it is needed. But we must find out what the reasons for non-attendance are and we can only do that by engaging those outside the Church.
2. Engaging the world.
The Uniting Church is one of the leading providers of financial aid and social services in the country. We certainly have no concerns in that area. If we are to reach individuals then we must make more use of the media. You may remember that the Christian Television Association tried advertisements in the sixties. I suspect that these failed because they tried to be too general. We have some Christian radio programs today. Locally made TV programs discussing local issues from a Christian perspective may also be worth considering.
There used to be advertisements run in the newspapers by the Catholic Church. They had the title, What do Catholics believe? I am sure they served a valuable educational function. But the Internet has taken over this function almost exclusively. It is the largest repository of information the world has ever seen but it is open and uncontrolled and this is a problem. Almost everyone in Australia can have access to it except for those in some remote areas. Free access is provided in libraries and this makes the information readily available.
Two weeks ago, the Methodist Church in England launched an 'on-line' church in which visitors may choose a character, walk it into the church, choose a pew, sit down and converse with the other people in the church. Every so often there is a real service conducted by a real Chaplain complete with hymns, prayers and sermon. Does it seem too way out? Well, how do we expect people in remote areas to worship? Or what about the confined or those who are never available to worship during the day? Don't forget also that the Internet 'chat room' culture is growing at an incredible rate. The virtual church, after two weeks, is scoring over 10,000 visitors a day. The problem that I see with it is that it lacks the notion of community. There is no direct human contact which is so important. The Anglican Church in England is creating a similar site but will have an attached community so that God's love can be fully expressed.
Many of you will remember the late George Yule who was a former Professor of Church History at the Theological Hall and occasional preacher in this pulpit. One of his favorite sayings was, "What the Church needs today is not another Reformation but a Renaissance!" A rebirth! A revitalisation! Are we seeing the beginning of global Churches?
3. Using understandable language and symbols.
If we are to convey our faith to those in the modern world, we need to use contemporary language, symbols and images. Sometimes it is easy to forget that they are not fixed and universal. Try this yourself. Ask children to give antonyms for common words. 'What is the opposite of open?'; 'What is the opposite of happy?' and so on. But then try, 'What is the opposite of cool?' Everyone knows that the opposite of cool is hot, don't they? Well, everyone under the age of thirty doesn't! It depends on the context. You see, the opposite of cool can be un-cool! We asked the wrong question! It should have been 'What is the opposite of hot?'
It is the same with symbols. There are some symbols that are universal and do not change. The Bible is filled with images of climbing mountains to be close to God. It is an image we can all relate to very easily. Who has not climbed a high mountain and been awed and humbled by the magic of creation? Who has not looked up into the night sky and been fascinated by the 'heavenly' bodies in the limitless blackness? But few of us today would actually think that that is where God lives. To place limits on God in this way can be to deny God. In 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut and first person to orbit the earth, returned claiming, "There is no God! I have been out into space and he is not there." To which a Russian Orthodox Bishop gave the astute reply, "Those who do not see God on earth will never see God in heaven."
We can have new symbols, too. Consider our new St Aidan's Banner. For me, Mary Steele's marvelous design captures so well the true spirit of Aidan, the missionary. It could have been 'Aidan of Lindisfarne' that was represented. But Mary chose to represent Aidan by the community of Iona from which he was called. This Banner always reminds me that if we are to do Christ's work, we must go from the Church out into the world.
Sometimes symbols can take on a life of their own. When this happens, there is a danger that the meaning can become the symbol itself - even to the point of dictating behavior. A common symbol that totally permeates our language is that of right- and left-handedness. The right hand is the favored hand; the hand of power and authority. Jesus ascended to the right hand of God. The Latin word for 'right' is dexter - hence ambi-dextrous (both right hands). 'Left' in Latin is sinister and that speaks for itself. Up until a few years ago, countless millions of people throughout the ages underwent agonizing re-training to make them conform and be 'right', for no other reason than that the symbol dictated it so.
In today's secular world, we must not assume that when we talk in the language of scripture, the hearer understands the meaning of the symbol. The biggest danger of all is when the hearer does not recognize the symbol or metaphor and interprets it as reality. We will be confronted by disbelief! "Do you mean to tell me that God created the world in six days?"
4. Respecting the intellectual capacity of people.
If we are to engage people in the world, then we must respect their intellect. It is impossible for Christians in our society to ignore our cultural history and what we value. We live in a world that places great emphasis on reason and science, on learning and understanding. Who could divorce themselves from this? We must value it and use it to strengthen our faith and to engage with others.
In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory caused massive reaction at the time and he was lampooned in Punch for his outrageous suggestion that species evolve with time. Many of you will know of the so-called "monkey trial" in Tennessee in 1925 where John T. Scopes went on trial for teaching evolution. But what is even more remarkable is that the issue is still with us today. There are new textbooks still being written that change the science in accordance with the literal reading of the creation stories.
If the Church is to engage the world effectively, then it must reach out to others in a spirit of pilgrimage and openness. To be a witness to Christ is to offer an invitation to share our common journey. We are fellow travelers and that means we must negotiate the path ahead together in mutual co-operation and understanding. There is no concrete highway to perfection - only the signs and symbols that God has provided. The Church's task is to point them out and to make them recognizable. And for this we have the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Nor must we forget that we live in a multi-cultural society with people from many other faiths and lands. In fact, 5% of Australians identify with non-Christian religions. While we are called to be Christ's witnesses, we can still value and respect the faith of others. To be a witness in the world means to take every opportunity to speak to the world of the love of God made manifest in the teachings of Jesus.
On this Sunday after Ascension, when our thoughts are filled with the images of Christ's power and majesty, let me finish with this. In his recent memoir, The Bright Shapes and the True Names, Patrick McCaughey describes the Monash University campus as having "a religious center that looked like an atomic reactor." I have no idea if the architect intended it or not but what an amazing idea this is: to describe the Church as the powerhouse of the community!
AMEN.
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A sermon presented by Robert Sanderson at St Aidan's Uniting Church North Balwyn, on
23rd May, 2004.
IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
PRAYERS
Lord of time and God of our salvation;
we thank you for this world of yours -
The earth that brings forth plants
as seasons change in endless round;
The sea with all its teeming life
and never ceasing surf;
The sky with myriad stars and all
the planets and their moons.
Lord of time and God of our salvation;
we thank you for our families -
our loved ones here and far away.
We thank you for our Church and for
its witness in this world of yours.
We thank you for your Son, our Lord,
who rose victorious from the grave
to give us life eternally.
AMEN.
PRAYERS FOR THE WORLD
Let us open ourselves, in silence,
to the power of the risen Lord.
SILENCE
We offer our prayers for all those who are sick,
facing surgery, in hospital or near to death.
We name all those known to us in our hearts.
We offer our prayers for all those caught up
in places of conflict or who are in mortal danger.
We offer our prayers for all those who are
hungry or homeless, desperate or lonely.
We offer our prayers for your Church throughout
the world that it may have the wisdom, the strength
and the courage to gather together your flock
wherever they may be.
We would ask you, O Lord, to bless all these
for whom we have prayed and to give us the
will and the wisdom to know how we may help.
This we ask in the name of Jesus the Christ.
AMEN
Let us pray the prayer he taught us:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done,
On earth, as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread,
And forgive us our sin, as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us in the time of trial, and deliver us from evil,
For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours,
Now and for ever.
AMEN
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