Westport church recovering: 9-21-12

Almost nine months ago, a terribly destructive fire devastated Westport Presbyterian Church in Midtown Kansas City.

Westport is a small congregation with, nonetheless, a big heart and a large outreach to its community. And it is determined to rebuild and stay working in Midtown. In fact, this week the congregation has been meeting with potential architects to choose one to move its rebuilding project forward.

(The photo here today shows what the back of the building looked like after the fire. I found the photo at http://trumanslepthere.blogspot.com/2012/01/for-us-its-love-of-god-and-love-of.html.)

As he does now and then, the pastor, Scott Myers, asked me if I'd fill in there as preacher on a Sunday when he'd be gone, and so that's what I did this past Sunday at the congregation's temporary location, The Villa, an event space just a few blocks from the church building.

Because lots of Kansas Citians have been impressed with Westport's spirit and have expressed concern about its future, I thought I might share with you today the sermon I preached Sunday in that I tried to encourage the congregation to move ahead with its mission.

Using Ezra 3:8-12 and I Corinthians 1:18-25 as my biblical texts, here's what I said:

I have a confession to make. I envy Westport Presbyterian Church. Oh, not for the disaster you've been through in the fire. I wouldn't wish that on Satan's minions.

Rather, what I envy is the opportunity you now have to reinvent yourself as you recover from the fire and its aftermath. It can be a time of astonishing grace and a lesson to all who watch what you do.

My congregation, Second Presbyterian, did not have such a compelling event to move us to rethink our past, our present and our future. Rather, our event was the installation of our new pastor, Paul Rock, two years ago.

That moved us to create a visioning task force that I chaired. We called it the GPS task force, and in our case GPS stood not for Global Positioning System but God's Purposes for Second. We were nothing if not clever. Or something.

The result of our work was a 51-page report full of some 150 recommendations for how we become the church we need to be to move into the future. You can read it all at Second's website if you want to.

One of the passages of scripture we used to guide us in that work is the one we heard this morning from the wildly popular book of Ezra. (When last did anyone preach here from Ezra?)

I chose that passage for today to tell you a bit about what we have learned at Second through our GPS process in the hope that some of it may be useful to you here at Westport.

In the Ezra story, the people of Israel return to Jerusalem after an exile of several decades and they begin to rebuild the temple.

What's the result of this effort to create a foundation for a new life together as the people of God? The result was both shouts of joy and bitter tears.

Some people shouted with exultation at the new possibilities as they began to create the new temple. Others wept because they were old enough to remember the old temple and what was being rebuilt was not what they remembered.

Friends at Westport, you will face this same division, and may be facing it already. However you rebuild, some will shout for joy at what it represents for the future and some will weep because your new space will not exactly be the old space they remember with love.

Listen to those who shout for joy and help them remember that not everything about the future is guaranteed to be bright and untarnished. Listen to those who weep and help them remember that not everything about the past was bright and untarnished.

Help both groups remember that what is important is what God is calling you to do and to be in the future — a future that will be in harmony with your wonderful history.

And what can you say about the future toward which God is drawing Westport?

You can say with the Apostle Paul in our reading from Corinthians today that it is foolishness, God's foolishness. That's the future God has in mind for you. And for Second Church. Heck, we can be fools together.

Some people will ask: What? That little Midtown congregation that could barely scare up 100 people to show up on a Sunday morning for worship is going to rebuild and try to continue to do ministry?

And you will say: Yes. Exactly. That's what we think God is calling us to. And we are committed to God's foolishness.

Others will ask: Why don't you just fold up your tent and merge with another congregation?

And you will say: No. That's not what we think our Midtown neighborhood needs. That's not what we think God is calling us to do.

Rather, you will say, God is calling us to be fools for Christ. God is calling us to be faithful to the mission of the church in our time and our place.

And just what is the mission of the church? Ah, a really good question.

I very much like the way missional church leader Michael Frost of Australia put it last year at a conference I attended.

Frost said the mission of the church is not to grow the church. Rather, he said, the mission of the church is this: To alert the world to the universal reign of God in Christ. And we do that both by proclamation and by demonstration. (repeat)

That is, we preach the gospel — meaning the in-breaking of the reign of God, the idea that, as Jesus said, the kingdom of God is at hand — to all who will hear, but we also demonstrate what the reign, or kingdom, of God will look like when it comes in full flower.

So, for example, if we believe that in the kingdom of God there will be no poverty, we work now on small demonstration projects to show what the world will look like without poverty. And if we can't help the whole world, we can start with just one family.

And if, for example, we think that when God's reign finally comes there will be peace, we work for peace now. And if we can't bring peace to the whole world, we can work to bring peace to our own neighborhood, our own family, our own congregation, even our own family.

And if we think that in the kingdom of God no one will be homeless, we work to provide homes for people now to demonstrate that coming kingdom when all will be at home in the Lord.

We don't imagine, of course, that we can bring about the final kingdom of God on Earth through our demonstration projects. That's the mistake the so-called post-millennialists make. And why they are forever disappointed.

But we do believe that by our work we can draw in people who catch the vision and want to experience now what Jesus himself said we could experience now, which is a taste of the kingdom of God.

That, after all, is what Jesus meant by the gospel. Turn, he said, for the kingdom of God is at hand. And you can experience that now.

And speaking of Jesus, you surely know that it’s not a wise thing for us be separated from him for so long that we no longer recognize him. When we do come face to face with Christ, we want to be able to recognize him.

For instance: It was a quiet day in heaven, and St. Peter had hardly any business at the Pearly Gates. As it got to be around noon, Peter saw Jesus walking by and called him over.

Could you watch the gates for awhile? Peter asked. I need to take a lunch break.

No problem, said Jesus. Take your time.

So Jesus sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, off the in the distance, he saw what appeared to be an old man walking slowly toward the Pearly Gates. Jesus watched with great interest as he got closer. And as he did, there was something about the old man that caught Jesus’ attention, though he wasn’t quite sure what it was.

Eventually the man got all the way up to the gates, and Jesus, by now quite intrigued by him, said to him, “Sir: I want to welcome you to the Pearly Gates. But before I can tell you where you will spend eternity, I need to know a little about you. Can you tell me about your life?”

The old man replied, “In my life, I was a carpenter.” And Jesus’ eyes got bigger as he stared at the old man, seeming to recognize something in him.

“What else?” Jesus asked.

The man said, “I had a son. And the son died and then came back to life.”

And Jesus stared at the old man in disbelief.

“Dad?” he asked. “Dad? Is that you?”

And the old man replied, “Pinocchio?”

That’s the sort of joyful twist you will be giving to doubters who think Westport Presbyterian Church died in the fire.

For today Westport Presbyterian has the opportunity to create a new future, one in which you will be committed anew to demonstrating in small ways what the kingdom of God might look like when it finally comes to Midtown Kansas City and to the whole cosmos.

You will show this to everyone through the work you do to promote the arts, the work you do to care for children and for the elderly, the work you and Scott do to promote interfaith understanding (speaking of which, by the way, do not forget to wish your Jewish friends well as the High Holy Days begin at sundown this evening, and if you have no Jewish friends, it’s not too late to get some; they will enrich your life).

You also will show what the kingdom of God will look like through the work you do to provide a home for agencies in our community that are themselves working in harmony with the idea that one day, as Julian of Norwich put it, "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

Since my work on the GPS task force, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the future of the church. In fact, this coming Saturday I will speak to a Minnesota Valleys Presbytery gathering near the Twin Cities about this subject, and I intend to tell them to watch the progress Westport Presbyterian makes as it literally rises from the ashes.

Indeed, both Westport and Second have an opportunity to show that Mainline churches do in fact have a bright future.

It will be a future in which we show again that Christianity isn't easy, that church is not just a service or social club. Rather, Christianity means preaching the cross, which Paul told us will strike many people as foolishness. And it means being an advocate for people who are not important enough by society's warped standards to be taken seriously.

As some of you know, I write a biweekly column for the National Catholic Reporter. In a column in July I suggested that what I called the current hierarchical, institutional expression of the Catholic Church is dying in America and might be gone in a few generations, though it was unclear to me what might replace it.

I was overwhelmed with responses from readers. Many shouted for joy that the old church would go by the wayside, a church they felt had outlived its usefulness and become a detriment to the gospel.

Others wept and defended the status quo, while they quoted over and over the idea that Jesus appointed Peter the first pope and said that on this rock Jesus would build his church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

There it was once again, joy and weeping at change — or at least suggested, predicted change.

It's inevitable, this combination of both joy and weeping. And I hope that as you work your way through all the plans you must make, all the decisions you'll face, all the tough calls, you will remember that it will not happen without both joy and weeping.

Your task is not to let the joyful people become unrealistic about what you can really accomplish and not to let the weepers prevent you from accomplishing anything.

Just remember what we heard God say through Paul's letter to the church at Corinth:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will set aside the understanding of the experts."

The world outside the doors of Westport Presbyterian Church is full of spiritually hungry people, to say nothing of people who are literally hungry.

They may think it's completely wacky for this congregation to be preaching the gospel of the in-breaking kingdom of God when much of what they see around them argues against that — the crime, the poverty, the ignorance, the economic injustice and on and on.

But I'll tell you what I think can draw them in so they can hear the transformative gospel of Jesus Christ, who came to start a revolution of love and grace. It's your willingness to engage in the primary mission of the church.

And, again, what is that? It is what Michael Frost said it was, to alert the world to the universal reign of God in Christ by both proclamation and demonstration.

Your foolish job is to recommit yourself to preaching the gospel of the coming reign of God and to demonstrating what the kingdom of God will look like when it finally arrives. It will look like mercy and compassion. It will look like justice and peace. It will look like respect — and most of all it will look like love because it will be love.

So, friends of Westport, the road ahead of you is full of challenges but also full of the promise that God will be with you every step of the way, encouraging you, loving you, celebrating with your joy and mourning with your weeping.

As I say, I envy you this journey and will be praying for you and wishing you success, even as I hope you will be praying for us at Second as we reinvent ourselves once more so that we can be, like you, fools for Christ in a world that needs to know the one who loves us enough to save us.

May it be so. Amen.

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RELATING TO MUSLIMS EVERYWHERE

As everyone knows, this is a difficult time for relations between the United States and Muslims around the world -- given terrorist attacks from people identifying themselves as Islamic and that hateful "movie" mocking and denouncing the Prophet Muhammad, produced in the U.S. by creeps. Still, as this well-reasoned New York Times editorial suggests, the U.S. must stay engaged with Muslims wherever they live, in part because they make up about 1.5 billion of the Earth's population. It's important, however, not to conflate the "Muslim world" with the "Arab world." The most populous Muslim nation is, after all, Indonesia. And not all of the Arab world is Muslim.