Introduction - A Question
In my last sermon, before my holiday, I ended the sermon with a simple question which I would like to get you to think about again this afternoon:
"What is it about your own experience with Jesus, that this community cannot live without?"
or to put it another way:
"What is it that is so important, so vital, so life-changing about your experience with Jesus? What is it about your encounter with Jesus, or your walk with Jesus, or your confrontation with Jesus, or perhaps just the touch of the hem of his garment as he passed by in the crowd of life ..... that has changed you, set your feet upon a different path, and made a difference to who you are? And unless you speak up and tell somebody about it, their lives will be impoverished. They might well miss something of immense significance."
Such a simple question:
"What is it about your experience with Jesus, that this community cannot live without?"
Yet the answer to that question will determine the future of this church.
Where do we experience God?
Just recently I heard about a meeting of clergy and lay leaders that I was not present at. Every church represented in the meeting is a declining congregation. To begin this meeting, they had a customary sharing time. Each person answered the question: “How did you experience God this summer?” (Sort of a religious variation of “What did you do on your summer holiday?”)
Several people in the room told how they had experience God in nature. At the cottage, in the woods, or on the lake, they saw a sunset, heard a bird's cry, or felt a summer’s breeze. “Ah yes,” replied the listeners, smiling sweetly at their own memories of ease. “There is God.”
Several other people in the room told how they had experienced God in children. Since most of the people in the meeting were over 55, they really meant grandchildren. (Most people under 35 rarely experience God in children.) They reflected on the innocent smile, the childlike laughter, the spontaneity of youth. “Ah yes,” replied the listeners, remembering happy days, “There is God.”
A few people in the room told how they had experienced God in music. They had attended a concert, or purchased a new CD, and heard Tchaikovsky as they had never heard him before. “Ah yes,” replied the listeners, hearts racing at the memory of the “1812 Overture” or “Afternoon of the Fawn”. They snuggled more deeply into their chairs. “There is God.”
Finally, it came the turn of a woman who was a newcomer to the group. She was a lay person .... about 35 years old. She looked very uncomfortable. She said hesitantly: “One morning this summer I awoke with an incredible compulsion to go and see my ex-husband. Normally I am not very spontaneous. In fact, I don’t really like my ex-husband. We haven’t spoken in over a year. But I was filled with such a compulsion to see him, that I literally could not resist it. So I gathered up my children, dressed hurriedly, and we drove to his house. We found him collapsed on the floor, having experienced a massive heart attack. We called 999 and saved his life.” The listeners were stunned. Some stirred uncomfortably in their chairs. This was an unexpected story. Finally, one whispered tensely: “Holy smoke!”
When it came to answering the question, “What is it about my experience with Jesus that this community cannot live without?”, pleasant sunsets, laughing grandchildren, and vigorous performances of the “1812 Overture” suddenly faded in importance.
How do you say the word “Holy”?
What do you think of as being holy? Sometimes we might see our spouse in a new way and our hearts are filled with love we may not have felt in years, and we might cry “Holy!”
Another might bring their child home from casualty, having narrowly escaped serious injury in an accident, and place the sleepy child in bed, and mutter “Holy!"
A few weeks ago I was hurrying across the new gardens in Piccadilly when I bumped into a guy called Byron. Byron was a pupil of mine at the first school I taught in when I came to Manchester. I bumped into him in the Gay Village one night when he was still in the 5th form and he regularly used to open up to me. When his father found out he was gay he had to leave home and, for a time, he ended up lodging with me in Salford. I hadn't seen him for ages and so we chatted away. He seems to be getting his life together, at last, and in the midst of the conversation he said "you know, if it hadn't been for the help you gave me I would have killed myself". I was humbled and filled with a feeling "this is holy". My experience of Jesus led me to offer help to that kid 6 years ago and as a result he didn't kill himself. More importantly he connects the help I gave with my experience of Jesus which I pray will one day become his own experience.
But do you know how most church folks say the word “Holy!”? Most church folks say it in the liturgy "Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of Power and Might, Heaven and Earth are full of your glory". It is said each week - indeed we sing it each week - but often without any real understanding of what holiness is. Sometimes we say it in a bored monotone, or in a ritualized rhythm, as if we're remembering hearsay, or describing experiences that someone else has had and repeated once too often.
Instead we should say “Holy!” like you have just seen the seraphim and collapsed to the floor in fright.
We should say “Holy!” like your sin has just been revealed in the daily news, and an angel has ripped out your guilt with hot tongs?
We should say “Holy!” and instead of returning home rush out of worship to the coffee shop, shopping mall, or any public place where there just might be somebody who needs to hear about it from you, and all because when God asked whom they should send, you had an involuntary and insane compulsion to say “Here am I! Send me!”
Vision
Church people talk a lot these days about vision ... and rightly so. The single, greatest reason churches do not grow is that they don’t have a vision! It has nothing to do with money, membership, demographics, or clergy leadership. Most churches have an urgent desire to survive! So they research their community, send the Board away for a “visioning” retreat, restructure the committees, rewrite the Mission Statement in 1,000 words or less, and even jazz up the worship service. But it’s still the same old church. The truth is that even when churches think they are ready to move beyond mere survival to seek a Biblical Vision, they don’t really know what to look for.
A vision is “A Song in the Heart”. It is a metaphor or symbol, a rhythm or tune, a picture or experience, the mere presentation of which elicits spontaneous joy and excitement. Vision speaks to the heart, not the mind. It can never be fully contained in words, and one always feels rather breathless and frustrated trying to communicate it to another person. Yet at the same time, a vision is so compelling that one simply must share it with others ...... even with perfect strangers!
A vision is makes you feel like nobility! It uplifts the human spirit, and fills the heart with immense purpose and meaning. It fills a person with impatience, and with a burning desire to do something immediately. The specific action required may be unclear. The support of others is helpful, but not essential. It is the vision itself which fills an individual with renewed self-esteem, and centres their lives toward a single-minded destiny. It invests a small human life with universal significance and infinite worth.
Vision is often held in songs. Martin Luther King's vision was summed up in the protest song "We shall overcome, we shall overcome. Oh deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day."
A vision is “True North for the Soul”. It is a permanent, intuitive compass direction for a human being. Every person inevitably becomes confused in the hurried complexity of everyday living. Life is an endless experiment and “course correction”. The vision brings one back to the true path. One only needs to pause, refocus, concentrate on the vision, and new clarity for action emerges. The vision is like a magnet that draws the people, individually and collectively, unto itself.
St John had a vision which he wrote down in the Book of Revelation:
"I see a new heaven, I see a new earth, for the first one has passed away! Where the fountain of life flows, And without price goes, To all people who abide in the land! "There! There on the banks of a river bright and free, yielding her fruit, firm in her root, the Tree of Life will be.”
Vision is the Answer
A vision is the answer to the question “What is it about my experience with Jesus, that this community cannot live without?” It is a clear grasp of that pivotal, heart-felt experience with Jesus ..... which has so changed one’s direction in life and activity of living ...... and which has so filled one’s life with joy and meaning ...... that unless one shares it with another, that other person’s life will be impoverished. Over the next few months I am going to be asking each one of you what your vision is for our church. Or, to put it in another way, I am going to be asking you to answer the question "what is it about your experience of Jesus that you feel our community cannot live without." I will be asking in sermons, over meals, in the coffee time. I am going to work so that I spend time with each one of you so that we find an answer together to this question and then use the answers to this question to recast our vision for this church and for what God calls us to be.
Dying churches focus on their past, their heritage, their roots. Growing churches whilst never denying the past which has brought them to this place focus on the future. Dying churches agonise over members who have drifted away, growing churches seek to welcome and invite hurting and thirsty people to drink deeply of the spiritual sustenance Jesus gives us.
A vision fills one’s life with generosity, which overflows in magnanimity toward the world. For Christians, authentic visions are always associated with the living Christ.
As glorious as all this sounds, when most church folks are face to face with an authentic, Biblical vision ..... they don't really want it! This isn’t surprising. The people in the Bible didn’t want an authentic vision either. Just read the great visioning stories of scripture. Every time a Biblical person sees a vision, they either shrink in terror or dream up a hundred reasons why God would be better advised to send somebody else (preferably a seminary trained expert).
So if you are really in earnest about seeing a Biblical Vision to guide you into the 21st century, you had better know in advance what you are getting yourself into. We’ll use as our guide the vision of the Risen Jesus experienced by the disciples along the Emmaus Road which we heard about in our Gospel reading.
The Road to Emmaus
The FIRST thing we need to know about Biblical visions is that they are revealed, but never created. Visions don’t emerge out of meetings, but out of spiritual growth. You don’t just send the Board away on retreat and expect them to come back with a vision. Instead, you create a climate of profound spirituality, and wait for the unexpected. Everyone .... young and old, newcomer and church veteran .... all alike need to be in a discipline of prayer, bible reading, and reflection. Everyone needs to be listening, searching, and looking about for the unexpected. And when it comes, it will very likely come from the fringes of congregational life, not the center of the denominational institution. But most people don’t know it. Even our most trusted church veterans. Our eyes have been blinded by the institutional habits of a lifetime, and only the power of God will open them.
The SECOND thing we need to know about visions is that they are only given to individuals. A vision requires direct contact with the fullness of a human heart. Therefore, Biblical Visions are not revealed to committees, official boards, denominations, or any other organized collection of people. Along the Emmaus Road, it's just two guys and a donkey. No committee. No parliamentary procedure. No minutes, no financial report and not even a pastor.
Visions target people. A vision does not simply linger in the shadows, awaiting just any person to stumble across it. A vision singles out a specific individual, and leaves them with a question that is never answered: “Why me?”
The THIRD thing we need to know about visions is that they are always preceded by intense yearning, even if that yearning may be unconscious or denied. The first thing passers by on the Emmaus Road notice of these two travellers, is that they are so sad! They are feeling pain. They are exuding frustration. They are in the trap of a lifetime, and straining to find a way out. The person to whom a vision is revealed may feel intense inner turmoil, anxiety, and self-doubt. They may feel deeply inadequate, or confused, or fearful of unknown consequences. Nevertheless, the vision gradually overcomes all reservations. Biblical visions communicate a kind of reckless courage. Ultimately, the individual recognizes that the vision is, indeed, a complete divine response that is absolutely appropriate to their yearning. It is the fulfilment of all that they are, and all that they believe. The disciples on the Emmaus Road have the audacity to turn around and return to Jerusalem.
The FOURTH thing we need to know about visions is that they are always apocalyptic! Not only is it unexpected, but it is usually risky. It is as if the ambiguities of human yearning confront that which is totally pure. The selfishness is burned away. The individual feels a loss, not unlike the addict experiences the pains of withdrawal. A vision reveals a perspective on life and eternity that is entirely unimagined, and then, like Isaiah’s hot coal, it is seared into the human heart so that is will forever be “odd”, “out of step”, and “peculiar”. The Emmaus Road disciples will turn their backs on the habits and routines of a lifetime. With the passage of a vision, nothing is the same.
The FIFTH thing we need to know about visions is that they only survive as a team vision! A vision grows only through sharing. Its apocalyptic reality needs to be defined and refined through conversation. People unite around a shared vision. They move to it, march to it, sway to it, and work to it. They may explain it in a thousand variations, but their eyes light up when they sing the song in their hearts. The Emmaus Road disciples will share their vision with the faithful in Jerusalem. And they will excitedly say “Yes! And it happened in this way to us!” Together they will shape it, savour it, and proclaim it.
Finally, the SIXTH thing we need to know about visions is that a Biblical Vision only grows among strangers! A vision must leap into the unknown to be healthy. It motivates people to reach out beyond their circle of friendship. The Emmaus Road vision will reach out to Jerusalem, and to the gentiles, and to the world. Visions always, always risk rejection. People caught by a vision place themselves on a high learning curve, since the vision is always ahead of them. Every new friend who shares the vision, teaches the others who previously shared the vision. The vision is never contained. It only expands.
The truth is that, while many church people long for a vision, the last thing in the world they want to receive is a Biblical vision! They are inevitably painful, and utterly life-transforming. They forever alter past, present, and future. If your primary goal is to preserve a heritage, then don’t seek a Biblical Vision.
A Biblical Vision
A church gripped by a vision will never be the same again.
If a congregation wants to receive a Biblical vision, they must be ready to place the whole heritage of the church on the block! The congregation must be willing to die. Nothing can be sacred except Jesus - not worship style, not theology, not organization, not music, not tradition. Nothing can be sacred. The congregation must be willing to surrender heritage, ethos, and institutional survival itself for the sake of Jesus. Nothing matters in the 21st century except the Gospel.
Christians must yearn to journey with Jesus above all! They must yearn for a well-spring of joy and meaning that will dominate every day of the week, and every minute of the day. They must yearn to really fulfil their lives on this planet. They must yearn to be a part of a greater destiny that is a positive hope for the community and the world. They must yearn to explore new possibilities, celebrate great victories, and visibly contribute to the health and wholeness of others. They must yearn to be purpose-driven - to discover their life purpose and to live it. For this they will sacrifice everything.
Jump
Congregations caught by a Biblical vision are like a child on the high-diving board. The lure of the high dive has caught them. Step by step, rung by rung they have climbed ...... higher, higher! Now they have gained the largest consensus possible. Standing upon the high-dive, their eager friends gathered around them, they look ....... and it is a long way down! Are there any rocks hidden under the water? Are there any sharks down there? They don't know. In the meantime, old friends and comrades are standing below, shouting "Don't jump! Don't do it!" But you must do it. Over the coming months we are going together to learn to climb up to that diving board and to trust as we jump. We will learn that we must simply step off into the air ..... and let God be our salvation. Amen.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.