Sermons by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Do You Want to Be Healed?
By Bishop Paul Marshall
Sermon at Diocesan Convention December 6, 1997It's anybody's guess as to why Jesus asked the man who had been ill for 38 years, "Do you want to be healed?" (John 5: 6) I'll tell you my guess. Some families reinforce sickness: lots of extra attention, having the family make its plans around you... Perhaps he had a lot to lose.
It's anybody's guess as to whether or not the Episcopal Church in the United States wants to be healed, or whether we have institutionalized our infighting and become comfortable with half-empty churches. Perhaps we've gotten used to it. If so, we are the ones whom God asks, "Do you want to be healed?" Do you want to be a vital, growing community of faith? I'm sure that in this room [at Diocesan Convention] the only answer any of us would consider is that we certainly do and, please God, let it be soon. We want to see our country peopled by disciples of Jesus, worshipping God by our sides and together with us serving those in need around us. I honor and respect that.
But, let's ask, what may be the cost of health, of growth? Our parishes are generally of a size where most people know one another, where the rector knows everyone personally, where people can be treasurer for life - no matter how hard they try to get out of it. If one of these parishes triples its numbers, none of those things will be true anymore If your church is to provide intimacy under those conditions, it will have to do so by forming small groups: parishioners would have to expend extra energy to maintain the level of intimacy they are used to. If pastoral care is to be available to everyone, there will have to be serious lay ministry. If equity is observed, power will have to be shared with more people.
Let me make it a bit worse. Every parish knows who it does and doesn't want as members. Become a "Peace watcher" and a "coffee hour watcher" and you will see what I mean. God had to remind Jonah (Jonah 3:10 - 4:11) that God's love is for everyone - a problem the first Christians had as they struggled with the idea of mission to the Gentiles.
It is a problem that has not been entirely overcome. Whom would you least likely welcome in church or at parish social functions? Released mental patients? Paroled prisoners? Poor people? Super-rich people? People who support Green Peace? People who belong to the National Rifle Association? How would you feel if they suddenly got religion (who says they haven't?) and wanted to join your church?
St. Paul asks a very different kind of question. His usual practice when he came to a town was to go to the synagogue and preach to Jews and to "God-fearers" and hangers-on.
In Athens, however (Acts 17: 21-31), he takes his mission to the marketplace. He comes to a culture that thrives on novelty and is skeptical about religious matters. Bit it is a culture in which people are worried about the chance that they might be offending some god they haven't heard of. They have built an altar "to an unknown God."
So we find St. Paul neither in his normal place nor using his normal pattern of preaching. Instead he speaks the language of his audience and, using their literature to illustrate his preaching, does his level best to communicate in a way they can understand.
Are we willing to do that? In an age that gets most of its information electronically, are we settling for small service listings in the local paper, hoping occasionally to get an item printed among those fillers on the religion page which I'm not sure everyone reads?
Don't stop those forms of communication, but think with me, please. If we are serious about wanting to reach a generation quite at home in cyberspace, will we go there? At the same time, do we know where to resist the culture? To a generation that values a church primarily in terms of the services it provides, will we resist becoming another service agency competing for customers, and find instead a way to speak a convincing word about emptying ourselves while following a servant Messiah?
I think we in the Diocese of Bethlehem will do what we are called to do. I think we will because I know for a fact that many of our churches are already working very hard to be what God wants them to be in their communities. Many of our churches are laying a foundation of vigorous lay ministry that will serve them well as they grow. A small but growing number are reaching out through electronic media. Most of the vestries I meet with want to break free of purely maintenance concerns and be about the business of welcoming the reign of God.
History is on our side. The major point of the book of Acts is that when the Church rose to meet a new challenge, the Spirit of God was there to bless their efforts from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond. In our own country, when this church was near extinction in the period between the revolution and the first third of the 1800s, Virginia Seminary sent out a new kind of missionary, and the strong Southern wing of this church was fertilized.
In our own time, we have seen the nation and our denomination begin new life when one woman, Rosa Parks, was just too tired to obey the rules of a racist culture, and simply sat down on a bus. America's conscience still has a great deal to do to provide equal protection and equal opportunity for each of its citizens, but there can be no retreating from that issue.
Yes, there may well be discomfort to being healed of our shortsighted, timid, or self-protective ways, but remember that the one who told us to go make disciples of all people - all people - in his very next breath said, "I am with you always, even to the end of the ages."
It's about death and resurrection. When we accept the pain of dying to familiar behavior, we find fuller life. That's why over and over again, we need to come to where broken bread and crushed grapes poured out are the most intimate means we've been given for union with Christ and fellowship with one another. God uses symbols of brokenness to impart life -- that is a promise impossible to misunderstand.
I certainly do not know all the ways in which our call to be faithful will challenge us. I do not know what about our life together will need to die if we are to be healed of inaction. I do know that if we take the risk of following the Spirit into strange territory, we will be born and again and again to rich and useful life for God. "The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." (1 Thessalonians 5:24)
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