Oneness in Practice

A sermon for the seventh Sunday of Eastertide given at the United Church of Acworth, NH on May 12, 2013.

John 17:20-26

I remember the first day we drove up into Acworth center to come to this church.
It was August or early September we had moved to South Acworth 
just in time for my brother's 14th birthday.

We lived that year in Brenda McCumber's old house which is now the Turner's house 
next to the Village Store.

And so since school hadn't started yet, the trek to Acworth center was unfamiliar.
It seemed like a long drive for being in the same town.

And it was raining.

But I remember arriving and coming to the door 
and George and Mickey Randall were just inside 
greeting us and welcoming us to church.
And I remember experiencing the big spacious narthex,

And we climbed the long and winding road of the stairs up to the sanctuary.
And entering through the double doors, we were once again greeted
Scott and Laurie Luther-Houghton
And this time with bulletins in hand.
And we found a pew and sat.


In Pennsylvania where we had been living, we had attended a Baptist church that had a praise and worship band with drums and guitars.
I probably looked up at the front of the church and immediately realized that this would be a different sort of service than that.
And Lillie Leblanc's organ music played in the background and ushered us into worship.

And Rev. Marvin Schmidt in her robe and stole welcomed everyone
 and with prayer began the service.

Acworth church at that initial visit was something strange.
There were songs that people sang without looking at the bulletin or hymn book.
With odd names like Doxology and Gloria Patri. 
As unfamiliar to my baptist and evangelical experience 
as the stained glass which filtered the grey rainy light into the room.

And there was a prayer that everyone knew – even my parents.  
Everyone but me, that is.
But I learned the Lord's prayer through repeated Sunday mornings
and then also through church school which was on Thursdays then.
Before we ate our snack, Stella Herpel would lead us in the Lord's prayer.
I mumbled along at first.
But gradually it became more and more familiar.
Until I was able to say it by heart.
And then there was the suppers.
Potluck after potluck.
And a church picnic at the Doty's with their heated outdoor swimming pool.
Slowly and surely I was introduced to the life of this church.
The practices of this church that were at first strange, gradually grew more familiar

Practices are important.  They communicate our beliefs, they communicate who we believe God to be and what we believe God has called upon us to do.

We greet people who come to church 
 because we want to be hospitable.
Hospitality is a value and it is embodied in practices of hospitality.

It's through our practices, through our regular activities, 
through our worship rituals that we communicate to each other who we believe God is.

I learned early on that the Acworth church was welcoming 
even if it felt too traditional for my tastes.
It wasn't two weeks after we started coming before I was invited to light the candles and hold that strange long pole with the silent bell on the end.  
And we were initiated into bell-ringing from the beginning.

These seemingly small things: lighting candles, sharing meals, ringing bells, greeting, reciting prayers together, singing songs together.

These are the ways that we are nourished by our faith.
It's through these ordinary practices that God's extraordinary love shapes us. 

But all across America in just as many evangelical as mainline churches,
something has begun to afflict congregational life.

Diana Butler Bass calls it the “practice gap”

She grew up Methodist and learned all of what you're supposed to do if you're going to be a good methodist.  How to do this liturgical bit here and how to help with that church event there. How to do this and how to do that.

And it's easy for us to communicate and pass down the hows of church.

This is how you ring the bell, woo-hoo my eight-year old self exclaimed!
This is how you light the candles – cool!

But what's not as likely to be passed down, 
perhaps because we're just too economical with our words 
or too focused on the practical getting the job done,

What's not as likely to be passed down, is why we do what we do in church.

Why do we light candles?  Why do we ring bells?
Why do we stand and sit and stand and sit...
Why do we pass around bread and juice?

The easiest answer is the answer that many churches have gone to:  that's just what we do.  We've always done it that way.

For many people church is a place where people do things that don't make sense and when they ask people why they do what they're doing they find out that they're no the only ones who don't understand.

that's just what we do.  We've always done it that way.

We find ourselves like the disciples of the guru in the story of the ashram cat:

When the guru sat down to worship each evening, the ashram cat would get in the way and distract the worshipers. 
So he ordered the cat be tied up during evening worship. 
Long after the guru died, the cat continued to be tied up during evening worship. 
And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be dutifully tied up during evening worship. 
Centuries later, learned treatises were written by the guru’s disciples on the essential role of a cat in all properly conducted worship. 
(original source unknown – quoted in Mark Pierson, The Art of Curating Worship)

That's just what we do.  We've always done it that way.

For the modern spiritually inclined person, that answer is far from satisfying.
They want an authentic and honest spirituality that engages in practices that have deep meaning and are life-giving.

People are looking for fullness, they're searching for real connection with God and real connection with other seekers like themselves.  
We want to find practices and engage in practices that will bring to us that sense of fullness.

And what we find in the modern religious environment is a lot of choices.
Even those who live in Acworth don't have to come to the Acworth church.  
Back in the day when travel was harder (imagine travel being more of a pain for Acworthians than it is now!)
Back in the day the choices were fewer and folks would find the easiest and most sensible option was to go to the church in town or stay home.  
Now there were still choices.  Acworthians had to choose which flavor of church they wanted.
Methodist?  Baptist? Congregational?
Or maybe they wanted to go a little further over to Unity and worship with the Society of Friends. 

But today with options in Keene, Claremont, Bellows Falls, or Newport and all those in between. With options that are Christian of various shapes and sizes – catholic, orthodox, baptist, evangelical, mainline.  The Unitarian-Universalist church, the Jewish synagogue, Buddhist spiritual practices, various New Age options.

Options, options, options.

And some just opt out altogether.  Studies have shown that an abundance of choices 
actually discourages people from committing to a choice.

And so the largest growing religious category of Americans are the “nones” who check off “none of the above” as their religious identity on the survey.

They may be agnositic, humanist, atheist, or perhaps they say “it's complicated.”

And in this plurality of choices, people are looking for spiritual practices that are healing and life-giving whereever they may find them.

It's no longer the case that people will just come to church and want to engage in our worship or community life just because this is the Acworth church.

People want to engage in practices that are meaningful, practices that connect them with God and engage them in activity and relationships that nourish that love of God 
and sense of God's love for them.

Diana Butler Bass calls upon mainline Christians to look again 
at what we do and why we do it.

And I think Jesus's prayer in John's gospel that we just read 
gives us a great vision for the why.

He prays passionately 
not only for his disciples then and there but also for his future disciples:
“that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

What makes the Christian faith credible to a watching world is not finely spun arguments 
or nicely designed worship services.
What makes the Christian faith credible is the unity of believers with one another and in God.

And this unity is the ultimate why that Jesus gives us.  That we may be one with Jesus who is one with the Father and that we may be one with one another.  

Blest be the tie that binds.

That tie that binds is the love that God has shown to us in Christ, the love that welcomes the stranger, seeks healing for the sick and marginalized, washes his disciples feet, and does not repay evil for evil.

This love is a unifying love, a love that when experienced becomes contagious.
It's this love without which our worship, our life as a congregation is in danger of sounding like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

This call to unity in God's love and love for one another is the why behind Christian worship and it's the why behind Christian practice outside of worship.

Why do we fellowship with one another at a potluck dinner – or coffee hour?

Why do we work our tails off putting together events to raise money for the Food Shelf or the Blessing fund?

Why do we sing songs of praise and make a “joyful noise” which lets all passersby in South Acworth know it's church time.

Why do we share joys and concerns and pray for one another?

Why do we read and study the Bible together and learn about statements of faith?

The answers to these questions might be that that's what we've always done.
But that's not really true.
These things were borne out of conviction, and conviction produced practice 
and what we need is to find the root of that conviction and breathe deep again.

If we're going to do what we have been doing, let us do it because we know the why – 
“that they may be one”
one in God and one with one another.

So that the spiritual seeker who comes through our door will see in our joy and passion that this is a community that isn't just doing church.

It is being church.

This is a group of people who have encountered the love and grace of God in their souls and who have been changed and liberated by their encounter with God.

“That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

And here's the challenge.

Think about what we do as a church and what you do as a part of this church.
And why do you do it?
And if that's a difficult question to answer, I encourage you to seek the answer in prayer and meditation on the words of Christ here and elsewhere.

Spend time considering what the Acworth church is for.

And I'll do the same.

And let's see if we can renew our love for what this church means and what the Christian message has done for us and can do for others.

And let's let God breathe new life into our practices and 
[heaven forbid] 
create in our midst new practices which organically follow from the unity we find with one another and with our God

For this is Jesus's prayer and may it be ours.

“That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

Amen.