The State of the Church

Texts: Romans 12:9-21; John 15: 12-17

January 28, 2007

In case you missed it, there was a little speech given in town last Tuesday evening. It happened to coincide with the day of our January meeting of National Capital Presbytery. So, on the same day, I got updated on the state of the union and the state of the Presbytery.

I will resist all temptation to compare the two, other than to note that we were told that the state of the union is strong, while the state of the Presbytery is, on balance, somewhat in debt and somewhat conflicted.

I suppose it is always the temptation of any leader to report that the state of things under his or her purview is strong and solid, but having given considerable thought to this, I think it is more accurate, in describing life at Clarendon Presbyterian Church, to say that the state of the church is faithful.

To risk that in Latin: ecclesia fideles. We are the church faithful; and we are rightly so described because we are also ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda – the church reformed and always reforming according to the movement of the Spirit and the will of God.

So what does it mean to say that we are the church faithful here in 2007? What are the signs of our faithfulness these past 12 months? What signs of faithfulness should we look for in the months ahead?

Let me share some of the good news from the past 12 months, and some sense about where God is calling us in faithfulness in the year ahead.

First, let’s celebrate the good news.

Let’s celebrate the readily apparent fact that we are growing, and today have received into membership a gifted group of newcomers to our community.

Let’s celebrate the fact that we worshipped together on 53 Sundays last year and that total attendance was almost 3,000; or that, in a congregation of 70 members our attendance averaged more than ¾ of our membership – a figure that even megachurches would envy.

Let’s celebrate that Bud, Martin, Samantha and Sarah were confirmed into membership and that Lenka was baptized.

Let’s celebrate that these beautiful stained-glass windows were restored and should shine like a beacon in this neighborhood for decades to come.

Let’s celebrate that our playground has been transformed – by our mission partners in the child care center – into an Arlington jewel.

Let’s celebrate that dozens of you shared in worship leadership, thanks in no small part to the wonderful administrative ministry of Carl Layno.

Let’s celebrate that we filled more than 1,000 bags of groceries for our neighbors in need, thanks in no small part to the energy and enthusiasm of Bobbie and Melissa.

Let’s celebrate that our ministry of healing and wholeness has been greatly augmented by our new mission partner, the Center for Pastoral Care.

Let’s celebrate that our ministry of justice continues to let our light shine down in Richmond and all across Northern Virginia where we are widely recognized as a clear, strong and consistent voice for equity and justice.

Let’s celebrate that we’ve created an innovative on-line adult education program, and that the blog that hosts it has been visited more than 2,000 times during the past year.

Let’s celebrate because, by the grace of God, we are rejoicing in hope, being patient in suffering, persevering in prayer … we are rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep and living in harmony with one another … we are overcoming evil with good.

One year ago we set out on a new way of organizing life and leadership at CPC by creating a smaller, flatter session structure. With the fits and starts of any such change we are learning to live into this new structure. We have lodged the work of the church in four functional ministry teams, three of which are headed by current members of session. Those three are the Christian education and worship team, the mission and outreach team, and the facilities and personnel team. The fourth team is finance. You can pretty much tell by the names the broad areas these teams cover.

The work of these teams continues to be guided by our mission and arranged according to mission-driven areas of focus. What does that high-toned jargon mean?

Well, it means that in all we do here we are mindful that “all are welcome at Clarendon Presbyterian Church” – and we mean all and we mean in all aspects of the life of the community. “We are a community that tries to reflect the love and justice of the gospel of Jesus Christ” – and so we study the gospel and reflect on it, and we try to shape our common life according to Jesus’ call to love and to do justice. “We invite those with faith and with doubts to join us” – which means at least two things: 1) that we see doubt as part of the life of faith, that questions are important, that we seek to love God with our hearts and with our minds; and 2) that we understand that God delights in upsetting our orthodoxies, that our creeds are always provisional and our confessions preliminary. So, we invite everyone to “join us as seekers of God’s amazing and inclusive grace and truth.” In other words, the heart of the gospel – that God so loves the world – is meant for everyone.

That’s our mission, as written every Sunday on the front of the bulletin and as recited in our welcome each week.

Based on that stated mission and our identity as a people called by God to be a progressive, inclusive and diverse community of Christians, recalling the work of the 2002 congregational revisioning process, and the work of session over the past three years, the present session outlined four areas of focus to guide our common life in the coming year. I recall that history to underscore that this vision comes from the life of this community dating back more than five years.

The focus areas are:

• Enhancing our life together as a community;
• Enriching how we worship and grow spiritually as a community;
• Answering our call to reach beyond our walls in “hands-on-relational” outreach; and
• Caring for and stewarding our facilities and space, aligned with our stated mission.

For those of you who pay excruciatingly close attention to such things, you will have noticed a few changes in this list from the previous two years. First, we have moved from exploring how we worship to enriching that aspect of our lives. We have convened several groups to study worship and spiritual practices, and we are already enhancing worship life by involving ever more of you in worship leadership.

Similarly, for the past several years we focused on discerning our call to outreach. We have done that remarkably well. Now it is time to answer the call that we have discerned.

Likewise, the final area of focus has moved in the past year from a planning and visioning phase to an action phase, and that will continue and be greatly enhanced by the creation of an endowment fund.

That process should begin very soon, as we anticipate closing this week on the property sale that was initially approved by you one year ago.

At this point, I feel like I might owe an apology to folks who came in this morning expecting a sermon and may now feel like they are instead listening to the “annual report” of the CEO. Well, let me assure you that I am not a CEO – and heaven help the corporation that hired me for that job!

While there is a sense in which we are, of course, an incorporated body, a non-profit organization, an institution, in a larger and deeper sense, if we are a body, it is the body of Christ in the world. The earliest Christians were called, simply, the people of the way, and to the extent that we can recapture that essential identification we are more of a movement than an institution.

At the Presbytery meeting last week, our General Presbyter Wilson Gunn shared a definition of the church that he picked up somewhere along the way: “The church is a group of people who agrees to overlook the same sinfulness in each other.”

In a profound sense, that observation reveals our deepest hope. For we are not a voluntary association of like-minded individuals, not an affiliation of folks who would most naturally hang out with one another, not, for certain, a group of perfect people. Instead, we are a body called into being by God, trusting in God’s grace and mercy and seeking to follow God’s call and claim on our lives, drawn together by the spirit working in our midst. We did not choose, but we were chosen for this place and this moment.

We say of ourselves that we are a progressive, inclusive and diverse body. But sometimes we question that identity, looking around at ourselves and seeing folks who mostly look like us, speak the same language, and share – in a global sense – a common affluence.

But let’s do a brief social science experiment.

By show of hands, how many of you trace your family roots in the United States back at least 150 years? How many of you can trace those roots in this country back 200 or more years? How many of you are first- or second-generation immigrants? How many of you can trace part of your family tree back to people who are actually native to this land, Native Americans?

Now, how many of you grew up in the Presbyterian Church? How many grew up Roman Catholic? How many grew up in non-Christian households? How many Lutherans? Methodists? Baptists? Others?

With just two categories of inquiry you can see that we are, in fact, fairly diverse. And we haven’t even begun to explore categories of taste or opinion about issues that press in on our common life. For example, I am willing to bet that if we did a survey of favorite hymns and least favorite hymns in our hymnal we could pretty much cancel out all music. Same with opinion samples of any given sermon or worship service.

Much of that has to do, in fact, with that first set of distinctions: where we come from and where our church roots developed. We are, in fact, quite diverse.

And, as with any community, that diversity is a source of richness always waiting to be tapped, but also a source of tension always residing somewhere near to the surface as our expectations of church – formed so strongly by early experience – are either met or not in the day to day living of this congregation.

Nevertheless – whether your expectations are consistently met or not – of this I am utterly convinced – indeed, I am a witness here: we are called together as the Clarendon Presbyterian Church precisely to be a distinct body, to witness to the world that God’s love knows no boundaries of sexuality, race, creed or confession; that God is not finished speaking to the world, nor finished loving it; that the narrow yet often loud voice of the so-called Christian Right is not a faithful witness to the love and justice, the compassion and peace that Christ calls us to.

We are not here because we always like each other; we are here because we are called to love each other. We did not choose this time and place; but we are called to this moment.

Think back on all those places to which we trace our various roots. Think back to all of the faith communities that nurtured us in many traditions more or less faithful to the gospel of love and justice. Consider that vast array of communities. And know this: we are an extraordinarily rare thing in this world.

When Episcopalians from Falls Church suddenly believe themselves to be East African Anglicans, it is time for our light to shine.

When lawmakers in Richmond cannot bring themselves to apologize for a history of racism, it is time for our light to shine.

When young people in our communities continue to hear disparaging words on account of their sexuality, it is time for our light to shine.

When young adults in our community cannot hear the call of God to lives of faithful service, it is time for our light to shine.

When our nation is torn asunder by unjust war and unequal economics, when work no longer works for so many of our families, when the commonwealth works only for the uncommonly wealthy, it is time for our light to shine.

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Within the global Christian church, a community of disciples that discerns a clear call to be a distinctive voice of progressive faith, a community that celebrates the gift and call of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people of faith, a community of the way of love and justice is a desperately needed light in a world of deep darkness.

Let us continue in the season ahead to be that people, for the state of the church is faithful. Thanks be to God. Amen.