God, help us to hear the words of Jesus and let them change our lives. Draw us closer to you, and help our faith community make a difference in the world. Through us, bless all your people. Amen.

 

Last week, I met with a group of other pastors. One of them talked about how every congregation seems to have a banner year, the year that becomes the point of comparison for all future ministry of the church.

If someone is talking about the success of the children’s education program, for example, it will always be compared against that year when we had 47 kids in confirmation.

Remember that? If only we could get back to those days.

Or when a new program is being developed, or worship is being planned, or basically whenever anything changes in a church, there will always be someone who says, “that’s not the way we’ve always done it.”

It doesn’t really matter whether that something actually was always done the same way or not – what matters to people who think like this is that the new idea doesn’t mesh with their memory of the banner year in the church’s history.

And so, by the most important comparison they can muster, this new thing is set up to be an automatic failure.

 

I’m assuming that most of you have had experiences in communities like this – if not in a church, then maybe in another organization that you’ve been involved with – or maybe even in your own families.

Does anyone else have those holiday traditions that you thought you did every year? If you go back and count, it turns out that the most memorable traditions maybe only happened half the time.

But our most meaningful experiences of something are deeply tied to our emotions, and so we often go back to “the way we’ve always done things” because it’s comforting to us.

It can help us find meaning.

This is especially important when the world around us seems to be changing. When things that are familiar to us are disappearing, we turn back to places and rituals that give us comfort as a way to deal with the changes, because we don’t know any other way to handle them.

 

If you do a quick online search for trends in the church today, you will find countless experts writing about how to keep the church the same as it has “always been.”

The headlines state things like “Sunday morning worship continues to decline” and “growing interest in small-group ministries” and “more emphasis on families in church.”

Continues to? Growing? More? In comparison to what?

Clearly, the people conducting studies and writing articles about the church today have an unspoken assumption about what the church of yesterday was – and everything that the church is today is compared to what it used to be.

 

This is not healthy.

Whether it’s a church member complaining about a different way of doing Sunday School, or a professional researcher comparing worship attendance numbers today to an unspecified historic benchmark– the church today is not and cannot be what it used to be.

Thank God.

The ideal church that lives in the back of many people’s minds is the church of 1942 or 1976.

It is a church that only recognized the professional ministry of men.

It is a church that condemned gay and lesbian people.

It is a church with buildings that were not wheelchair-accessible.

It is a church that occasionally participated in the institutional oppression of other groups of people – you would be shocked to read about the role of Lutheran churches in Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

But maybe even worse than that, the idealized church was characterized too often by inaction, or passivity, or ignorance of the injustices that were being done in its name.

 

Jesus says, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

 

What about, “those who want to save their church must lose it, and those who lose their church, for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

 

Thank God that our church no longer suppresses the voice of women, or excludes gay people.

Thank God that we now pay attention to accessibility for people with various physical needs.

With God’s help, we can overcome our history of oppression and inaction, and instead work for justice for all people, in our neighborhood and around the world.

 

But in order for the church to become what it is today, that old church had to die.

We had to let go of those things that were preventing some people from hearing the Gospel, in order to keep the church alive.

The people who stuck with the church, who carried it through the times of transition, were the ones who weren’t afraid to try something new, even though there were huge risks involved in the new way of doing things.

 

Let me tell you a story.

I’ve been at this congregation for a whole month now.

I certainly don’t know everything about how this community works, but I have been to a lot of meetings!

Here’s one of my first impressions that I’d like to share.

 

At the council meeting in February, we had a report on some of the updates that are needed to our original church building. Some building materials were used that we now know to be unsafe, so at the very least, those need to be replaced. But a few other suggestions were brought forward also, to make the space more user-friendly, and more welcoming overall.

Here’s the part that was surprising to me.

I didn’t hear a single person say that we needed to restore the original building because it’s always been there, or because their parents donated the money to build it, or because having a newly refinished building will help grow our Sunday School program.

The suggestions for building use were mostly social outreach programs.

What do we need to do so that the school can still keep meeting in our building?

What other community groups might need a place to meet?

How can our building be an asset to the community?

 

These were the questions that seemed to be driving discussion. Sure, if our congregation needs it, having some more usable space would be great. But supporting our own desires is not the ultimate good here. Supporting the needs of the community is more important.

If we’re going to update the original church building, it won’t be for our own sake, but for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of the Gospel.

We can put aside the baggage of what that building was created for in the first place and realize that it might serve a different purpose in the new reality of what our church is today.

 

This is a very faithful way to think about how we use our possessions.

At some level, our congregation has already moved past the way it’s always been trap and has started focusing on the way that is best for the Gospel.

 

The people who have made our church what it is today are like the disciples in the Gospel lesson.

Jesus rebuked the disciples and told them that they must change or die.

The disciples didn’t like this any more than you or I would like being given such a harsh ultimatum. Peter especially didn’t like what Jesus had to say.

But Jesus said – it’s not about you.

It doesn’t matter what you like or don’t like, it doesn’t matter whether the new reality fits in with your preconceived notions of what a faithful community should be.

What matters is Jesus.

 

The disciples had to be willing to give up their lives for the sake of Jesus, and for the sake of the Gospel. Only then could they truly appreciate the importance of their lives, and of Jesus’ sacrifice on their behalf.

Judas didn’t get it. Judas stuck with the old way of doing things, with legalism and the tradition and trying to appease the powers that be.

It didn’t work out so well for him.

If you’re not familiar with the story of Judas, come back for worship on Maundy Thursday when we hear the story of how he betrayed Jesus for his own gain.

Most of the disciples though – even Peter, despite his argument with Jesus today – most of the disciples finally decided that it was worth putting their own egos aside for the sake of spreading the message of Jesus to the world.

 

Our leadership has found ways to set their own egos aside for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel. We don’t do it perfectly, but at least some of the time, we listen to Jesus’ instructions to lose our own lives for the sake of the greater good.

The leadership of our denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has at least occasionally done the same thing.

On a more personal level, I’m sure that all of us have had to do this for our families at some point in time – putting our own priorities on the back burner for the sake of a spouse or child or parent or sibling.

 

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

The same goes for the church.

We can’t live our lives, as individuals or as a community, by constantly focusing backwards on some idealized time in our memory.

The only way that we can continue to live, and do ministry, and grow together, is by looking forward to the ways that God can use us in the future.

So let’s move forward together, like the disciples did, and like Jesus asks us to.

And may God guide us on our way.   Amen.

This sermon was first preached at Lake Edge Lutheran Church, on the first Sunday of Lent, March 1, 2015.