Me? I really am just the gardener

Easter Sermon The Dover Church
April 4, 2010– Easter Sunday Scripture: John 20:1-18

How about a Resurrection story this morning?
How many of you were here in 1957 when Kraft Hall was built? For that matter, how many of you were in other churches in 1957? You remember how it was back then in the good old days: full churches with two services every Sunday and more added for Christmas and Easter, two and even three choirs, one for adults, one for high school youth, and one for children, ever expanding budgets for building Sunday School facilities which were full to the brim of children. I paint the picture because most people 40 and younger never knew what church was like back then.
In 1957, the United Church of Christ was formed as a national denomination and the Dover Church joined by the early 1960s. The UCC had 3 million members nationwide in 1957. Now there are 1.2 million. The median age of our members gradually got older and older. Budgets plummeted. Staff was cut. Churches left the denomination. Many local churches closed. Many more struggle to just stay afloat.
Even during the decade of 1967 to 1977 when I was in Sunday School, church was still rolling right along as I described it in 1957. The Blue Laws had not yet been repealed here in Massachusetts, so there was nothing else to do on Sunday mornings except go to church. We had a captive audience, if you will. I grew up in a neighborhood where the pillars of Worcester society lived, all the leaders of finance, industry, commerce, law, medicine and politics. Every Friday night we would see our Jewish neighbors get in their cars and drive off to Temple. Every Saturday night we would see many of our Catholic neighbors get in their cars and drive off to Mass. And every Sunday morning, our Jewish and Saturday night Catholic neighbors would wave from their front lawns to the rest of us Catholics and Protestants as we got in our cars and drove off to church. I cannot remember one family on my street who did not go someplace to worship most weekends of the year back then, summers excepted. If you were a pillar of society back then, part of the establishment, that’s just what you did in neighborhoods like mine. Church was where you established relationships with other pillars, connected, plugged in, the way it still is south of the Mason-Dixon line even now.
But the bottom fell out for most of our churches and nearly every mainline denomination between 1957 and today. The turmoil and crises of the 1960s and 1970s shook society deeply and many people lost trust in institutions. Churches like ours were seen as part of that establishment, so we fell into disfavor as well. Options opened up for people when it came to Sunday morning. There were sports, recreation, shopping, and work. With both parents working or only one parent at home, Sunday became the only time for family time. The stigma of not going someplace to worship was suddenly gone and people felt free for the first time to claim that they were spiritual, but not religious, which sounded somehow more authentic than just “going to church” to a lot of younger people who had never known what being spiritual had to do with church.
Denominations like ours had taken our position as the established church in the center of town for granted for so long, that they were slow in responding. When panic began to set in, they started rolling out new ideas for local churches to try out: contemporary or praise worship, new hymnals, new Sunday School curricula, new ways to do fellowship, new justice and witness initiatives, new and more effective stewardship programs. Any of you who have been in any mainline church over the last 10-20 years will have seen these ideas come and go, usually with little lasting impact after the initial enthusiasm leveled out. Many times I have opened the latest informational packet from the “Main Office” in Cleveland or Framingham and wondered, “what have they come up with this time?”
I have been in ministry throughout the last ten years of this decline and I have watched our denomination and my colleagues search eagerly for the silver bullet to turn things around. What has always struck me as strange is how the problem had been misdiagnosed. In all the latest strategies for renewal and growth the main thing was missing. Can you guess it was? I know. It’s so obvious that it’s almost embarrassing. What was missing was…well, not a thing, but a person. You know…Jesus.
In our glory years of large membership, robust budgets and societal expectations of participation, we tended to downplay Jesus. We were more of a distant Almighty yet loving God church. Jesus was an idea about which we thought and whose ideas we taught as philosophical concepts, but not someone we related to. We tended to be pretty low key about our faith, private folks who got uncomfortable about overly enthusiastic religion. We liked middle of the road preachers. The church was more of a civic organization than a revival meeting. Those of us who were raised in the church of the 1960s until now had pretty low expectations of what church could be and only vague ideas of who Jesus was and what he could mean for our lives, let alone someone we would actually want to emulate in the physical living of our lives.
And through it all, as churches and denominations like ours looked here and there for answers, our Easter story of the Resurrection was just sitting there, waiting. All we really ever had to do was just follow Mary Magdalene’s example as she searched for answers. All we ever had to was just turn around and see Jesus. My friends, this is not rocket science. If it were, I wouldn’t be standing where I am.
I know what you are thinking. I know that I am making many of you uncomfortable right now, because you think I am talking about the ultra-conservative “family values” Jesus whom the TV evangelists yell into the cameras. You think I am talking about the oppressive Jesus in whose name people damn this or that group of people. You think I am talking about the not just un-intellectual but downright anti-intellectual Jesus, the Jesus who says “either faith or science, creation or evolution, it can’t be both.” You think I am talking about the Jesus who sounds limiting, parochial, and closed off from possibilities, the one my colleagues in academia thought I was nuts to be interested in. You think I am talking about the Jesus that wants us to wave our arms in the air and burst into tears to show our sincerity in worship.
But I’m not. That’s not my Jesus. My Jesus, the Jesus I find in the Gospels, the Jesus I myself have turned around and seen is this incredible God person of unconditional love, forgiveness, mercy, a community builder, a welcomer, a teacher who invites us into an adventure of the mind, spirit, and body, a friend, a burster of limitations and boundaries, an invitation into the unknown, neither conservative or liberal, a window into the soul God.
You folks tell me about the amazing things you do and have done, the climbs to the top of Kilimangaro, the lifetime of learning about how to grow orchids, the businesses and fortunes you have built, the sails across the Atlantic, the marathons you have trained for and run in, the jumping out of helicopters to ski some glacier in British Columbia, the joy you have in your families and friends, the way practicing yoga has changed your life, the time and talent you give to make the world a better place, the ice boat racing in the Soviet Union, the serenity and joy you feel playing your piano, and so on. That’s what I’m talking about, about bringing that same enthusiasm to knowing Jesus. It’s supposed to be a fun adventure, a relationship which will bring you into the heart of God, a relationship which will stretch your mind and expand your horizons every bit as much as studying quantum physics or traveling to exotics places will.
I know that if we are as enthusiastic about getting to know Jesus and form our lives in his image as we are about the other things in our lives, if we just turn around and see Jesus, God is going to do amazing things in and among and through us. I know because I have seen it in any number of churches, churches I’ve visited and churches I’ve served, churches that just came alive, churches that came back from the dead, as they really got to know Jesus and fell in love with him all over again for the first time. I see it here in this church on a daily basis, growing and percolating. This incredible person is somehow alive and his presence and power does amazing things in the lives of those who want to do and be amazing people and churches.
I know that many of you are doubtful about this whole Jesus thing. I know that you think it’s all about me. As the new senior minister, you think that if I am gifted enough, charismatic enough, skilled enough, likeable enough, the church is going to take off. My friends, do not make the opposite mistake of Mary Magdalene, who saw Jesus and thought he was the gardener. Me? I really am just the gardener.