Prayer of Preparation: What We Face
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
October 5, 2014
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Jeremiah 5: 1-3
Acts 17: 16-25
Let
us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For
your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
6
While Paul was waiting for them in
Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17
So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and
also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18
Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said,
“What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer
of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about
Jesus and the resurrection.) 19 So they took him and brought him to
the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you
are presenting? 20 It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like
to know what it means.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living
there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.
22 Then Paul
stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely
religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city
and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an
altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as
unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and
everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines
made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though
he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and
all things. [1]
So I'm excited for October to
finally be here. I, and we, as a Session have had our sites on October and
November since way back in the spring. We've been in talks, conversations,
organizational meetings, trying to get organized enough with plans about the
future of our church, to make a presentation about where we are, and where we'd
like to go, where we feel like we are being called to go, to begin a
Stewardship campaign of sorts, but to do it our own way, a way that seems right
to us, and a way that seems right for us. . . doing as we always do, the best
we can. We have some challenges that we are facing together. We have a journey
to go on together. We have some battles to fight together, and over the next
eight weeks I hope to share with you what we see as a path forward, and invite
each and every one of us to take a unique part in that vision going forward. If
all we do is talk about it, then we have but scratched the surface, but the
conversation is the first step. So over the next 8 weeks we will be looking at
Stewardship, the State of Gordonsville Presbyterian Church, as an act of worship.
My sermons over the next two months will be based on the 8 main parts of our
worship service and how it is tied to where we are as a church. I'm excited
about what I am planning to say, and I'm excited about the opportunities this church
has going forward.
So if you take a look at your
insert you can see how it all breaks down. Today is all about the Prayer of
Preparation. This is a part of the worship service that I brought with me from
Hampton. It is and was a piece that we started putting in the bulletin. It was
never spoken during the service, but was written there to be read during the
prelude by each person as a meditation. It was a quote, a poem, a thought. . .
and its purpose was and is to cultivate the soil. Presbyterian worship circles
around the Word being read and proclaimed, and so the sermon is central, but
often, as the parable suggests, seeds planted in cultivated soil find more
success than those that are merely scattered on the path or on the dry rocky
ground. So what the prayer of preparation is designed to do is to get us
thinking. . . it is there to spark thought. . . to challenge us sometimes, and
sometimes its message is ironic, sometimes historical, sometimes a direct
challenge, sometimes a famous line, sometimes a part of our Book of Order, I've
even used secular things like Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, even the ancient
Greek Playwright Sophocles, and even more often I have placed my own poetry
there. . . which works to reveal part of the ponderings going on within me
during the week leading up to the sermon. . . and it is often a challenging
phrase. . . . for often the poetry of such a phrase can subtly challenge in a
way of its own, that any other piece could not do. . . music actually can often
do the same thing. . . but music as art does not reach everyone the same way.
So the Prayer of Preparation is just one more time to intentionally cultivate
the soil of the mind for the seed to be planted there.
So if you look at the Prayer
of Preparation today, you may get an idea of what we are looking at going
forward. Since over the extended worship service we will be looking at our
church, our strengths, our weaknesses, looking at who we are, where we are, and
where we are seeking to go, specifically us, I thought a good way of
cultivating the soil would be to look broadly at the challenges we will face
that have nothing to do with us, that there really isn't much we can do to
change about them, for they are all external, but they really are legitimate
challenges and existential factors we will face in our present and certainly
more and moreso in our future. We will focus on the specifics of our church in
the weeks to come, but today in way of preparation for that, I want to take a
look at the landscape of the culture and events in which our church finds
itself afloat, and the floating metaphor is true. . . for it is the case that
we are affected greatly by some of these outside factors, they like waves and
currents flow all around us, while we seek to be carried in the flood of the
river of time by the hand of God, else we should capsize or be floated down
stream into change or even oblivion. In the midst of it all it may seem that we
are up against insurmountable odds. . . and that there is no hope. . . perhaps
to the logical mind that is 100% true. . . but such has been the case forever
for people of faith, followers of God, and certainly for Christians. Most of
the time the floodwaters have been a challenge, both in times when it seemed
that Christianity controlled the stream of culture, and in times, like now,
when it seems that churches like ours could not be more overwhelmed by the
changes going on around us.
It is no secret that one of
our biggest challenges is the trend in our culture and country that church
attendance is exponentially decreasing. People have more and more other avenues
for their time. It used to be that the country had systems in place, laws and
traditions, that set Sunday apart, and now all of those are no longer in place.
Families have other commitments on the weekends that pull them away from being
in church. So in that way time is against us. But it isn't just time, also
faith in general is also in decline, at least in terms of organized religion.
So it isn't always just a matter of time, but of interest. People seem to be in
increasing numbers less interested in being a part of a organized institution
of faith, some because they don't believe, and God is seen as an outdated
superstitious notion of the past, and some others, though they believe in God
are turned off by organized religion. The two thousand years of Christian
history is always constantly being judged. . . and the track record isn't
great, but such is the case for other institutions, too. . . many institutions
are having a difficult time in the changing culture. Technology has opened the door for new ways
of doing things, and some of them have rendered the old ways. . . exactly that.
. .old, out of date, and obsolete.
Popular culture also doesn't
do us any favors. There is a great secular bent to most of popular culture.
There is an individualized, if it feels right do it, vibe to pop culture. . .
Pop culture is providing other avenues for human salvation. . . other avenues
for people to become fulfilled full balanced people, other promises for feeling
better about ourselves. . . ones that don't seem to include the guilt, the
judgment, or the hypocrisy that fills the perception of what the church is in
people's minds. I see it all the time in my other job. . . my students, once
they hear that I am also a pastor, draw many conclusions based on that, and not
many of them are positive, and hardly any of them are accurate, but the past,
our history, and other concepts of what Christianity is about have painted this
picture indelibly in their minds, and it is very hard work to alter that. It is
hard to shake that baggage. Most of what I do on a daily basis over there, at
school, is trying to break outside of those stereotypical barriers into the
real.
But it's hard to do, because
Christianity doesn't always get the best press. . . and some of it is deserved.
We turn on the T.V. and see things like Westboro Baptist Church protesting
funerals. . . we see Mega church pastors like Joel Osteen, promising affluence
to Christians, you see churches spouting slogans and simple truisms about what
faith is about. . . you walk down the street yesterday at the Gordonsville
Street Festival and you get all kinds of pamphlets proclaiming all kinds of
things, claiming "Biblical Truths" that are also simplistic and the
dualistic vision of good and evil, and that walking into their church is the
only answer. You get bad movies like "Noah" reflecting poorly what
Christians believe. You have Christianity boiled down to simple political
points of view, and that type of division eliminates folks from the other side.
. . no matter which, because it happens on both sides.
With all that going on around
us. . . how does the typical person, the prospective visitor. . . what do they
see when the drive past Gordonsville Presbyterian Church? What percentage of
the general population is even open to walking in our doors and staying? How
many people are open to the idea of becoming a Christian in that environment. .
. and then also the question, how many of them are open to the idea of being a
Presbyterian? We have some baggage in the press too, and not much of it has
anything to do with what we do here, but how would anybody on the outside know
that? What are those perceptions in the greater community? Is it affluence? Is
it stuffiness? Is it overly conservative? Is it too liberal? I bet each of
those, all of those, even though they contradict and are even complete
opposites. . .I bet all of those are a part of the public perception of us. .
.and like I said it doesn't have anything to do with us here. . . it's just all
part of the external world in which we live.
And you may say, well we are
what we are, why do all of those things matter to us? The answer is that like
the larger protestant churches, our numbers are stagnant at best, and dwindling
at worst. And we'll get to the specifics of this over the course of these eight
weeks, but we have many financial challenges that we must face in the next few
years. Growth would seriously help from that standpoint, but also from a
vibrancy standpoint, from a life stand point, from a health standpoint, we
would like to be growing as a church. But we are facing, again these are
external issues, rising prices. . . for everything. One of the biggest is
health insurance. The cost of health insurance is on the rise. . . you all face
it yourselves, but as a church part of what the church is required externally
to pay for, for my family, is rising, and faster than we can afford. It is
breathtaking the percentage of our budget that is just that. But with that
challenge is the economy in general. . . people have less to give. So with
fewer people to give who have less to give it all equals a challenge. . . and
again I'm just focusing on the external factors we face. . . obviously we have
specifics of these we will get into later. . . but as the greater economic
factors fluctuate around us. . . it affects us. . . and there isn't much we can
do to change those factors.
So to sum up the situation. .
. we are surrounded by a world full of people whose minds are either hostile,
apathetic, or ignorant to what and who we are. We need to grow this church from
a vitality standpoint, and from a financial existential standpoint. There are
growing problems surrounding the economics of our country, state, our town, and
our church, not to mention each of us and our own personal struggles which are
also individual and imposing. Many would say that there are new and better
models for church that are emerging in the world, and so the question of how
relevant we are is constantly around us. We each are being pulled in multiple
directions by our jobs, our families, our responsibilities, and our health. And
if all of that didn't sound bleak enough, I haven't even yet mentioned ISIS, or
Ebola, or World War III, or Russia, or Israel, or open borders, and terrorism.
I chose for the two scripture
readings this morning times of real trial. Jeremiah describes a world that is
very much lost around him. . . and it got worse before it got better, but we
are still here. Paul, in the Acts passage, goes into the crowd at Athens, the
very center of the opposing viewpoint, the religion of the empire, the
tradition that had been going on for 1000 years, and had persecuted Jews first
and then also Christians, but Paul goes into that environment with just the
truth, and with God and preaches. He is not measuring his success by external
things, by the ends, but instead by the means, by doing what God called him to
do. The ends are in God's hands, all that we have is what we are called to do.
. . it is all we can do, and all we need ever do. The rest is in the hands of
God, and so we put it all in faith. I was once told by a fundraising guy, a
mentor of sorts of mine, when I was first starting my teaching career at
Christchurch. . . he said, "run a good school and the rest takes care of
itself." The same may apply to church. Run a good church, and by good, we
mean a faithful church, a loving church, a believing church, a church resting
and relying on God's providence, and a church always striving to listen for the
call of God, willing to go wherever that takes us. . . and the rest will take
care of itself. . . it must for it is in God's hands.
So the external factors that we
can't control surround us like a raging flood. It seems that we are caught
between those raging flood waters and our destruction, and that there is no
hope. Logically speaking there isn't any. There is nothing we can point to that
would suggest we would succeed, no business model, no solution from some kind
of consulting firm. It shouldn't work. . . and that should humble us, hopefully
enough that we wouldn’t think we could do it another way on our own. . . but we
should remember that none of it should have worked until now either. The
Israelites were trapped between the sea and their destruction, too, and a
pathway was opened up. . . later the Jews were surrounded by the Assyrians and
the Babylonians, and they each took and destroyed what had been built, but yet
the remnant remained. . . they were followed by the Persians, the Greeks, the
Romans. . . and yet the remnant remained. . .not only did it remain, but Paul
up against the best opposing minds in all of Athens, planted seeds, that a mere
400 years later would make Christianity the established religion of that
empire, and then Europe, and then spread to the rest of the world, and yet with
all the good and the bad of Christian Empire, and Christendom, some of which we
are still paying the price for, we are still here today. . . and we shouldn't
be. All logic says that we shouldn't be. . . but we are and it all because of
God. . . and it is in God that we put our faith, trust, and hope. . . for it is
quite clear to us that our success can only depend upon him.
I hope the ground is
cultivated. ... we have a ways to go, and many things about ourselves to look
into. . . but let us be on God's side, living according to God's will, and
insure the future into his hands. . . for that is where it truly lies. Now we
are ready for worship. . . in the mean time, may we consecrate our worship by
breaking bread in holy communion together. Amen.
[1]The
Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ac 17:16-25). Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Publishers.
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