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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| The Vision Acts 2: 5-6, 12-15, 22-24, 36-41 May 27, 2007 Pentecost A few years ago my parents came to Hawaii and, of course, went to worship at First Methodist on Sunday. After church my mother asked, “Well, what do you do the rest of the week?” I said, “Mom, I’ve been in this business for thirty years and now you want to know what I do?” It depends on which week, which day of the week, which minute of the day. Most people, if asked what they do, would just whip out a copy of their job description; I don’t have one. The United Methodist Book of Discipline says that the pastor is responsible for the temporal and spiritual life of the church, which could be a pretty long and diverse list. So maybe, I don’t have a job description because the final product would be the size of a phone book – or maybe a postage stamp. I’ve been to lots of conferences for large church pastors, even mega churches, and they all have a strong notion about what their primary task is –to set the vision – to reinforce the vision – to keep it in front of the people as the goal, the destination. In the Book of Proverbs it says, “Where there is no vision the people perish.” A newer translation has it, “Where there is no prophesy the people cast off restraint.” In other words, a vision gives us focus and direction: a common goal for which to strive. And someone has to keep that vision before the church or it all flies apart. Someone said that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. That’s my job. I used to have a neighbor who was a lawyer. She had LA LAW on her personalized license plate. One day as she was driving out the driveway she said, “It must be nice to have nothing to do all day but think great thoughts.” And as she disappeared in her Jaguar I thought to my self,” No, I’m not smart enough to think great thoughts, my job is to dream great dreams.” This church has embarked on a process of re-evaluating ourselves, our ministry, who we are and what the community is like, all to look again at the question of what it is God wants us to be in this time and place. This is the perfect time to do it. When a new pastor comes there is going to be a certain amount of change anyhow, so why not take creative advantage of the chaos. To that end, the Ad Council commissioned a Long Range Planning Committee to look for ways to plot our future course and they recommended the hiring of a consultant, an expert in doing the analysis we need to interact with our community in redemptive ways. The committee was unanimously enthusiastic about the proposal, so much so that they all pledged their financial support. But not everyone has been so enthusiastic. It was pointed out to me that it was a consultant, back in the sixties, who convinced you to prepare for a couple thousand members; but it never materialized. It occurres to me that that may not have been the consultant’s fault. Maybe we should go back and take another look at that vision. Obviously at some point you bought into it pretty heavily; you did, after all, build this lovely big sanctuary. Maybe the vision is still relevant. Maybe we gave up on it too soon. So, when it didn’t fill up we just moved the pews farther apart so it looked fuller with less people. And it’s nice to have more leg room – not nearly as nice as being crowded. So, this year we set a goal to fill it on Easter, and came pretty close; perhaps if we fill it once a year that will satisfy the vision. Hold that thought and go to the scripture text for today. Pretty amazing story – certainly not one would expect from a prayer meeting. There was a piece on TV about Walter Cronkite last week. He told about the day in 1969 when his daughter told him she was going to a concert that week-end. He said, “Fine,” invisinioning something at the Lincoln Center, perhaps the New York Philharmonic. On Monday when he was looking at the wire service to decide what news to put on his TV show he found this story about a half million hippies in a muddy field up near Woodstock – sex, drugs and rock and roll. It wasn’t until he came across the word “concert” in the story that it occurred to him where his daughter was. It was something like that at Pentecost. “Hey Mom, I’m going to a prayer meeting; just a few of us in the upper room.” How bad can it be? Then the next day Mom picks up a newspaper and reads about a riot that spilled out into the streets. People were running around like they were on fire and spouting gibberish in all manner of languages. One bystander told a reporter that it looked like a drunken orgy. It wasn’t what Mom expected from a prayer meeting. It wasn’t what the people at the prayer meeting expected either. But, then, when you invoke the awesome power of God in a prayer, you can’t be entirely sure what to expect. Let me tell you what I find most incredible about this story: not the fact that they had a wind storm in a room with no windows, not the vision of flames dancing on them (what ever that was about), not even the fact that they were suddenly able to speak in foreign languages they had never studied. No, the most amazing part of this story is that when it was all over, 3000 people joined the church. You have to figure that the upper room held about twenty-five or thirty people – and 3000 joined up. That’s a percentage increase of 9900 %. And get this, they baptized them all. If they only spent five minutes apiece that would be twelve and hour, so to baptize them all would take 250 hours which is more than you can fit into the average day. And if you baptized them by emersion, somebody’s arm was really tired. Talk about growth problems; imagine what sort of sanctuary their consultant recommended. I believe God wants us to dream big. I believe God wants us to claim a big vision. I believe that Pentecost was not a one time event to be commemorated by a dying church but to be prayed down again and again – the rush of a mighty wind – tongues of fire, and God’s church is filled with those whom he has called to himself. It’s my job to remind you of the vision. It’s been ours since we built this great building forty years ago. It’s been ours since the day of Pentecost two thousand years ago. I know – it only happens in those independent mega-churches. They move into a warehouse one week and the next week they have 5000 people. It happened to the Methodists in the nineteenth century but not now, not to any of the old mainline churches. Not so, it’s happening all over the country, with Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Episcopals. Let me tell you about a miracle I saw just last fall. I was up in Washington State doing a program for a Methodist church and going back to Seattle to the airport when my friend said, “I want you to see something.” It was Sunday evening. He took me to an Episcopal Cathedral. The building was something right out of the middle ages. It was cold and damp and dark. We got there at about nine o’clock and sat and shivered with a half dozen other early arrivers and I can’t figure out what in the world I’m doing there. The program consisted of an all male choir singing forth century chant. “That ought to pack them in,” I thought to myself: no congregational singing, no praise band, no sermon – just chanting in Latin. The church looked like it would hold about 400 and the six of us there spaced ourselves out around the sanctuary and glanced at each other nervously. About 9:25 the door opened and it didn’t close until every pew was full. Then they started sitting in the chancel, on the communion rail, leaning against the altar, sitting in the window sills. Who were these people – all under thirty. They packed about 500 young adults in an old Episcopal church on a Sunday night to hear Gregorian chant. That’s a miracle right up there with Pentecost. People in our time are desperately searching for two things, spirituality and community; they found it there. We are the purveyors of the things the world craves, let’s open the doors. Some of you still think what I am proposing is impossible – I hope you’re right; because what is merely difficult can be done by us with careful planning and execution. The impossible takes divine intervention. So how are we going to make the vision a reality? New ministries, more staff, better advertising – no! We are going to pray down another Pentecost. I challenge each of you here to pray for your church daily. Then we are going to remember that God loves prayers with feet. We are going to put our energy, passion and check books behind our prayers and wait for the rush of a mighty wind. We are going to worry less about offending somebody than missing somebody – somebody that God has claimed and we are supposed to reach out for on God’s behalf. So, when the people who aren’t here today because of Memorial Day travels ask what the sermon was about this Sunday, tell them that Bob wants to move. That’s right; I want to move – from here over to there - that little fenced in area that looks like the bow of a sail boat. That’s where the pulpit was supposed to be. But, we moved it here to be closer to the congregation. Also the preacher has more room to move around. But we’ll move it back there on June tenth, not for Sunday morning but Sunday afternoon. That’s when the high schools have their baccalaureates and the place will fill up. It will fill up with teenagers; for many of them it will be their first time inside any church and for many of them, their last. So, you tell people that I want to move back there, not because I like it better but because the crowds have pushed me back there. And you are going to have to make a sacrifice as well; when we move all the pews back in, there will be less leg room, and the parking lot will be too small. Jesus said you reap sparingly
because you sow sparingly. He also said you don’t have because
you don’t ask. Let’s ask. Let’s ask big! Let’s
pray big! Let’s dream big! In Genesis the angel asks Abraham
the rhetorical question, “Is anything to wonderful for God?”
God answered that question definitively at Pentecost. “Where
there is no vision the people perish,” that’s not going
to be our problem.
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