The Table of Peace (and the 2019 Tom Evans Award to Terry Rhodes)

I come to you troubled this day. Troubled about the word I’m about to deliver. Troubled by this sermon.

I come troubled by the prophet Jeremiah and the words found in 6:14, “They dress the wounds of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”

I come troubled by my atheist and agnostic friends who claim that religion is a false peace, an opiate of the masses. Offering fake comfort, forced smiles, and trite clichés.

I am troubled this day. For when I stand in front of God as the apostle Paul writes, we will have to account. I must give an account of myself to God.

As I look at the table of our denomination and of the mainline church, I see that the average age of clergy is 53 years old. The single age most represented is 60. This means the bulk of our leaders were born in the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s. A period of massive growth in the church. As New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote, “The strength of Christianity in this era rested on a foundation of swift demographic growth, as the steady, linear increase to which most American churches were accustomed to gave way to a surge in membership and attendance that left denominations and churches struggling to keep up with the demand.”[1]

The decline of the mainline church was slow. It started in the 1970s. It continues to this day. And I hear about it in all the headlines, the Pew Research Center, various books and from all the scholars, and I am troubled.[2]

Many of us sitting here remember the boom years. Where we had single income houses and usually then women stayed home. It afforded this church multiple women’s circles! There was the Esther Circle, the Ruth Circle and others. This has declined down to our Caring Committee, that carries out tasks that would have been spread over several circles. Sometimes it’s just Marilyn and Darlene mailing out the Pilgrim Messengers on a Thursday morning.

I wish I could give you peace and promise you that we could bring those back. But it would be a false peace. An empty promise. Fake comfort. Times have changed.

Church is not valued as it once was. The religious life has been marginalized. Gone are the blue laws that ensured nothing besides church happened on Sundays and on Wednesday evenings. Gone are the living wages of a single earning house-hold. Women have other things going on, like working, voting, and being people not property. Gone is the surge of population where we just needed to put out a sign-up board and have full committees.

Religious life has changed. It’s not your fault. It’s not my fault. It’s bigger than us. Times have changed.

Yet instead of accepting this, churches are in turmoil. Nostalgia gives us a false promise that we can return to those days if we just keep things the same. Yet every business-minded person knows that this isn’t true. Kodak dismissed the rise of digital photography, and that giant is dead. Blockbuster dismissed Netflix and streaming services, and that giant is dead.

To further the trouble, Harvard Business Professors Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky say that when confronted with a “do-or-die situation” 90% of organizations choose die.[3]

I wish I could get those days back for us. I wish I could be like Rev. Truman Whitaker who added 89 people to the congregation in his first year here.[4] Those days are gone. Lost. I grieve them. You grieve them. We must acknowledge our loss.

Here’s the thing about peace. We’d like to think of peace as this easy, kumbaya thing. Where everything is in its right place and there are no alarms and no surprises. We think that to get to this peace, we can ignore our troubles, disregard things that trouble us, and hide our heads in the sand. The words of the author James Baldwin ring in my ears, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

This is the path Jesus gives us. Jesus models the behavior. He calls out the calloused religious of his day and calls them to care for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized. He seeks to break their hearts of stone and give them hearts for love alone. He calls them “white washed tombs” and “hypocrites.” His harshest words are for them. And this man, this messiah whom we call the Prince of Peace also says, “Do not think I come to bring peace. No. I bring a sword and will divide father and son, mother and daughter…”

I wish I could fix the decline and get things back to how we remember them to be… but here’s the thing. There’s no going back. Time only moves in one direction. I wish we could go back and get 89 new members in a year. I wish I could call up Dave Weber or Mary Keck for an inspiring Gospel Galley.

What we have is our problems and issues and disagreements…. AND we have the invitation. The invitation to the table. That when we mess up or someone fails us, we are called to forgive and offer peace but we forget about this. Like Peter, we’re stingy with our forgiveness. “What do you mean Jesus, I should forgive seven times?” And Jesus says, “No. Seventy-seven times.” Jesus multiplies by eleven. He goes all the way to eleven, he could have been at 9 and gone to ten, but he’s at eleven and when we get to seventy-seven, he’ll multiply that by eleven because that’s how he is and calls us to be.

We welcome each other at the table even when we disagree. Coming to tables of peacemaking is hard work. We must be willing to suspend our inclination of making ourselves the judge of others. Forgiveness is on the menu at God’s table, and we are called to sit down and find merciful ways to deal with one another despite our differences.

I have the spiritual gift of agitation. I know it’s not listed in the Bible. You can ask Kate, it’s hard to live with. I get agitated because I want things to be better. I get agitated because I want to know why things are the way they are and if they aren’t living up to the original purpose, I get agitated and want to change it. I am agitated, which makes peace hard to come by. I’m agitated that there are soccer games on Sunday mornings. I’m agitated that schedules are so busy it’s impossible to plan a nighttime bible study. I’m agitated that the mainline church is dying, but I take peace that this is where we are and we can face it. Together, we can remember what used to be, test and see if it would still appeal, and then get to work on it. We can experiment and try and fail (and I hate failure but I learn from failure) and try again. Things will be different.

I say this not out of malice. Not because I’m some “let’s-burn-it-down” anarchist. I say this as a scholar and historian. Out of a deep respect for this tradition I have discovered. Your tradition of the congregational way. Your tradition of prudence. Charity. Social justice. I found you and loved what I found so much I went to seminary. I’m counter cultural in the fact that I joined a church in my twenties only to lead one in my thirties. It used to be counter-cultural to have tattoos and not go to church, it’s now counter-culture NOT to have tattoos and go to church. Who saw that one coming?! I see the need for change not because I like change. I don’t. But I see that if we want to keep things the same, we’re going to have to change.

And y’all are used to change. You used to have a balcony. Bob Fenn told me about how his confirmation class would meet up there. We don’t have one any more. The choir used to sing in the sacristy, but you walled that off and moved them front and center where they need to be. You added The Gathering service at 9 a.m. 17 years ago. You made the 8:15 year-round, it didn’t used to be. You added a new entrance and air conditioning, which was a brilliant move on your part. You are used to and have modeled change, and it’s not change for change sake! It’s change with a purpose. We can do this.

When I first told some friends that I was heading to Medina, they said, “Oh, Medina thinks it’s still the 1950s.”

Well, what’s wrong with the 1950s?! The 50s had some good stuff. Here’s how we can bring the best out of the past and forge into the future. This past Friday was a homecoming parade where we put teens into convertibles they can’t afford. I saw Olivia and Xanthe Phillips riding in Kelly Charnley’s Mustang convertible. What this says is, “If you play your cards right, you too can become a financial director of a church and get a sweet ride like this!” It also says community. Communities don’t have homecoming parades like this, with the American Legion and the band, and all of our elementary schools riding on the back of semi-trucks and flat beds. That isn’t done. People don’t come out for that in other places, they don’t want to leave their Netflix and X-boxes. But Medina does! That’s awesome! That’s a great thing of the past. And as I stood there watching this Norman Rockwell scene, I took out my smart phone and snapped some pictures. The best of the past meets our very real present.

I bet if you had a smart phone in the 1950s or 60s, you would have done the same thing. The best of the past meets the best of our present so we can pass it onto our future which is sitting on those trailers.

Be at peace. Forgive. Don’t judge. Times have changed. It’s not anyone’s fault. Don’t get into an uproar and blame “these young people” because that’s where your future is. Likewise, those of us under 60 can’t get mad at our elders, because that is who cared for our church and got it to this place. They remember the history. At the table, we can listen to one another. We can figure out where our energy is and where to change it. These things can happen at the table. The council table. Our bible study table. Our communion table.

We shall talk about the issues that face us. Not just in the parking lot, but together. Talking face-to-face. For when two or three are gathered, Jesus is in our midst and love can show up when we ask the right question.

Come to the table of peace. Come to the table of Love. Come. Come to the table. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Gil Rendle. Quietly Courageous: Leading the church in a changing world. Page 19-20.

[2] Three resources for this: the short version: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/04/28/if-it-doesnt-stem-its-decline-mainline-protestantism-has-just-23-easters-left/ and then the long versions: David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons, unchristian: what a new generation really thinks about Christianity and why it matters and Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: the end of church and the birth of a new spiritual awakening.

[3] Leadership on the Line, staying alive through the dangers of leading.

[4] Bicentennial Tidbit posted on the church’s Facebook page on 9/10/2019 at 7:05 p.m.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *