Back to the Future --- Again!

RCL Proper 32A

6 November 2011

Saint Faith’s Anglican Church

Vancouver BC

Focus text:  Joshua 24

            One of the courses that I taught at Vancouver School of Theology was an advanced seminar in pastoral theology entitled ‘Mission, Church and Ministry’.  What I was trying to present to my students was the idea that God has a mission not the church and that the church is one of God’s agents in accomplishing that mission in the world.  Various lay and ordained ministries are means by which the church seeks to participate effectively in God’s mission.

            One of the reading assignments was a section of a book by the late David Bosch on the theology of mission.  The section that I had the students read examined where the early church went wrong in the centuries after the death and resurrection of Christ.  What Bosch was looking at were the challenges that the early and later followers of Jesus faced as they made the transition from being a small messianic movement within first-century Judaism to being an institution we now call ‘the Church’.  Such transitions always bring questions about purpose, leadership and structure.

            On Friday I witnessed just how difficult such transitions are.  I happened to be downtown on an errand to the Synod Office when I walked by the Vancouver Art Gallery and saw the ‘Occupy Vancouver’ tent city --- complete with tarpaulins that the Fire Department considers hazardous.  As I overhead a media scrum, I realized that a movement, ‘Occupy Vancouver’, was confronting an institution, ‘the world financial system’.

            All across the world the various ‘Occupy’ movements are typical ‘movements’ rather than ‘institutions’.  They have considerable diversity of purpose, have no clear leadership and have very little structure.  In contrast to these movements, the institution they are confronting, the world financial system, does have a common purpose, a definite leadership cadre and structures of various degrees of transparency.  Regardless of my personal feelings about the issues involved, I know what the likely result is of such a confrontation:  Either the various ‘Occupy’ movements will evaporate or they will begin to make the transition into some institutional form with a clear common purpose, some defined leadership and structures to facilitate the achievement of their purpose.  Then the trap will spring and ‘Occupy’ will face all the temptations that accompany such a transition.

            Time and time again various movements have undergone this transformation, whether we are talking above political movements centred around charismatic individuals that become political parties with executives or religious reform movements led by prophetic figures that become religious institutions with property, money and influence.  When a movement becomes an institution

·      a prophetic message of hope and challenge can become an ideology,

·      a community built around the differing and complementary gifts of its members can become a hierarchy based on seniority and power and

·      a way of engaging the world that is flexible and responsive can become a structure of laws and customs that require a substantial bureaucracy to administrate.

The irony is that movements either eventually become institutions if they wish to continue or they disappear.

            Some four hundred years after the fact, a group of Jewish scribes and teachers began to write down the stories of the Exodus and the settlement of the land of Canaan by their ancestors.  In today’s reading from Joshua we heard the story of the renewing of the covenant made by the Hebrew people before they enter the land.  In it they promise never to forget what God had done for them during the times of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, during the sojourn in Egypt and during the Exodus.

            But the scribes knew what you and I know.  This landless coalition of nomadic tribes did not remember what God had done for them and for their ancestors.  The transition from being landless nomads to becoming a settled people with farms and flocks and towns had had a predictable effect on the people.  Despite the promise they made in the presence of Joshua, the people had not remained faithful to the covenant.  Their faithlessness, in the opinion of later generations, had led to political disaster, the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and exile in Babylon. 

            In recording the renewal of the covenant under the leadership of Joshua, the scribes were seeking to re-energize the people of their own generation and to restore, in some small way, the passion and faithfulness that had sustained the Hebrews during the wilderness journey.  It is as if the scribes were saying, “Let us become a movement once again!”

            I have no crystal ball and I do not claim to be a prophet, but I do believe we are facing a similar challenge of become a movement once more after centuries of being an institution.  Our Anglican heritage began as a reform movement within the western catholic Church, but it quickly became an institution with power and wealth.  As an institution rather than a movement, the Anglican tradition spread throughout the world wherever the Union Jack was planted.

            But “the times they are a-changing”.  We can no longer afford to be more concerned above the preservation of the Anglican Church as a cultural and religious institution than we are about sharing the good news we have as followers of Jesus of Nazareth.  There is much in our way of following Jesus which can sustain and empower us especially our ability to be a bridge between tradition and the present.  But if we are selling the Rectory in order to maintain the status quo, then we are going to be disappointed.  The status quo --- despite its name --- rarely lasts for ever --- no matter how much money it may have at its disposal.

            The key to our transition from an institution back to a movement will be to take with us some of the things we have learned as an institution.

·      We will need a common purpose rooted in our faith.

·      We will need to identify leaders, lay and ordained, who can encourage others to live out that purpose in their daily lives.

·      We will need ways of working together that serve that common purpose rather than institution survival.

            As a parish in partnership with others we are discerning what we believe God is doing in our neighbourhoods and what role we are called to play as Christian communities in the Anglican heritage in this great enterprise.  We know that the present structures will need to change in order to use our resources well to do what we believe God wants us to be and to do in our time and in our place.

            Time and time again God has called upon Jews and Christians to leave the oases of their beloved institutions and venture out onto the pilgrim way of faith.  We are, I believe, at such a time now.  We can use the proceeds of the sale of the Rectory as viaticum, the last nourishment given to a dying person as food for their journey beyond, or we can use these proceeds as trail mix, high-energy food used to strengthen and nourish those who are travelling a difficult path.

            To paraphrase Joshua, my prayer is that this house, this community of Saint Faith’s, will choose trail mix rather than viaticum.  There is still work for us here.

            The Christian faith began as one movement among others in the turbulent religious world of the first century.  Within four hundred years it had become one of if not the dominant institution in the Western world.  But that time has come to an end and we are faced with the prospect of doing a new thing --- recovering the passion and excitement of an earlier generation.

            My friends, we were meant for such a time as this.  Let the movement begin anew!  Amen.