Nov. 21, 2004
Rev. Marlene Wagner Pomeroy
"Stories of the Future"
John 11:32-44 and Revelation 21:1-6a
 
Yesterday I was at church for two separate events.  First, I attended a lengthy meeting with about nine church leaders to begin to address our future here at the First Congregational Church of Pasadena, United Church of Christ.  We met with the Rev. Fred Plumer to discuss the future of the wider United Church of Christ denomination that we are affiliated with and to talk about the mission of our local church.  We talked about the need to welcome new people and to think in new ways about how we could be the Church in the world in this modern time.  The emphasis was clearly on the fact that the past is gone and the future is about to be created by God through us.  But what future for the church are we called to participate in? That is the question we will be seeking to answer in the coming year.
 
The second church-related event I attended yesterday was a wedding in our sanctuary.  It was a beautiful candlelight ceremony - the bride and groom were not from our church, but had come seeking a place for their wedding.  It was beautifully decorated with these flowers and others, the music by Andy on the piano and a couple of their friends was heavenly, and the church was filled with people.  It felt very traditionally church.  As I looked out on over 200 people gathered for this important rite of passage, I wondered how many of those people worshipped regularly somewhere.  The Church is still a place where many people recognize and lift up significant rites of passage: we celebrate births, we baptize babies and people of all ages, we confirm their transition from childhood to adolescence with the rite of confirmation, we celebrate weddings and union services, we walk with you through aging and we celebrate your life at your death.  But something is amiss, I believe, if that is the only time that we fill the church with our presence.  Something is amiss if we only come to church for those occasional moments.
 
Because what is significant about the church is that it is a place that speaks also to the mundane times in our lives - the daily comings and goings that happen between the highlights, and far outnumber them! Paul's writings in the New Testament give us a marvelous metaphor of the Church being the living body of Christ on earth.  The Church is a place where we embrace the living God who pushes and pulls us into new places, who makes a claim on the totality of our lives, and who embraces us fully every day.
 
Fred Plumer in our meeting yesterday reminded us that the Church is about transformation.  Sure, we have budgets and boilers to attend to, meetings and events to plan, but the foundation of the life of a church should be our intentional relationship with God that allows for a life that is continually transformed.
 
The story of Lazarus in today's scripture reading speak of that kind of transformation.  The death of Lazarus deeply moved and disturbed Jesus. The story seeks to ask the question - what is dead and what is in need of renewal?  And who is the source of this renewal, says the writer of the story? God.  Not us, but our creative, powerful, loving Creator.
 
The United Church of Christ's "God is Still Speaking" initiative seeks to engage us in this need for renewal grounded in the Divine.  It is asking us to work within our churches to re-think what it means to be the Church in the 21st Century.  It is asking us to discern what aspects of church are crucial and life-transforming and what areas are bound up in the past and need to be left in the grave.  Is the Church going to be a place where we celebrate significant events, or is the church going to be a vibrant part of our life that meets us at every juncture of our lives, reminding us of God's constant presence in our lives and in our world?
 
We in the United Church of Christ have a rich past to recall.  We have taken bold stands a in history, engaged in meaningful firsts on behalf of the disenfranchised, have worked hard to unify the fractured church and forge new partnerships with others.  But we are a denomination that does not live in the past.  We live today as well, holding up the lives of people who are here and addressing the needs of our world now.  We also welcome new people who walk through our doors and invite them to walk with us in faith and bring new ideas for us to embrace.
 
Writer Marcus Borg writes of the paradigm shifts that are happening within Christianity all over North America.  The earlier paradigm views the Bible as the literal word of God which is a unique revelation of God.  This results in specific issues that are problematic for many of us:  the earlier way did not ordain women and still does not.  The earlier way regards homosexuality as sinful and less than acceptable.  The Bible's function was a revelation of doctrine and moral living.  The earlier way describes Christianity in exclusive terms - the only one true religion and path to salvation.  Yet, by 2002 there is statistical evidence that the majority of people do not believe in a literal interpretation of scripture and 78% do not believe with the statement "My religion is the only true religion." (Borg, The Heart of Christianity pages 3-4)
 
Borg reminds us that we here at First Church and in the United Church of Christ are wrestling with paradigm shifts that are present in a much wider sense.  Borg describes the Emerging Paradigm as he calls it in two major ways:  how we see the Bible and how we see the Christian life.  This new paradigm is about the Bible as a wonderfully rich historical book that speaks to ancient communities.  The power for us today, much removed from that time period, is in the rich metaphors and meanings that exist in its pages. The story of Lazarus is rich with symbols of death and re-birth and God's power to breathe new life into any situation.  When God touched Lazarus, God transformed Lazarus in a powerful way.  We are left to ponder that reality because the Bible does not tell us what Lazarus did as a result.
 
The new paradigm is less about morals and more about the Bible's ability to mediate the sacred - a vehicle for the grace of God and the presence of the Spirit to come alive.  Instead of racking up points for an afterlife, we are transformed in this life through our ongoing relationship with God.
 
Certainly we need to unpack all of these ideas and wrestle with what that means for us as individuals and as a community.  But what an opportunity for us to clarify what future we will have with God!  How exciting to discover new ways to honor God that link us to our past and yet open ourselves to the vision for the future.  The Book of Revelation was written to a persecuted Christian Community during the time of Roman occupation.  It was written to encourage the community to persevere despite the threat from outside.  It is a mysterious and apocalyptic book full of hope and judgment.  But in the passage we read today it is a book that looks to the future as a time of hope and to reclaim the reality that God's home is here among mortals, not away in some loft place, and that God desires to create us anew so that our lives are living testaments to love and justice and new possibilities.  So in the year 2005 we will be doing some work in our church, clarifying how we will be God's future people.  We will work together to discover what new ways that God is calling us to consider.  Our future as a people of faith has not yet been written.  We will write it together.  So whether you sit here today in your pew for your 20th or 40th year, for the 5th year or for the first time, we invite you to journey with us in the coming year so that we might all place God to the center of our lives and live our lives passionately.  For we are reminded that God is still speaking in our lives and in our world.  May we be people who listen!  Amen.