Jesus didn’t
call the disciples to leave their nets
and follow him so they could become holier than thou,
or more enlightened than thou,
or learn 12 steps to highly effective living.
He called
them to become fishers of people,
to catch people up out of the sea of
despair
where so many of us are drowning.
Jesus
recruited his disciples into a mission “for others.”
World War II
martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
called Jesus “the man for others.”
Bonhoeffer
then said, the Church is Christ’s Body,
so, “the Church is the Church only when it exists for
others.”
We are not
here to save our spiritual skins,
stay out of Hell and go to Heaven
when we die.
We are not
here top off our spiritual gas tanks,
or to enjoy the music, architecture, and pageantry.
We are here
to become the Body of Christ
ushering God’s Love-Kingdom into a hurting world.
Over a
quarter century ago,
I made a rule for myself.
Don’t preach
about the Church.
People don’t
come to hear about the Church.
I am going
to break that rule today.
I don’t
break it lightly.
So, I hope
you’ll stay with me on this.
It’s
important.
You have
undertaken to be our Cathedral.
The most
important part of a Cathedral’s mission
is to model for all our
congregations
the true way to be the Church.
Becoming the
Cathedral is about being the Church for others
on steroids.
Your new
role is to constantly remind our diocese,
that we all have the same mission,
we are all on the same team,
we are all part of one body – the
Body of Christ.
Paul wrote
to the Corinthians:
“Each of you says, ‘I belong to
Paul’ or ‘I belong to Cephas’
or ‘I belong to Apollos’ . . . Has
Christ been divided?
You are the Body of Christ and each of you is part of it.”
I want to
paraphrase Paul.
“Each of you says, ‘I belong to St.
Paul’s’ or ‘I belong to St. Peter’s’
or ‘I belong to Trinity’ . . . Has Christ been divided?
You are the Body of Christ and each
of you is part of it.”
Bishops and
Cathedrals are ligaments holding the diocese together.
The
Cathedral serves the other congregations this way,
modeling life as a church for others.”
That mission
flies in the face of spiritual consumerism.
Spiritual
consumerism means: we want our spiritual needs met.
But here’s
the Catch 22 of that desire.
We can never
get our spiritual needs met
as long as we’re trying to get our
spiritual needs met.
The New
Testament says it over and over and over.
The way to
happiness, wholeness, and completion,
the way to be born all the way
is to forget about yourself in the
love
of brother, sister, neighbor, and
even enemy.
Mohandas
Gandhi said,
“The best way to find yourself is to
lose yourself
in the service of others.”
Have you
heard people say,
“I stopped going to Church
because I wasn’t getting anything
out of it”?
If we go to
Church to “get something out of it,”
we may get something but it won’t be
the gospel of Jesus Christ,
because his gospel is about taking
up our cross
and living for the broken, bleeding
world.
That can be
Mother Theresa stuff, Martin Luther King stuff, or
Dietrich Bonhoeffer stuff.
But it isn’t
usually that dramatic.
It’s more
like holding a training event for other congregations,
having something fun for Reno kids
whose parents don’t belong here,
hosting a music event for the
community,
or a blood drive or a 12-step group.
You are
already doing a lot of this ministry.
That’s why
you are the Cathedral.
But what’s
this got to do with each of us individually?
Everything.
It makes all the difference for who we are,
not just at Church on Sunday but
wherever we are all week.
Cleopatra’s Shadows is a novel about first century Egypt.
The Egyptian
gods were a violent bunch,
and things had turned violent in the earthly palace of Queen
Berenice.
The queen’s
servant made the theological connection.
She said,
“Bloody gods birth bloody people.”//
Nothing
shapes our souls more than who we worship
and the character of our worshiping
community.
If our God
is a genie in the bottle to support our personal ambitions,
and our Church is a spiritual filling station catering to our
preferences,
it makes us mean-spirited,
hard-hearted, and small-spirited.
But when we
are a Church for others
worshiping the man for others,
something gracious seeps into our
very souls,
something at odds with the
expectations and demands
of me-first consumerism.
Our hearts
begin to beat in sync with the heartbeat of God,
the God who loved the world so much
he gave his only son
to save it.
We start to
think with the mind of Christ,
who, as Paul said,
“though he was in the nature of God
. . .
emptied himself, taking on the form
of a servant
being made in human likeness . . .
.”
“In human
likeness” -- with all its vulnerabilities, frustrations, and sorrows.
Like Jesus,
we join the human race.
That sets us
free from our essential loneliness.
We call it
Communion.
Albert
Einstein said we belong to the universe
but we are deluded into thinking we
are separate.
That
delusion is, in Einstein’s words,
“a prison . . . restricting us to
our personal desires
and affection for a few persons nearest us.”
“Our task,”
Einstein said, “must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of creation in its
beauty.”
That’s
Communion.
Anglican
priest John Donne explained Communion this way:
“No man is an island
Entire of itself
Every man is a piece of the continent
A part of the main . . . .
I am involved in mankind . . . .”//
That’s what
it means to be a Christian.
It is to be
involved in humankind.
Jesus is God
choosing to be involved in humankind.
A Cathedral,
starting with the other
congregations
and the world right outside your
walls,
is involved in humankind.
Do you see
what you get out of that?
Release from
the prison of self.
Communion
with all living creatures
and creation in all its beauty.
Jesus called it “abundant life.”
