Life Over Death

Our guest preacher on November 22 was the Rev. Elena Larssen, one of the Associate Conference Ministers here in Minnesota.  Her sermon includes both population statistics and fatty acids … read on!

Life Over Death

Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

Welcome and Greetings~

I heard some amazing news from The Rev. Wade Schemmel, Conference Minister of the Northern Plains Conference, which is mostly comprised of North Dakota. He shared with my colleagues and I that the population has declined in such a way that the following is true:

if you took a spatula and spread out the people of Ohio over the land mass, there would be 222 people per square mile; if you did the same in North Dakota, you would have 6. Six people is not enough for the state to maintain the amenities of a county (it takes 11) and so there are areas where the counties are being reclassified as frontier.

Frontier! What a wonderful image! Cowboys and pioneer women in bonnets, covered wagons…these are inspiring images! But we know it was hard, a difficult life, often lonely and lacking in basic resources…but also a creative time of great freedom. So we, as the church whose population has receded, and around whom the frontier has arrived again, how do we live on the frontiers of Christianity?

Hear these words of scripture:

Revelation 1:4b-8
1:4b Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,
1:5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,
1:6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
1:7 Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.
1:8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

We think about these things quite a lot in the Conference office….from the regional view point, it’s easy to see that church has fallen out of the center of society. For many people, church has nothing to do with them. 1 in 5 Americans attend church regularly. 90% of our churches in the UCCMN have lost membership in the last ten years- an aggregate of nearly seven thousand people. All around us are signs that the world has moved on without the church, and we on the Conference staff are here to support you and bring resources as you do the painful work of being a church in a post-church world. It ain’t easy, friends, and there aren’t magic answers. Often times I hear folks bargaining—well, young people like screens and guitars! Well, folks these days want to hear easy answers from conservative preachers…well, folks want coffee carts and valet parking—ok, yes, I do actually want valet parking, especially in winter. But seriously—in a society where church going is a unique trait, not a given- what can we do to be Christ’s church, dignified, faithful, with all our priorities straightened out?

One thing we did this last year was have Paul Nixon come and keynote at our Annual Meeting. He is a Methodist minister who has become a church growth guy- and wrote a book about it called “I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church.” His basic concept is that God has called all leaders–lay and clergy–to lead healthy, GROWING congregations. He believes the future of mainline Protestant traditions in America are in the hands of pastors and leaders who must immediately make some critical choices, radically reframing the way they approach their ministry tasks.

Based on his experience of healthy, growing churches and the characteristics they share, Rev. Paul Nixon outlines six critical choices every congregation must make:

Life over Death,

Community over Isolation,

Fun over Drudgery,

Bold over Mild,

Frontier over Fortress, and

Now rather than Later.

And so I challenged myself, over this year, to preach a sermon on each of those items, when the scriptures seemed to call out the topic…and of all of these, the one I thought of as I read this week’s scriptures was this: LIFE OVER DEATH.

In fact, it seemed to run all through the lectionary: life vanquishing over death, Christ reigning supreme on clouds of glory—there was no scripture assigned for today that didn’t evoke discomfiting images of a militaristic, supernatural Jesus flying in on a cloud with a sword. And trust me- I looked for anything else to preach on! I looked for the mild mannered, well-read Jesus who uplifts the poor- you, know, the Jesus with whom I’m comfortable! But I looked at all these death-defying, supernatural scriptures, and I thought of something that Mark Hanson, the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA said recently in his sermon marking the full communion agreement between the ELCA and the United Methodists…he said that the world teaches us that death is always in front of us, and life is behind us, but Christians, we know that really death lies behind us, and life is always in front of us. Because this is the essence of our faith; to choose life, to refuse to be afraid of death, knowing that- in some magical mystery tour way- God’s message in Jesus is that death is not the final answer, death is not the Omega, but instead life, true life, is both where we begin and where we end, and where we begin. And this opening passage of Revelation makes it clear: God loves, us, frees us, and makes us a community so that we can serve the world. Einstein said it this way:

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” –A. Einstein

When we choose to live like it matters, and that life may be miracle enough… this, really, is Rev. Nixon’s most essential point: we must, as congregations and churches, choose to LIVE. We must put our foot down, refuse to accept irrelevance, and sliding membership numbers and commit to a path that prioritizes audacious, miraculous growth.

Now, this is not a church that we, in the Conference office, worry about very often. You are a leadership church, both in terms of bringing leadership to the region with members and staff, but philanthropically and programmatically. It might be hard to see the frontier from here. But if Paul’s Nixon’s book is about anything, it’s about introducing a little urgency, a little energy, a little drive into the life of the congregation. It calls us to remember that frontier has reclaimed us, and asks us the hard question: How often we have chosen what was nice for us over what would be crucial and life giving for those folks outside the church?

I was in Austin, MN, at the First Congregational Church, and was introduced to an elderly man. Clearly a person who was highly respected in that church, he is now living with Alzheimer’s. but was very present and interested in the affairs of the church. We were particularly introduced because he had been, in his professional life, a scientist who worked on isolating the Omega three fatty acid- the one that makes us all feel great about eating salmon, and whatnot. And so he told me about his discovery, and how he decided to name his new discovery: now, Omega 3 acids are characterized by an extra bond the third from the end of a long chain, so in looking for a name, he picked up his Bible. But instead of flipping through from the beginning, he flipped to the end, and starting reading backward from the end of Revelation. And there it was, in the 13^th verse: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Omega Three- the third from the end

And the wonder of life and discovery was evident in his memory, even thought so many other things had faded. A man of faith, a man of science, he had clearly chosen to live his life with wonder and appreciation for the very intricacies and vibrancies of life. An alpha-and-omega viewpoint; a seeing-all-the-miracles attitude, a life-over-death mindset.

We’ve all seen the statistics about how many people don’t go to church, don’t have a church, don’t know what church is for. And you know what they are missing out on? The Choir….A peaceful place to reflect on Sunday morning. They don’t have someone from the Hotdish Brigade bringing them meals when they’re sick; they don’t have someone praying for their family during times of trouble; they don’t have someone teaching their child about the Ten Commandments and about caring for your neighbor; they don’t have someone who will take their teenager on a mission trip (And we know that’s a Godly thing to do); they don’t have a personal spiritual leader who will not only give counsel, lead a funeral, but also come over for pie and coffee on a random Thursday. They don’t have someone to bless their dog. And they don’t have a circle of people who are trying, together, to live like death is behind them, to live as though everything that lies ahead will be woven through with the grace of God. That’s so much of what church is…and so many people do not have a family of faith. The vitality of a church is no less than an opportunity for God to touch the lives of spiritually homeless people. Gulp!

Tall order- yeah? Turning the tide of the fall of Western Christianity? Yeah- that’s pretty much what we do here in the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ. Well, we try. And we have a thousand reasons to turn our thoughts to happier days, when people just came to church because the doors were open. But we know that the frontier has reclaimed us, and that nostalgia is a dangerous game of loving those things which have passed away more than the things of the present…and God is calling us to have an alpha-and-omega viewpoint; a seeing-all-the-miracles attitude, a life-over-death mindset.

Because…A life over death mindset doesn’t just think that life is ahead of us…it acts that way. It expects new life to rise from the ashes. A life over death mindset doesn’t just think, or feel, or wish, or hope—it knows. A life-over-death mindset knows we belong to God. A God who loves, us, frees us, and makes us a community. A life-over-death mindset says, what can we do?

And then…it puts on its boots, ties the apron strings, saddles up the mini-van, and gets to living. That’s a life over death mindset. Yes, here we are on the frontier, daring to have a life-over-death mindset, and the good news is that God is with us: Loving us, freeing us, making us a community of service. That’s a life-over-death mindset. Because God who is and was and is to be, is the Alpha and Omega, and we won’t get to the end before it’s over. An alpha-and-omega viewpoint; a seeing-all-the-miracles attitude, a life-over-death mindset.

Amen.