St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, May 16, 2010

Christ’s Prayer for the Church – Rev. David Mundy

John 12: 24-26 John 17:20-26

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Our eldest member at St. Paul’s United Church is a remarkable woman named Muriel. Muriel is 103 years old – actually 103 and nearly nine months. When you get to that age, every month should count! I first met Muriel seven years ago when she was just a “sprout” of 96. She was still living in her own home at that point. Her hearing and her eyesight may have been suspect but her mind was still sharp. In fact, when I went to see her she always quizzed me about the contents of our denominational magazine, the United Church Observer, which she read from cover to cover. I learned that I better do my homework before I went to see her if I didn’t want to appear uninformed.

Even though Muriel still subscribes to the Observer and is still quite passionate about the United Church she reminds me that she began life as a Methodist. When she was eighteen years old the Methodist church in Canada, and most of the Presbyterians, and the Congregationalists, made a remarkable decision to come together and form a new denomination called the United Church of Canada. That was in 1925 and a congregation of eight thousand assembled on June 10^th of that year, in the Mutual St. arena in Toronto, for an inaugural service.

From time to time I bring this up with Muriel and while her memory isn’t quite what it used to be, she still recalls the sense of importance and new beginnings associated with that historic event. Here is a newspaper report on the event from that time:

The thing is done. A quarter of a century of waiting, hoping and struggling, has become today an hour of palpitating joy. The United Church of Canada was born today, its advent, attended by high revelry of rejoicing hearts. Not in temple or cathedral, nor amid longdrawn aisle and fretted vault, echoing the note of praise, but, as if symbolic of the power and purpose of the new-born Church to hallow and to beautify, the holy festivities were held within an arena set apart to athletic prowess and physical endeavour. - The Star, Sudbury, Ont., June 1925

A new crest was developed for the United Church which had elements of all three denominations and a motto was adopted Ut Omnes Unum Sint which is Latin and is taken from one of the gospel passages we heard today, the phrase “that all may be one.”

The gospel of John was the last to be written and it may have been fifty, sixty, even seventy years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Even at that early stage of the church there were the first signs of divisions and dissent, so the gospel writer has chosen to include a prayer of Jesus which invites his followers of the moment but all those to come to be united in him. This is an inclusive prayer, not based on rigid conformity but offered as an invitation to new way of life in Christ. It is a prayer of encouragement for a newly formed church and it was certainly fitting for the formation of the United Church of Canada.

Our United Church hasn’t surpassed the one hundred-year mark, like our member Muriel, but reaching the age of eighty-five “ain’t too shabby”, wouldn’t you agree? Especially for an upstart denomination. We have chosen to honour this important birthday or anniversary today rather than in June because of our gospel lesson today and Jesus` prayer for the church that all may be one.

And as with most birthdays we can take the opportunity to look back and forward. During the first forty years or more of the United Church the denomination rode the wave of population growth in this country until we had “more franchises than Tim Horton’s” to use the title of a conference on our future. We were and probably still are the largest Protestant denomination in Canada. Some of us can remember the growth of the late 1950`s and early 1960`s with ambitious building projects and Sunday Schools bursting at the seams.

The United Church became known for its stand on social issues, some of them quite controversial. And we seemed to be willing to go where angels feared to tread. This is a denomination of “firsts” or “near-firsts.”

✙the first to ordain women in Canada 1936

✙one of the first to apologize to Native people for the residential school system and to make restitution

✙one of the first to consider whether there is a place for gays and lesbians in the church (the answer was and is yes)

✙one of the first to choose a person of colour as our denominational leader, the moderator (the current moderator is Mardi Tindal)

✙one of the first to enter into respectful dialogue with Jews and Muslims

✙one of the first to address environmental issues including encouraging United Church members and congregations to refrain from buying bottled water

From the mid-sixties on, the second half of our existence, we have wrestled with several of these prophetic choices, and this has been a time of struggle for the United Church. We became aware of the diminishing number of young people in our midst, but the general outlook was that they would come back some day. Except that in many churches they didn’t return.

Some blamed a changing society which was becoming more secular and more religiously diverse at the same time. There really wasn’t much pressure to attend church anymore. Some felt that our stands on the various issues were driving people away, and there is no doubt that a significant number left over a couple of key debates.

The result has been an aging church, in terms of the people in the pews, and many congregations now have few people under the age of sixty. This is true for the clergy, the ministers, as well. Last year a professor from Queen`s Theological College spoke at our Oshawa Presbytery and informed us that there are now more retired ministers over the age of one hundred in the United Church than there are ministers under the age of thirty. This struck home for a couple of reasons. I was ordained at age twenty five, as was my predecessor here at St. Paul’s, the Rev. Nancy Knox. We are now part of the group of clergy who will retire in the next decade and the church is worried about who will replace us. I also have a son who, if he is ordained next year as planned, will be one of those rare twenty-somethings in ministry, but I wonder what sort of church he will enter into.

There is something else which has happened which is more difficult to measure that shrinking and aging congregations. In recent decades we seem to have forgotten that our motto “that all may be one” comes from a prayer and that it is a prayer of Jesus. As the decades have progressed, we seem to have become less able, less comfortable, speaking about Jesus, the Christ, the Saviour, in our life together. Even though Jesus is still there in our creeds and our statements of faith, we are often tongue-tied when it comes to expressing our Christian faith.

So, as we approach our 85^th anniversary, does the United Church have a prayer for survival? More than a prayer for survival, do we have a prayer for abundant life in Christ?

I hope our answer is an emphatic “yes” although it will not be easy. We can begin by counting our blessings as a congregation. We are still a multi-generational church family, which sadly is not the case for many congregations. We still have a Sunday School, we have a Junior and Senior youth group, we have a Junior Choir, we have a Vacation Bible School. A shocking number of Oshawa Presbytery congregations no longer have a Sunday School, let alone these other opportunities for young people.

St. Paul’s continues to enjoy strong leadership from dedicated lay leaders and they have been hard working and resourceful and courageous.

This said, we have a huge challenge before us in the years to come, and if we want to make it to our 100^th birthday as a denomination, local congregations such as ours will need to be focussed and will require the commitment of a new generation of leaders. Last year our Visioning committee presented some objectives to the St. Paul’s Board and I will share them with you: