St. Paul’s United
Church
Sunday, January 29th, 2012
Formed in Faith – Rev. David Mundy
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I am
back from a conference called Epiphany Explorations which is held
annually in Victoria British Columbia.
On my first day there, is was raining and seven
degrees Celsius here in Bowmanville, while in
Victoria, it snowed. And the next day, it snowed another fifteen centimetres!
What is the point of going to a conference in Victoria in January if you can’t
come back and brag about the mild weather and the daffodils in bloom?
Oh yes, the actual reason for going to such a conference may be to learn
something, to be stretched in one’s understanding of faith, to have a spiritual
awakening or two – an epiphany. That word epiphany may not be familiar to you
so I will give you some definitions:
·
A Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the
manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the person of the Magi
·
A sudden intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or
essential meaning of something
The
conference I attended is held in this season after the Day of Epiphany, and the
hope is that the participants, a mixture of clergy and laypeople, will have
their own epiphanies, either in the form of an “aha” moment of discovery, or
perhaps in the slow, but steady opportunities to learn, the insights which
change and transform us.
As a
Christian leader who is the “teaching elder” of this congregation, it is important
for me to lead by example in deepening my own faith, both informally and
formally. I am a member of a group of colleagues who also take spiritual growth
and development seriously. And, as it
turned out, this conference once again challenged me to think about my faith in
Christ, to challenge some of the assumptions of my faith, and to feel my faith
through music and drama.
This
morning is the third Sunday of a five-part series on the Five Keys to a
Vital Congregation. Just to remind you, the keys we have chosen are:
Passionate
Worship
Radical
Hospitality
Intentional Faith Development
Risk-Taking
Mission and Service
Extravagant
Generosity
We might
have said Intentional Faith Formation rather than development,
picking up on the biblical metaphor of God as the potter who shapes and
forms our lives. In many churches, the
committee which oversees this aspect of congregational life is now called
Christian Formation rather than Christian Education because we appreciate that
this is about ongoing formation as God’s people rather than simply sharing and
absorbing information.
We listened
to one gospel passage this morning which is one of the few stories of Jesus’
childhood, and we discover that he was a precocious learner from an early age.
His family was part of the caravans of pilgrims on the journey from rural
Israel to the spiritual centre of Judaism, which was Jerusalem. It was likely
that children hung out together in groups, or “packs,” during these trips the
way kids are inclined to do and sometimes parents lose track of them. So, on
the return journey to Nazareth, Jesus’ parents, Mary and Joseph, discover that
their boy is nowhere to be found. They have to make their way back to the city
and search
for their son:
48The next day they found
him in the Temple seated among the teachers, listening to them and asking
questions. The teachers were all quite taken with him, impressed with the
sharpness of his answers. But his parents were not impressed; they were upset
and hurt.
And Jesus matured, growing up in both body and spirit, blessed by both
God and people.
In this story Jesus was on an actual journey to Jerusalem, but Luke lets us know that he was also on a spiritual journey toward maturity in wisdom and faith.
In the other gospel passage, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, Jesus is now a teacher, sharing what has been called the Christian Manifesto. Standing on a hillside in the Galilee, Jesus encourages a curious crowd of peasants to learn and discover a new way, a revolutionary way of being the followers of God. I am fond of saying that this is a nobody teaching a bunch of nobodies, a peasant teaching peasants, yet they are introduced to a profound, counter cultural wisdom which didn’t just change them, it changed human history.
Are we people who are open and ready to develop in faith throughout
our lives? Our younger children tend to be eager to learn and offer answers. If
you watch at Children’s Time you will see their hands flail around when
questions are asked and you hear their sometimes uninhibited “off the wall”
responses. You are delighted when those answers make me look foolish! Actually,
there are times when I want to stop and hug our kids because of their wonderful
originality. Knowing that many of them can quote the Harry Potter books,
chapter and verse, is it essential that they learn the Christian story.
Our tweens
and teens are at different stages of their development and formation. Their questions and responses to the biblical
stories and the issues of faith are more challenging. And they understand the
importance of supporting one another on the difficult and often lonely journey
of faith. In one of our teen groups,
they begin with what they call the “talking stick,” which is actually a Native
tradition. They pass the stick around the circle and share things from the week
that has passed. It’s interesting that in this day of social media, Facebook
and text messaging, there is still value and meaning
to being physically present to one another.
We would
probably all agree that it is important for our children and youth to have this
nurturing climate of faith formation which shapes their spirits. What about the
rest of us? Are we intentional about our spiritual growth as we move through
the decades of adulthood?
The
immediate answer for a lot of you might be, “well, I’m here in church,
aren’t I?” As important as worship
is for all of us, there are limitations to what can happen in this setting. For the most part, one person gets to do
all the talking during the preaching and teaching. There really isn’t an
opportunity to develop and explore the themes of a sermon, to discuss them
together, to share and even challenges ideas and emotions. That may be why a recent poll in the United
States, a country where far more people go to church than here in Canada, discovered that almost fifty percent of
American churchgoers felt that they left Sunday worship unchanged.
The real
possibility is that we will end up in a state of arrested spiritual development
in which we aren’t very biblically literate and we aren’t well equipped to
respond to the issues of day-to-day from our faith perspective. We don’t really
know how to have a conversation with that fundamentalist Christian friend who
seems to have all the answers, or the Jehovah’s
Witness or Mormon who knocks on our door.
Can you
imagine if you bumped into an old friend you hadn’t seen for years and asked
after the family? How old are the kids
now? Seventeen and nineteen! Wow, time
flies. What are they doing? Grades two and four? They still go to school every
day but they just don’t attend classes?
We would almost certainly walk away from the conversation unsettled by
what we had heard.
I hope it
is good news that we offer a variety of adult faith formation opportunities
here at St. Paul’s during the day, on different evenings of the week, even on
Sunday morning from time to time. In the
past two years we have offered:
♧Revisiting the Psalms
♧The Gift of Hospitality
♧Exploring Our Faith
♧Book Club discussion of I Shall Not Hate by Izzeldin Abuelaish
♧Women and Anger
♧End of Life Issues and Funeral Planning
♧The Power of Forgiveness
♧Weekly Wednesday Morning Bible Study
I’m not
sure what it says that the best attended of all the groups we have offered
through the years is the seminar on planning a
funeral! What I always find with these groups is that I learn a great deal
because of the conversations which ensue and both the questions and the wisdom
of the participants. While I am often the leader of the discussions, I always
benefit from what I hear from others. While preparing for these groups can be a
lot of work, they nudge me to grow in faith. There is something in that dynamic
of conversation with others which opens my eyes and ears to God’s presence in
our midst.
The
invitation to all of us is to go deeper in our faith, to overcome the
reservations we might have about joining with others. Some of you may feel that
you are just too busy, including busyness with other church
responsibilities. Some of you may feel
awkward or even embarrassed about taking the first step of participating in a
group. Let me reassure you that you will be welcome, whatever your background
or level of understanding.
All of us
can mature in faith. All of us can have our epiphanies. All of us can learn the
language of Christianity to use yet another metaphor. At the conference I
attended in Victoria, one of the speakers was Marcus Borg, whose most recent
book is Speaking Christian. In this book, and in his presentation, Borg
maintains that learning our faith is like learning a language. It is more than
just learning vocabulary. We discover the context and the nuances of our
Christian heritage and culture.
Ask
yourself this morning if you feel that you are continuing to be shaped in your
faith as the years go by, or if you are still back in your Sunday School days. Actually, if our children and youth are
learning to “speak Christian” shouldn’t we be doing so as well? The
encouragement to all of us is to join the adventure, the journey of discovery,
which will lead us closer to Jesus, the Christ.
I’ll finish
today by returning to our “key” of Intentional Faith Development. These
five “keys” are offered in Robert Schnase’s book
called Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations and in chapter three he
offers a definition which might have been good at the beginning of this sermon!
Through the personal practice of Intentional Faith Development, we do the soul work that connects us to
others, immerses us in God’s Word, and positions us to grow in grace and mature
in Christ. We place ourselves in the most advantageous circumstances to learn
and grow in our following of Christ. We cooperate with the Holy Spirit in
our own spiritual maturation. We learn in community. Intentional refers
to deliberate effort, purposeful action, and high priority.
Christ invites all of us
on this intentional journey!