Don Friesen
The Mennonite Church in the small northern city of Thompson, Manitoba, was built about the same time as our church. The founders of this church did much of the work themselves, but the fledgling congregation in Thompson must have purchased a church building kit. The building is very simple, but it boasts a modest spire — an attempt, I suppose, to make it look like a church. After some years the roof of the church had to be re-shingled, and the spire was temporarily removed from the roof. At the Thompson church reunion this summer, one of the women mentioned driving past the church during the re-shingling, and as she passed the church one of the kids in her van said, "Hey, look! The Mennonite Church has lost its point!"
It's one thing if a minister's sermons don't have much of a point, as was pointed out to one minister when one of his congregants told him, "Each Sunday your sermon is better than the next Sunday!"
It's one thing if a minister's sermons don't have much of a point, it's quite another when the church has lost its point! Some people feel that way. They've tested what the church has to offer, and as they leave the church they're humming Peggy Lee's old plaintive tune, "Is That All There Is?"
What's the point? It's certainly a question we ask ourselves from time to time. Catherine Wallace says that when she was twenty-one, she had an eighty-year plan for her life! She writes, "I knew that nothing would ever stop me. Life felt ...like a race or a contest, and I was sure I'd win. ...I was omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, invulnerable.... And now? Now ...I'm 47. And I have had some wonderful successes and I have survived some devastating failures...." (Catherine M. Wallace, "What are you doing here? Cohabiting with Christians," 1997)
What is the point? We can ask that at any stage of life — in adolescence, when we are finding our direction in life; in later life, when life has left us disappointed and disillusioned; in mid-life, when we are re-evaluating life; and in our senior years, when we know that we don't have a lot of time left, and we too are tempted to join in the plaintive tune, "Is That All There Is?"
Mark 9: Disciples With ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
I wonder if the disciples weren't singing the same tune in our Gospel story. Jesus was teaching his disciples, telling them that he would be betrayed and crucified, and Mark tells us that "they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him." (Mark 9:32) Who wants to ask for elaboration, if after three years of following Jesus hither and yon it all ends in death? If that's all there is, they may have muttered, let's go to Capernaum and catch a movie or something.
Jesus spent a lot of time teaching his disciples about the kingdom of God, and from his perspective they might have been expected, by now, to be on point! Somehow or other they seem to have missed the point, for when they got to Capernaum Jesus had a question for them! "What were you arguing about on the way (here)?" he asked them. Turns out that "on the way they had argued with one another who (among them) was the greatest." (Mark 9:34) It was a stupid little game, with no end of variations: Who's the best? Who's the most spiritual? Who prays the most? Who can follow Jesus the farthest in a new pair of sandals before his feet blister? Who can nod the hardest when Jesus ridicules a ridicule-prone Pharisee?
Sometimes I wonder if Jesus disciples' weren't suffering from ADD — Attention Deficit Disorder. I come from a family that has more than its share of ADD, or if not ADD, then an incomprehensible inability to focus for long on anything! After the many times Jesus had mapped out his future for his followers, they just couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. They were continually losing the point, if they ever had it in the first place! And to these fumblers of faith Jesus entrusted his Church! Incredible!
The Church's Attention Is also Prone to Wander
The Church's attention has also wandered from time to time. Jesus taught us, as read in today's Gospel, that "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all" (Mark 9:35), but at times the Church's attention has been distracted by a sense of privilege, thinking that any honour belongs to the Church rather than to the One who called the Church into being!
Jesus taught us that his "kingdom is not from this world" (John 18:36), but at times the Church has been distracted by great empires, and has wedded itself to the interests of those great empires!
Jesus taught us that he came among us "to give his life (as) a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28), but the Church has not been able to focus on service for very long, finding programs of self-aggrandizement more rivetting!
The Scriptures tell us that "the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Luke 9:58), but the Church has often been side-tracked by building monuments of grandeur!
Too often the Church has indeed lost its point. I recently came across a short, satirical video entitled "MeChurch," with the byline: "Where it's all about you." It's a wonderful jab at our tendency to expect the Church to cater to us! We know that Christ came to serve (Mark 10:45), not to be served, but we find our own needs much more rivetting!
Perhaps it was the knowledge of the Church's Attention Deficit Disorder that led Rick Warren a decade ago to write his book, The Purpose-Driven Church (1995), a book that has sold over a million copies in twenty different languages and which was selected as one of the "100 Christian Books that Changed the 20th Century". It also led to a purpose-driven industry in its own right; we now have:
I'm not sure I like the word, "driven," and I'm not altogether happy with a pragmatic, results-driven approach to faith or to the family of faith. While it's good for the Church to remain on point, I'm sceptical about our ability to measure the intangible things of the spirit. The Purpose-driven Church movement does well in pointing us back to Jesus, and to a focus on Jesus' basic commandments, but Warren's choice of commandments is selective, and his pet slogan a tad too cute: "A Great Commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a Great Church." (Purpose Driven Church, page 103) Jesus' first disciples would have loved that slogan, for it played into their own notions of greatness.
The answer of critics to the question, "Who's driving the Purpose Driven Church?" is: one of our modern business gurus (Peter Drucker, as cited in "The Pied Pipers of Purpose," by Lynn D. Leslie and Sarah H. Leslie), whose ideas have been applied to the Church willy-nilly. Follow the recipe and greatness is just around the corner!
Learn from Jesus and the Children
In response to the notions of greatness that distracted his first disciples, Jesus did something rather unusual. He "took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me....'" (Mark 9:36-37)
It's an amazing act. I have read that in the ancient world abandonment of children, especially infants, was a normal practice. (Joel Marcus, "Counting Diamonds," The Christian Century, August 30-September 6, 2000) Often the offspring of parents who lacked the resources to feed them, they were left dependent upon the kindness of strangers to save them from a life of misery. In antiquity, one-third of live births ended in death, two-thirds of children who lived died before the age of sixteen. Disease and lack of hygiene wiped out two-thirds of the child population. Not only were children readily abandoned, but some ancient cultures denigrated the children who lived as next to useless. (Jim Mueller, Göttinger Predigten)
In this context, then, Jesus' act is a most profound act. In an age that was quick to abandon children, Jesus embraces the child, and says, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me...." (Mark 9:37) Small wonder that the charity for which the early Christians were known throughout the ancient world included their treatment of destitute children.
The Church at its Best
The Church is at its best, not when it's hob-nobbing with the great, but when it pays attention to the least among us. The Church is at its best, not when it's chasing after privilege, or building — be it empires or monuments of grandeur — but when it seeks to serve in the manner of its founder, humbly and not considering power "a thing to be grasped." (Philippians 2:6, RSV)
The minister of one church recounted how for a long time he wanted the Church driven into action. He wanted it to be on the cutting edge of outreach and social activism, and he recounts his continual disappointment in the congregation's failure to march forward, and in his own failure to mobilize them for this great task. He also recounts the lessons he learned from some of his congregants. There was Ruth, who had not had an easy life. She had lived in poverty during the Depression; she nearly lost a daughter; she lost her husband early in marriage; and she experienced many other trials and troubles. In spite of all these set-backs, Ruth was a beautiful person, and the minister realized that all of her Christ-like virtues had been nurtured by the congregation that he thought was an un-exceptional, if not derelict church — certainly not a church to which the Apostle Paul would have cared to devote an epistle!
Whereas this minister often asked himself, "What is the point?" he also witnessed how many members of the church quietly came to the aid of Martha, an elderly woman who lost her husband and who was herself in great pain and confined to a wheelchair. At Martha's funeral he marvelled how the church acted like family, grieving their loss while at the same time building each another up. After the funeral, he recounts, "I looked at my watch and realized I had a lot to do.... There were many good works to attend to.... But at that moment, I saw that, as a church, we were doing the finest thing. So I lingered that afternoon, as I have many afternoons since, basking in the church at its best." (Mark J. Galli, "The Local Church," 1992)
The Church is at its best when it looks to Jesus, who gave us plenty of hints as to our raison d'et: Give to the stranger, love the Gentile, value the children, value the servant. Value a female no less than a male, a Jew no less than a Gentile!
The Church is at its best when it looks to Jesus, who said, "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God ...for I was sent for this purpose." (Luke 4:43) Jesus found his purpose in Isaiah (61:1, cited in Luke 4):
It's a grand hope, but it is an aggregate of many little hopes, an ultimate purpose that is the aggregate of many little purposes, a vast purpose undergirding the noblest and best of human aspirations.
Perhaps we, the Church, are at our best when we live in hope, when we remain hopeful despite many reasons to ask, "What is the point?" Saint Paul admitted that we may be "afflicted in every way, ...perplexed, ...persecuted, ...struck down" (2 Corinthians 4:8-9), but we remain "defiantly hopeful". We remain relentlessly hopeful that one day we will all "...be complete, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:17, RSV) We remain hopeful that one day we will be "mature and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:4). We remain relentlessly hopeful because we have faith that "...the one who began a good work among (us) will bring it to completion...." (Philippians 1:6) God will work His purpose out. AMEN
The Purpose-driven Life (2002)
These, in turn, have given rise to other spin-off publications, like Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry (1998, by Doug Fields), and Who's Driving the Purpose Driven Church? (2004, by James Sundquist).
The Purpose-Driven Life Journal (2002)
The Purpose-Driven Life Deluxe Journal (2003)
Meditations on the Purpose Driven Life (2003)
Daily Inspiration for the Purpose Driven Life (2004)
Purpose Driven Life - for Commuters, an audio CD (2005)
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
Jesus inaugurated his own ministry with a passage that epitomizes the hopes of the Hebrew Scriptures for God's definitive act of redemption, restoring creation to the harmony intended by God from the beginning.
...the Lord has anointed me;
...sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners...."
All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.