“I made your name known to the people you gave me. They are from this world. They belonged to you, and you gave them to me. They did what you told them. Now they know that everything you gave me comes from you, because I gave them the message that you gave me. They have accepted this message, and they know for sure that I came from you. They have believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I’m not praying for the world but for those you gave me, because they are yours. Everything I have is yours, and everything you have is mine. I have been given glory by the people you have given me. I won’t be in the world much longer, but they are in the world, and I’m coming back to you. Holy Father, keep them safe by the power of your name, the name that you gave me, so that their unity may be like ours.” (John 17:6-11)
I want to begin this morning by saying that in general terms and in the normal course of things I have a natural aversion to the process known as “navel-gazing.” I’m sure you know what that means. It means becoming fixated with ourselves and our own problems and issues to the point at which we forget that there’s a whole world out there that probably needs help far more than we do. So I don’t engage in a lot of navel-gazing. It strikes me as largely a waste of time and energy that could be used far more productively. Certain occasions, however, seem to lend themselves to the process of navel-gazing, and it seemed to me that this is one of those occasions. The 87th anniversary of the founding of the United Church of Canada at Mutual Street Arena in Toronto.These are perhaps appropriate times to look back to where we’ve been, to look around at where we are and to look ahead to where we might be going. I’ll be honest - I think the United Church of Canada engages in far too much navel-gazing. We gaze wistfully at the past and we lament the present state of the church and we fear what the future holds - and we do that at all levels of the church. So the General Council repeatedly expresses fears about declining membership, declining donations to the Mission & Service Fund, an aging ministry (never mind an aging laity) which has led to the average age of our ordained ministers now being 54 - which, happily enough I suppose, makes me still a young buck! Presbyteries worry about churches closing - and the biggest concern is usually what to do with the property and money when the congregation is gone! And at the level of the congregation we worry repeatedly about deficits and membership numbers and attendance and not enough young people. Everyone is aware that the church isn’t as strong or as prestigious or as influential as it used to be. We engage in interminable debates about various doctrinal issues that are less than central to our faith and various social issues that have far more to do with culture than with Scripture. Sometimes, I fear, actual ministry gets submerged into a culture of fear and despair that has gripped our denomination and shows no signs of wanting to let go and that threatens to paralyze us, to turn us into a private club with a fortress mentality that seeks only to hang on for as long as we possibly can, and in the midst of doing that we forget the good news of the gospel - that life always goes on in some way or some form; that resurrection is inevitable, and so we need not live in fear but rather we should live in joy; we need not be afraid of risks, we should be risk takers; we need not worry about our own life as a church, but rather we should worry about offering abundant life to those around us with all that we have for as long as we can. So, today - the 87th anniversary of the founding of the United Church of Canada - seems like an opportunity for a bit of navel-gazing. With all the challenges that we face, do we really still matter?
First, let’s go back to the past. As Methodists and Presbyterians and Congregationalists gathered together for the First General Council in 1925, what were the hopes and what were the dreams? The 1920’s were a time of great hope. World War I - the war to end all wars - was over, peace was the way of the future and the country was in a time of great prosperity. Everything was looking good. We were the first inter-denominational church union in the world. There are a lot now - just a couple of weeks ago the United Protestant Church of France was established. But we were the first - the trail blazers. The church in Canada was influential and big - and the United Church of Canada would be the biggest and most influential - the largest Protestant church in Canada (a title we still hold, by the way.) The United Church was founded with what was basically a 3-point agenda: to unify Canadian Protestantism, to Christianize Canada, and to proclaim the social gospel as the way of Christ. So, how have we done.
The quest for unity, I would suggest, is gone. It lived until the early 1970’s, when the United Church almost worked out a deal to merge with the Anglican Church. Now, that would have been a denomination. But that quest for unity faltered. Why? Because there was no unity on certain issues - the place of bishops and the ordination of women were two of the big issues. Our two churches went their separate ways, and at that point, I believe, the dream of Christian - or at least Protestant - unity died. We became a denomination among denominations, in competition with everybody else for a declining audience, so to speak. We’ve become very insular in many ways, erecting ridiculously difficult barriers against things that should be as simple as offering recognition to ministers ordained by Presbyterian, Methodist or Congregational churches around the world and tending to look down our noses at those in less “progressive” denominations, so to speak, who we think are just a bit behind the times. On the Christian unity front, I think we’ve failed.
We wanted to Christianize Canada. Oh yes, in its early years the United Church believed very strongly in evangelism - which has become a bit of a dirty word now in a lot of United Church circles. We wanted to make sure that Canada was and would continue to be a Christian nation - and that our country would grow more strongly Christian and more firmly based on those elusive "Christian values" that so many speak about but that so few can agree on. It's perhaps that latter point that renders that dream so difficult to actually achieve. We don't entirely agree on what "Christian values" are or what a Christian nation would look like. The sheer grandeur (and difficulty of achieving) such a goal probably rendered that an impossible dream from the start. In any event, it's clear now that Canada is not a Christian society, but a pluralistic society (with people of many faiths and with people of no faith.) But if we've failed in the task of "evangelization" we still have opportunity to bear witness to and to stand for what we believe the Gospel tells us to stand for. So, there are some possibilities for us in that regard. All is not lost!
And we wanted to promote the "social gospel." This was the unique way in which the United Church tried to "Christianize" Canada. The social gospel has been defined as the application "of Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as excessive wealth, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labour, inadequate labour unions, poor schools, and the danger of war." We've held on to that. "Justice" may be the key word to United Church practice today. I would define our understanding of justice loosely as seeking to offer dignity to all people, regardless of their condition or of whatever differences may separate us. As a national church we do well at that; at the congregational level perhaps less so. That's because at the national level, it's a concept or a theory; at the congregational level the concept or theory has to be put into practice - and it's always easier to talk about something than it is to actually do it. I've noticed over the years, for example, that most United Churches talk a great game about standing with and supporting the marginalized, but then we back away when a marginalized person takes us seriously and shows up in our midst on Sunday morning or at a church social. It's always fascinating to see who's usually left to sit alone at church social events - and it's usually not the lawyer or the doctor or the teacher or the minister; those in the respected and respectable positions in society. It's usually not the happy family with mom, dad and 1.8 kids in tow who are stuck in the corner. It's the "others." To paraphrase Paul - we know what we should do; we just have trouble doing it.
I think it’s fair to say that we’re not what our founders 87 years ago hoped we would become. Why? What went wrong? Is it our theology or is it how we put our theology into practice? Is the problem with us or is the problem with society? And why do we find the concept of real Christian unity so hard to grasp, even after 87 years as the UNITED Church of Canada? I don’t know that I have answers to those questions. And, truthfully, maybe nothing went wrong. Maybe this is just the way it is. Maybe it’s not even reasonable to expect that the vision of 87 years ago would still be the vision of today. Maybe we have to stop thinking that something went wrong or that something is wrong. Maybe we have to stop throwing our hands up in despair and start thinking about our possibilities. So, back to the original question - which should concern us all - does the United Church still matter? Is there hope for us, or should we just turn out the lights and lock the doors behind us when we leave today, and not bother coming back? There's always hope, of course, because there's always God - and God is a God of hope. And here's the thing: the point of the gospel and of a church that proclaims the gospel is not to be popular - it’s to be relevant, and to be relevant may mean to be unpopular because it means we have something meaningful to say that some people may not like. Let’s think about that.
A church that actively seeks to break down barriers between people and engages in the ministry of reconciliation between people matters, even if we sometimes don't put that into practice as well as we should. If we do that we matter. A church that actively advocates on behalf of the marginalized in our society matters, because my perception is that our society is becoming a meaner, less compassionate and less caring society - and it's usually the marginalized who end up as the targets in such a society. And, yes - as uncomfortable as it makes many (including probably many here today) a church that advocates in such a way has to sometimes speak politically (although not in a partisan way) and has to both engage those with power and challenge them to act in a way that’s just and that offers justice and dignity to all. If we do that, we matter. A church that continues to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ - the life-giving and life-saving good news that God sent into the world (the message of grace and salvation and forgiveness and redemption and eternal life) is a church that’s offering hope. No matter how hard we try, we will never create the Kingdom of God on earth. Only God can do that - and so in spite of our efforts there will always be injustice, there will always be poverty, there will always be violence - and there will always be people who need to be given the hope that these things don't have the last word. Our task is to offer the hope of Christ and to hold up (as the prophets of old did) a vision of the world God wants, even if it seems far away. A church that makes God's word the last word and the only word is a church that matters. If we do that, we matter.
We've changed in 87 years. We aren't what we were and we never will be what we were again. We aren't as large or as powerful or as rich or as influential as we used to be and we probably never will be again. But sometimes those things that we so often use as symbols of success are the very things that draw us away from the gospel and the pursuit of them blinds us to our true mission. Maybe being pushed to the margins of society (which is the reality of today) rather than existing at the centre of society (which was our founders’ hope) will be good for us. Maybe it's on the margins, in fact (offering hope to those who inhabit the margins with us) that we matter the most! So I would say - don't despair! Today’s question is "Does The United Church Still Matter?" The answer is - Yes. The United Church still matters. And so do we all!
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