Place to Go or People to Be
The Rev. Aron Kramer 5 Easter Sunday May 10, 2009
The Church has become a place to go, not a people to be. This was said by Phyllis Tickle last Wednesday night at Breck school. Many of you heard her say it and I hope it struck home as much with you as it did with me. This is the tension we are being called to live into at this point in our lives together. We have become a place to go, not a people to be. And yet we are making a decision together on how we will be a people called and sent by God, to participate in the work God is already doing in the world.
I would be lying to you if I said that I was overjoyed we voted to remain in the building. What seemed to be the easiest task of the three truly is the hardest. Closing the building was the easiest of all of them, and we resoundingly chose not to take the easy path. Leaving the building would have also been difficult, but oddly enough, not as difficult as staying in this space. The decision we have made together, and over 150 of you voted in total, so it really was together, is a decision that states loud and clear a couple of things, at least I hope it was your intention to state these things.
By choosing the most difficult option, we have made a commitment to never grow complacent, to never be a place to go, but rather, to dedicate our lives to becoming a people to be. The other piece of this decision is that we recognize that if The Garden were to leave this location we would never truly be able to come back to the urban setting we currently hold. The Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota would completely lose its claim to being an urban denomination, a denomination with a strong presence in the heart of the city. So this decision was twofold. To recommit and re-imagine ourselves as a people called and sent by God, and to commit ourselves to being an urban presence for the Episcopal Church in the whole state of Minnesota.
So now we go to work, we go to work making a decision about the direction we want to go, the next vote, we go to work creating new relationships and imagining how we can share in God’s mission for the world. Some of you will breathe a sigh of relief and say to me, “It’s about time we got to work, its about time we became the people God is calling us to be.” Some of you will sigh a heavy sigh and say to me, “I am exasperated, what more can I do, what more is there to do?!” And yet, even some more of you will say, “Whatever.” We all have our way of dealing with these decisions that we have made, we all have our fears and anxieties about whether or not we want to continue on this path for The Garden.
If I were a stupid priest I would stand up here and from this pulpit say that if you don’t do what I want, I will leave. But I am not a stupid priest, at least not that stupid, and so instead I say to you all, I am excited about the possibilities we have in front of us. In fact, I think as we move forward and boldly claim a vision that God has for us, we begin to take a journey back to the beginning of The Garden, back to its roots, back to the heart of the mission that started this amazing community of faith.
Kristine Granias rightly challenged someone the other day, I think at our convocation that suggested Gethsemane started all those churches simply because we outgrew our church. We didn’t have space for people and so started a new church somewhere else. If you read our history, one of the striking things about that history is the deep sadness coupled with the great joy that came with each Church start. Gethsemane did not simply grow big and send a faction of people off to start a church. They saw a need and sent people to fill that need. Most of those people were happy to go, but they were deeply saddened by having to leave the community they had previously called home. This was not an easy thing for those people who started the Churches Gethsemane founded. It took courage, it took faith, it took a great deal of hope, and he were are tapping into that same call, that same experience as we look to our future and ask what it will be.
Jesus talks about being the vine in today’s Gospel, that as the branches of that vine we are rooted in the vine that grows in the world. However, that vine is, once in a while pruned, we are being pruned as we speak, we are being cut back so that we will be more fruitful, so that we can hear God’s dream for us more clearly and be able to respond without the baggage that we normally carry with us. If you listen to the Gospel, and this is one thing I love about the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.” John does this throughout the entire Gospel and it is a thought that we should all dwell upon on a regular basis, the idea that we have already been cleansed, that we have already been forgiven, that we have already been transformed by the Gospel, by the word of God. So this Gospel, instead of asking us to seek forgiveness and to seek cleansing and transformation, calls instead for a response to that “already”. We are being asked to grow, we are being asked to move, we are being asked to do, because our hearts have already been knit into the fabric of God’s being and the only thing we can do now is respond.
Our ancestors, the people who went before us, experienced this pruning on a regular basis. In those first 50 years, our forebears were constantly being pruned and being asked to respond to the Gospel as they lived it in this particular context. They saw need and they approached it unafraid of the cost. Today, we begin to reach back to grasp the spirit of our forebears and ask, where is the need, and how will we respond. Where is it that God is calling us to participate in God’s mission for the world? There is a DNA that once you have sat in this space, absorbed the living spirit of the community of the Garden there is a DNA that gets implanted into your own, you become a Sower to seed, you become a seed to be sown. For too long we have been languishing on the vine, and now as we finally allow ourselves to be trimmed back to the beating heart of our being there is pain and remorse, but more hope for our future together. I know making decisions has been tough for some of us, but without these decisions we will continue to languish and the closing of the building will be inevitable.
It is a new day, and together we are being sent by God into the world to accomplish the particular mission of this place, of this community of faith. God is at work, and my hope for us all is that we will see the truth and the value in Phyllis Tickle’s statement, “The Church has become a place to go, not a people to be.” Everything we do is raising up the vision of what it means to be a people, not a building to go to. Placing primacy on the relationships that reside within the community not our relationship to this building. If we can do that, we will become a people to be, and transcend the geographical location that has stranded so many churches in this day and age. We believe that God is here, seriously, we do.
The Church has become a place to go, not a people to be. This was said by Phyllis Tickle last Wednesday night at Breck school. Many of you heard her say it and I hope it struck home as much with you as it did with me. This is the tension we are being called to live into at this point in our lives together. We have become a place to go, not a people to be. And yet we are making a decision together on how we will be a people called and sent by God, to participate in the work God is already doing in the world.
I would be lying to you if I said that I was overjoyed we voted to remain in the building. What seemed to be the easiest task of the three truly is the hardest. Closing the building was the easiest of all of them, and we resoundingly chose not to take the easy path. Leaving the building would have also been difficult, but oddly enough, not as difficult as staying in this space. The decision we have made together, and over 150 of you voted in total, so it really was together, is a decision that states loud and clear a couple of things, at least I hope it was your intention to state these things.
By choosing the most difficult option, we have made a commitment to never grow complacent, to never be a place to go, but rather, to dedicate our lives to becoming a people to be. The other piece of this decision is that we recognize that if The Garden were to leave this location we would never truly be able to come back to the urban setting we currently hold. The Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota would completely lose its claim to being an urban denomination, a denomination with a strong presence in the heart of the city. So this decision was twofold. To recommit and re-imagine ourselves as a people called and sent by God, and to commit ourselves to being an urban presence for the Episcopal Church in the whole state of Minnesota.
So now we go to work, we go to work making a decision about the direction we want to go, the next vote, we go to work creating new relationships and imagining how we can share in God’s mission for the world. Some of you will breathe a sigh of relief and say to me, “It’s about time we got to work, its about time we became the people God is calling us to be.” Some of you will sigh a heavy sigh and say to me, “I am exasperated, what more can I do, what more is there to do?!” And yet, even some more of you will say, “Whatever.” We all have our way of dealing with these decisions that we have made, we all have our fears and anxieties about whether or not we want to continue on this path for The Garden.
If I were a stupid priest I would stand up here and from this pulpit say that if you don’t do what I want, I will leave. But I am not a stupid priest, at least not that stupid, and so instead I say to you all, I am excited about the possibilities we have in front of us. In fact, I think as we move forward and boldly claim a vision that God has for us, we begin to take a journey back to the beginning of The Garden, back to its roots, back to the heart of the mission that started this amazing community of faith.
Kristine Granias rightly challenged someone the other day, I think at our convocation that suggested Gethsemane started all those churches simply because we outgrew our church. We didn’t have space for people and so started a new church somewhere else. If you read our history, one of the striking things about that history is the deep sadness coupled with the great joy that came with each Church start. Gethsemane did not simply grow big and send a faction of people off to start a church. They saw a need and sent people to fill that need. Most of those people were happy to go, but they were deeply saddened by having to leave the community they had previously called home. This was not an easy thing for those people who started the Churches Gethsemane founded. It took courage, it took faith, it took a great deal of hope, and he were are tapping into that same call, that same experience as we look to our future and ask what it will be.
Jesus talks about being the vine in today’s Gospel, that as the branches of that vine we are rooted in the vine that grows in the world. However, that vine is, once in a while pruned, we are being pruned as we speak, we are being cut back so that we will be more fruitful, so that we can hear God’s dream for us more clearly and be able to respond without the baggage that we normally carry with us. If you listen to the Gospel, and this is one thing I love about the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.” John does this throughout the entire Gospel and it is a thought that we should all dwell upon on a regular basis, the idea that we have already been cleansed, that we have already been forgiven, that we have already been transformed by the Gospel, by the word of God. So this Gospel, instead of asking us to seek forgiveness and to seek cleansing and transformation, calls instead for a response to that “already”. We are being asked to grow, we are being asked to move, we are being asked to do, because our hearts have already been knit into the fabric of God’s being and the only thing we can do now is respond.
Our ancestors, the people who went before us, experienced this pruning on a regular basis. In those first 50 years, our forebears were constantly being pruned and being asked to respond to the Gospel as they lived it in this particular context. They saw need and they approached it unafraid of the cost. Today, we begin to reach back to grasp the spirit of our forebears and ask, where is the need, and how will we respond. Where is it that God is calling us to participate in God’s mission for the world? There is a DNA that once you have sat in this space, absorbed the living spirit of the community of the Garden there is a DNA that gets implanted into your own, you become a Sower to seed, you become a seed to be sown. For too long we have been languishing on the vine, and now as we finally allow ourselves to be trimmed back to the beating heart of our being there is pain and remorse, but more hope for our future together. I know making decisions has been tough for some of us, but without these decisions we will continue to languish and the closing of the building will be inevitable.
It is a new day, and together we are being sent by God into the world to accomplish the particular mission of this place, of this community of faith. God is at work, and my hope for us all is that we will see the truth and the value in Phyllis Tickle’s statement, “The Church has become a place to go, not a people to be.” Everything we do is raising up the vision of what it means to be a people, not a building to go to. Placing primacy on the relationships that reside within the community not our relationship to this building. If we can do that, we will become a people to be, and transcend the geographical location that has stranded so many churches in this day and age. We believe that God is here, seriously, we do.
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