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Sermons by The ReverendGrayhameBowcott
“The Difference Between Church-goers and Disciples”
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany – February 4th, 2018
St. George’s, The Anglican Parish of the Blue Mountains
1 Cor. 9.16-23
16If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe betide me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
19For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. 23I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
I pray that I speak to you in the Name of God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel.
For more than six years at seminary I studied under this motto,
the motto of St. Paul, and the motto that has been adopted by the Faculty of Theology at Huron University College.
Now for someone seeking to go through for ordained ministry, it might seem to be a given that preaching is simply part of the job,
but there is something more formidable, something more challenging about the Christian discipleship that Paul is modelling for us in this letter.
“Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel,” said Paul.
Paul didn’t take a “do as I tell you” approach to his ministry among the first Christian churches. Instead Paul was seeking to enable disciples for Jesus,
as he himself sought to be a disciple.
So, instead of a “do as I tell you” approach, Paul modelled a
“do as I do” form of leadership, not only to the early churches,
butalso to us sitting here in our church this morning.
So, let me put things another way.
Woe is unto you, if you don’t preach the Gospel.
One of the things that I love most about my doctoral studies at the Toronto School of Theology is that my degree program is an ecumenical one.
My cohort classmates are Presbyterian, Greek Orthodox, Anglican, Unitarian, Muslim, Christian Reformed and others.
In our studies we pray together, we eat together, we celebrate our faith together,
but more importantly we asked the questions of: what is church?
What is God calling us to do?
How can we be better followers of Jesus?
andin our most recent conversations we are being led to ask the question:
What is the difference between a church goer and a disciple of Jesus?
Are they the same thing?
And the answer that the Holy Spirit has been guiding me to is that, in the scriptures, when Jesus was calling people to follow him, it was not to establish an institution or even church as we call it, but rather to call people to follow him into a completely different way of existing in all parts and aspects of the world.
One of my colleagues explains this subtle difference in this way:
When a church is empty, churchgoers usually ask the question:
“How do we get people to come to our services?”
Those desiring to be disciples of Jesus, however, take a different approach.
They may say: “How do we love as Jesus loves?
Instead of how do we get people to come to our services…….
How can we be of service to others?”
Church goers come to church expecting to receive something from God on Sunday.
Disciples leave church and take God with them in all aspects of their life.
So, what if St. Paul’s motto is not just for preachers,
butinstead for all Christians who seek to follow Jesus?
Woe is unto us, if we don’t preach the Gospel.
I like what one of my colleagues has recently shared in our discussions:
He said, “Our church has one priest and over one hundred ministers.”
Or maybe the front of the church bulletins should say:
Priest……the Rev’d so and so.
Minister……the entire congregation.
One of the key questions that I have been spending so time wrestling with is:
What makes a successful church?
And while there was no single answer to this question,
there certainly seems to be a trend in my research among churches that are being recognized as successful.
These churches are the ones in which each and every person in the congregation has a share in the ministry of the church.
Each and every person has an understanding that to be Christian means that
we must be active in our faith,
that we are called to be outwardly focused, not selfish, but self-giving.
And that Christianity implies, as St. Paul affirms,
that it is not okay to sit back in our comfortable pews and just hear the Gospel.
God calls us to actively share it with others,
or“woe is unto us.”
One of the greatest challenges for Anglicans is that we have had centuries of tradition in which we have trained our congregations to understand church as being the number of people in the pews and the amount of money we have in our bank account.
And now, all of a sudden, we are realizing that this concept of church doesn’t work anymore. And even worse than this, we are realizing that this understanding of being a church goer doesn’t have anything to do with being a follower of Jesus.
In today’s Gospel Simon, Andrew, James and John run to Jesus when they find out that Simon’s mother-in-law is deathly ill with a fever.
At the time,Jesus was worshipping his Heavenly Father at the synagogue.
And so Jesus leaves the church to go out to this woman, where he then heals her in a tender act of love and grace.
And do you remember what happens when the woman is restored to health?
Mark reads: when the fever left her she began to serve them.
In her service to others, in her ministering to them, a new disciple was born.
Even in this healing story we have Jesus modelling for us the role of a disciple.
Disciples are people who are called to serve others because they have experienced the healing power that Jesus has brought into their lives.
Now it takes Simon and the other followers of Jesus a little while to catch on to what being a disciple is all about.
They are shocked when Jesus suddenly refuses to heal any more villagers because he tells them that there is something more important to Christian faith than just doing good things for people.
Jesus tells them that the most important role as a disciple of Christ is to share the Gospel. To proclaim the good news of God’s Kingdom.
Jesus demonstrates that church isn’t about how many people you can get to come to you for help, but rather, church is when the Gospel of Christ is taken out to people who don’t know God and who haven’t experienced his love and his grace.
So Jesus too, endorses Paul’s motto.
In his own way he too tells his followers,
“Woe is unto you, if you preach not the gospel.”
It’s one thing to hear this message and another thing to live it out in our lives.
So I’d like to close by sharing one practical example of a church that came to realize that being church goers wasn’t good enough – but that discipleship meant doing something completely different than they were used to.
I have heard, first hand, the testimony of an Anglican church in the U.K.in which there were only seven members left. Of the seven remaining members the average age was 84 years old.
This congregation was small and tired, but they had been faithful church-goers all their lives.
It came to a point in the life of this congregation that ministry, as they were used to having, was no longer sustainable.
And instead of simply giving up and closing their church, these seven members decided to pray and be open to where God was calling them to serve in their community.
And so they attempted, what in football terms is referred to as a hail Mary!
(Superbowl pun intended).
Realizing that their community lacked a safe place for children to play and for parents to find daycare, these seven members completely renovated their sanctuary.
They took out the pews and their altar, and installed jungle gymns and monkey bars.
They painted the whitewashed walls with a rainbow of colours.
Over the wooden floors the put exercise mats and instead of coffee at hospitality time, they loaded up on juice boxes and healthy snacks, and diapers, lots of diapers.
And then they opened up their church to the community.
I have seen a video of the hundreds of children and young adults that were flowing in and out of that little church.
And if you are thinking, that’s not church! That’s just a daycare,
then you might be surprised to hear that the seven original members still worship in that space. Each week the gospel is still preached and the Eucharist is still celebrated.
The only difference is that now their church is filled with youth and activity.
In the middle of the jungle gymns and the monkey bars they have a baptismal font, and numerous young families are being brought to know Jesus because of the discipleship of these seven 80 year olds, who have been adopted collectively as the community’s official “grandparents.”
And at the end of a presentation made by members of that commmunity, one of the ladies from the church said this:
“The only regret that wehave, is that we didn’t decide to do this years ago.
Then we would have had more time to enjoy this experience of bringing new people to faith. We only wish we had made the change from church-goers to disciples earlier.”
Woe is unto us if we don’t preach the Gospel.
Let me leave you with this one last question.
Are we church-goers or are we disciples?
The two aren’t necessarily the same thing.
From my perspective I see nothing but possibilities for our church and I hope that you are as excited as I am to take up the Gospel and follow after Jesus.
I pray that each of you will join me on the journey.
In Christ’s name we pray.
Amen.