What It Really Means To Be The Church (Part 3)
What It Really Means to be the Church (Part 3)
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Americans have been leaving the church for decades. No matter what faith you profess, no matter how conservative or how liberal you and your faith may be, if you still go, there are more and more empty seats around you. There are a host of theories about why this has happened: clergy sexual abuse and church corruption; the failure of the church to speak meaningfully to social changes; the pandemic; and on and on. When you ask people why they left the church, though, few describe actually making a decision to leave. Instead, most people describe a gradual move away from attending until one day they just didn’t go anymore.
In truth, this trend had been unfolding for decades but it has accelerated in recent years. In our own church, I think the pandemic did play a crucial role. We did what we needed to do. We acted to protect the health of the church family by holding worship on-line only. As time unfolded and people were vaccinated, we recognized that different people had different needs. We continued to offer worship online and in person. We continue to do this now. There has not yet been a moment when in-person church has fully recovered.
In many ways our church remains strong, much stronger than many other congregations. People have continued to support the church financially. People have continued in leadership roles. As a result, our building and grounds and our endowment are in better shape than ever. In many ways, people have given more in response to those in need than ever, especially during the height of the pandemic. If you count the number of online views and add the actual attendance, I think we’re pretty close in “attendance.” And yet, there is something we have yet to recover.
Honestly, if you’ve been listening to me long enough, you’ve heard me say to you that I don’t buy the old reasons for why a person should go to church. I don’t think racking up attendance is how you get into heaven. I don’t think that hanging out at church is how you get God to love you. I don’t think that people who attend church are good and people who don’t attend church are bad. You shouldn’t come to church because otherwise you’ll feel ashamed or guilty. You really don’t have to be here. I know that’s a horrible marketing plan but it is the truth.
In some ways, the pandemic just gave everyone a taste of this truth. I heard about how nice it was to garden and listen to church. I heard about “Mimosas with Mark.” I saw the viewing patterns that developed where people discovered there way to “attend” worship and it could be early on a Tuesday morning or late on a Wednesday night or any other time that worked. If you have children, especially little children, this is so much easier to manage. If you have cancer, this is so much less threatening than being immune impaired and worried to worship. If you have work that you really have to do or you have a teenager on a travel team for sports or you have the option to do something else, worshiping on-line some other time is an option. I get it. Trust me, I’m grateful for all the ways that people work to stay connected and be supportive of the church.
You don’t have to be here. Sometimes, you can’t be here. That’s just life. Sometimes, you may even need to be in you own different worshipful space. You may see the beauty of the day and decide it’s time for a walk. You may see the needs of your spouse and say, “Today, this time is for us.” I support those choices. And you all in your own ways, have supported me when I’ve needed to make such choices myself.
Here’s the thing, though. One of the very best things about the church—maybe even the defining thing about the church—is that we are a community of faith. As I’ve said to you before, the reason to come to church isn’t to get something for yourself. Rather, the reason to come to church is because someone else might need you or you may really need to hear what someone has to say that will challenge you to grow or you may actually just need the chance to be among others and feel like you belong. The church was the original social network—built one Sunday, one meeting, one outreach project, at a time.
I’ve used the term, “church family” a lot over the years. I think it captures the nuance of the church as a community. Every family includes a full range of people. There’s that uncle—the fun one or the crazy one or the one with the crazy ideas. There’s that aunt—the one whose a pain but, boy, can she cook! The church is not a carefully cultivated country club with members who “fit in.” A place in the church is not reserved for those who are successful or those who are good looking and charismatic or those who are fun to be with. Nope, the church is open—wide open—to whoever would choose to join. In the church, we make room for each other. And like a family, if your part of the family, you are in—no matter how annoying you might be today.
Historically, this inclusion has been a defining feature of the church and one of the church’s biggest contributions to the larger society. The church has been a place where people who disagree about politics or about social issues or about any other hot issue can still gather and be in each other’s company and actually care about one another. The church has been a place were we had to practice getting along. The church has been a place where we had to entertain the possibility that there are things that matter more than the latest hot issue. The church has been the place where we had to remind ourselves that the person we disagree with is not our enemy nor the enemy of all that is decent and good but is rather the person whom I share a pew with on Sunday morning. We might even find ourselves setting aside our differences long enough to roll up our sleeves and help someone who is in need, together.
Daniel Williams, writing in “The Atlantic” about what really happens when Americans stop going to church, puts the matter this way: “Being part of a religious community often forces people to get along with others—including others with different political views—and it may channel people’s efforts into charitable work or forms of community outreach that have little to do with politics. Leaving the community removes those moderating forces, opening the door to extremism.” Hard research data shows that when people stop going to church, our society suffers. We see this suffering every day as people who no longer have to get along with people with whom disagree grow more and more extreme in their contempt for each other. If I don’t have to live with you, I can think whatever I want about you, right?
At a more “micro,” lived, level, what you end up with are people who are more isoalted, more lonely, and more anxious. Without the experience of gathering and connecting and being committed to gathering and connecting on a regular basis, people suffer. We are relational, social creatures. Those needs, though, are going unmet. Every group that gathers as a community suffered during the pandemic (A.A. groups, the Lion’s Club, the Farmers’ Markets, the bowling leagues). Those groups, like the church, had also been shrinking even before. I know that I missed the connections at the gym when the pandemic hit. I know that I regretted the awkwardness of any social contact that happened peering over the top of a mask. Meaningful, genuine, reliable community contact—from knowing my checker’s name at the grocery store to having a stake in the person’s life with whom I share a church pew—feed our souls. And when our souls are not fed we suffer mightily. That suffering comes out sideways. We work too much. We drink too much. We keep turning to social media as if it were a giant bag of junk food that might just finally fill us and leave us satisfied.
What we long for—what I long for, at least—is reconnection. That’s what brings me to Ezekiel this morning. The prophet, Ezekiel, is the far-out, slightly psychadelic visionary of the Old Testament. He reaches his most surreal in our text for this morning. In a vision that might come straight from “The Walking Dead,” Ezekiel sees a valley of dry bones. It’s not that he’s just out for a walk and lands there by mistake. Rather, God leads Ezekiel into this terribly desolate place. It’s also not that there was some random skeleton laying off to the side. No, this place is covered in bones that have been picked clean and bleached white. They are 100% dead. God asks Ezekiel a question: “Can these bones live?”
God tells Ezekiel to tell the bones that God is going to bring them back to life again. I have to tell you that there were moments along the way during the pandemic, as I stood at this podium and stared at a camera in a totally empty sanctuary, I wanted to yell out, “Dry bones, breathe!” Later, lIke Ezekiel, I was totally shocked when I heard the bones rattle and shake and saw what looked like muscle and tendons being attached to bone again. It was the moment when so much food showed up for the food pantry. It was the moment when I saw evidence that someone had been in the sanctuary, lighting candles and praying. It was a moment of connection in a chance encounter at Target, peering over the top of my mask at a church member and feeling my heart soar and hurt, all at once.
Ezekiel’s second prophecy is to tell these rattling bones to breathe. God tells Ezekiel to tell the bones that they will breathe again and come to life. Ezekiel does this and the reassembled and enfleshed former skeletons rise to their feet as one. What had previously been lifeless has come to life again. However, still there is something that is missing… Again, I think this has been our experience, too. We’re back, but not all of us, and not in all the ways we long to be together, not in all the ways that we could be. “Come on bones, breathe!”
God charges Ezekiel to make a third prophecy, to tell the people that God will bring them out of their graves and back to their place, together. The people will be gathered again. God’s Spirit will fill them and make them fully alive. God will bring them home.
For a while now, we’ve been walking together out of the valley of dry bones. We’ve reconnected and flexed a newly reattached muscle or two—collecting food, feeding folks at PADS, going on work trips. We’ve worshiped again and laughed again and eaten together again. And with each step we take, the loneliness and the isolation and the longing for what we missed recedes a bit more.
What does it really mean to be the church today? In the church, we look each other in the eye and declare “We’re in this together. You are my community. You are my family. Together, we breathe better. Together, grow more. Together, we can transform loneliness and isolation into care for those in need and lover for God and for one another. “Come on bones! Let’s get living!”