The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for December 3, 2006

Texts: Ezekiel 37:1-11/Ephesians 3:12-16

Title: “Can These Bones Live?”

              The sanctuary décor---the tree, the wreath and candles, and the banners---make a very special statement today.  This the first Sunday of Advent, our first Advent back in our sanctuary since the storm.  We are firmly set on familiar ground today attending to familiar customs, yet for this first Sunday in Advent, Advent will share billing with other agendas to which we as a congregation must attend.  This is the announced date for the congregation to return your stewardship pledges. It is also the day you will be electing a new slate of elders.  And on top of all that we will join together in celebrating the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This is a full day.

              The first Sunday of Advent is an occasion when this minister and other ministers across the church, introduce the Advent theme, a theme with two basic emphases, watchfulness and waiting. With your indulgence, I would like to take us to a different place, a not very inviting place at that.  Sorry.

              The book of Ezekiel is a book of forty-eight chapters in length, but only one of those chapters typically gets much play from the preacher, and that happens to be chapter thirty-seven, the chapter introduced this morning. I have chosen Ezekiel over Advent themes because I believe Ezekiel is a voice you and I need to take into account at this particular point in our church’s history.

              Two weeks ago a number of us came together to enjoy a meal and a program that was billed as a “good steward’s dinner.”  Bill Backstrom, chair of our budget and finance committee headed up a team that provided a comprehensive overview of where we as a church were before the storm, where we are now, and where we hope to be as we plan for 2007.  Emphasis was given to membership numbers, budget numbers, church attendance, and other related items that would provide the attendees with an informed overview of our church’s status. Roy Perrin, who has headed up the church’s restoration effort, provided us with a comprehensive update on the status of those efforts, while Jim Prigmore challenged us with a thoughtful overview of our ministry.

              While each of those presentations earned a grateful and enthusiastic response from those of us who heard them, I want to reserve special thanks for one of our members who risked voicing some important concerns that might not otherwise have been addressed. The speaker’s message might aptly be summarized in just three words, “we [the membership of Lakeview Presbyterian Church] are old.”  Truth of the matter, the man had the facts on his side.  Of the gathering of over sixty persons only three or four, aside from some young children in attendance, were under forty years of age.

              The speaker challenged us to give careful consideration to that reality as we plan for the future.  I do not know, frankly, that this pastor and the session leadership of this church have taken the age of our congregation sufficiently into consideration as we have made plans for the future.  We have not, for instance, made specific plans to get younger through strategies to attract young people to our church. While the Day School board has spent a good bit of time pondering the child care needs of young families returning to Lakeview, we offer nothing on site to address those needs at present.

             While we will be well served to generate some specific plans for outreach very soon, such plans will not change the demographics of this congregation any time soon. Of course, we who live and work in this city and environs know that nothing happens any time soon.  This Lakeview neighborhood we serve is very much a work in progress, with glimmers of possibility, but little to encourage a sturdy and abiding hope.

              The storm, in the space of a very few hours, forced us to contend with realities we might not otherwise faced for five years or longer, at the top of the list, certainly, the aging of our congregation.  That we have become an older congregation was less visible when there were more of us, and we have had more young people and children in worship.  Depleted in numbers, and suffering the marked absence of children in worship, it is difficult to disguise the fact that we are by and large a congregation made up of adults forty-five and older.  

              There is no concealing what we are.  The facts are the facts.  Another time, another set of facts.  And so it was that God led the prophet Ezekiel into a valley to confront some cold, dry facts. The valley was full of bones, cold, dry bones, the perfect props for an object lesson God was about to teach. The bones, of course, were a metaphor for Israel.  “Mortal, [God declared] these bones are the whole house of Israel.  They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” 

              The facts were the facts. Israel WAS cut off.  Forced to live in bondage to Babylon, the nation was in very bad straights. The old were dying off before they could communicate their history and their faith to the young. They had a past, at least the elders did, but their future was tenuous at best.

              You have to credit God with being consistent.  Each time Israel found herself up against, convinced that the game was up, God intervened to expose another reality.  In the instance before us this morning God did so quite graphically, charging Ezekiel to declare to the people, “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.”

              Restoration, of course, would not occur over night for the whole infrastructure of the nation had to be rebuilt, new leaders appointed, and new hope instilled in a population so long accustomed to living without hope that they had forgotten how to dream.

              Dry bones was all that Ezekiel could see until God gave him a new perspective.  We here at Lakeview are being treated to a new perspective nearly every week.  A couple of weeks ago it was the extended chancel, last week it was the new tile, this week it is the scaffolding reaching high up the cross.  Each week our sanctuary is one step nearer completion, and it is a delight to see the progress we are making. 

              Yet even as the appearance of the sanctuary changes, some things don’t change.  For one, our demographics don’t change.  The majority of us who are worshiping here are forty-five or older, the majority of those who are not here and can be counted on to support our ministry with their time, talent, and treasure are forty-five or older.  The facts are the facts.        

              So what will we do with those facts?  Ignore them?  Not a viable option. But what are the viable options for a congregation suddenly faced with the cold hard facts that we are a congregation greatly depleted in numbers whose average age is forty-five or older, ministering in a community whose future is undefined.  What are we to do with the fact that some of the people whom we have counted on to support the church financially are, as a result of retirement or other circumstances, unable to contribute at their former levels?

              Are we rebuilding for the future or rebuilding to remind ourselves that we had a past?  That question begs to be answered, not just by this pastor, and the session leadership of this church, but by each one of you who are here today.  If we are rebuilding for the past, then we needn’t change a thing, we can go about our business, thinking and acting as we did in the past.  If we are rebuilding for the future, however, we better begin to entertain new thoughts about who we are and what we are about as a congregation.  Or, are we too old for any of that?    

              The blow of entering my sixth decade of life a little over a week ago was softened somewhat when my sister informed me that sixty is the new forty.  Sixty is the new forty.  Perhaps age is truly a state of mind, as some have said.  What authority, after all, is in a position to set the terms for how a forty, sixty, or eighty year old is supposed to act?  Have we not seen fifty year olds carry on like ten year olds, and ten year olds act with the kind of maturity typically associated with folks four or five decades older.

                The age of a congregation may well have a bearing on what that congregation can do, but the age of its members will not define a congregation, unless that

congregation is willing to yield to such definition.

                So how shall the vitality of a congregation be judged? The person who rose to challenge us at our dinner three weeks ago felt strongly that vitality could be measured by the number of young families in the church.  How could anyone fault that assessment? The youth and energy of a congregation’s younger members certainly play a significant role in fostering and maintaining vitality in a church. We have seen it here.

                 But how do we measure vitality? The Reverend Earl Johnson Jr., a Presbyterian pastor and teacher, has identified four generally agreed upon bases for measuring a church’s vitality, beyond younger members.  The four are the number of persons attending Sunday morning worship, the number of new people joining the church, the size of the youth group, and the annual growth in pledges.

                  Every church leader would like to see the church filled on Sunday morning, see a steady flow of new members added to the church rolls, know that the youth of the church are turning out in record numbers when activities are planned.  Every church leader I know would like to see an annual growth in pledges.

               Unfortunately, comparatively few churches in our denomination are blessed with that kind of good fortune, most count it a victory not to have a net loss in membership for the year. Yet as desirable as it might be to serve and worship in a congregation where the church is full every Sunday, where numbers of new members are being added to the rolls, where a vital youth group exists, where pledge levels rise each year, and the average age of the congregation decreases each year, [while it would be desirable to worship and serve in such a place] are these indicators necessarily THE criteria by which congregational vitality should be measured?

                  John Calvin, the principal mentor to whom Presbyterians have looked to ground us theologically and biblically, once wrote that “the church exists wherever the Word of God is purely preached and the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution.”  Calvin never based his judgment of a ministry’s effectiveness on numbers and demographics, but on the purity of its witness.  Are we doing what God calls and equips us to do?

                 We may not have numbers, we may not have great demographics, and we may not have the budget to do the things we might wish to do, but for all that we are the church, aging perhaps, but no less the church.  To be sure, numbers evidence life and vitality, but they do not define what a faithful people of God can be.

                God does not judge us on criteria we use to judge each other.  Instead, faithfulness expressed in commitment to the gospel is what God seeks.

                Our faith has been tested these last several months in many different ways. The faith of the Israelites was also tested. We can adopt their attitude and give up on the future, or we might consider that the true marks of the church are not to be observed in the indicators that most attract our attention, applause, and envy, numbers of young families affiliating with the church, attendance at worship, the size of the youth group, and the size of the budget.

                 Older we may well be, but the Holy Spirit, who is the bearer of our faithful testimony to the community and world, never ages.  We have a ministry and we will continue to have a ministry so long as we understand that God asks from us no more than he has already given us, hearts responsive to his call, and malleable to his holy purposes. Your time, talent, and treasure, what is any of that but a sign of God’s blessing, a blessing given to us, that we in turn may be bearers of his blessing to the community and world.

                Numbers and demographics don’t do ministry, people do ministry.  This is our ministry, and we, through the providence of God, have been chosen to do ministry in this time and place.  May we give glorious testimony to God in our doing.

PRAYER

                O God, you have placed it within the human heart to respond to you in faith, but our faith is often a weak and tentative thing. You bid us to respond to your light, but in our guilt we have chosen to hide in the shadows. You gave us Jesus the bearer of light, but we rejected him and murdered him on the cross. Yet, yet, your mercy is from eternity to eternity.  Even when by all appearances we are dead in our sins and transgressions, bones scattered and bleached by the sun, you breathe your own breath into our fragile bodies.  What a great, amazing God you are. 

              The call echoes once again, “O Come, O Come Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel.  Advent, something new breaking in, God about the business that is always

               God’s business, the business of renewal and restoration.  In a time when renewal and restoration have taken on new meaning for our congregation you come to us once again, O God, inviting us to wait and watch for the new things you are poised to accomplish in our midst. Grant us eyes to see, wisdom to embrace, your holy plan as it takes shape, not merely as spectators, but partners prepared and ready to assist as you require.

              As we gather today, O Lord, our first Advent Sunday in our sanctuary after the storm, some things are familiar, many are not.  There is no mistaking that we are at a different place in our journey than we were the last time we prepared the sanctuary for Advent and Christmas.  Even as the light that we lead us to Bethlehem pierces the gloom of this space, we grieve what was lost in the storm. The mind conjures up pictures of what this sanctuary looked like on Advents past, and the friends, now gone, who were our companions in worship. It is difficult to be excited about the future when the past calls to us with such great poignancy.  Yet, O Lord, you continue to call and prepare us for the future.  Teach us to listen, and prepare us to act on your call.

              O Christ, Prince of Peace, how little chance peace appears to have in these contentious and careworn times. Each day brings with it some new outrage, the news that yet another car bomb has killed and maimed the innocent.  Each day brings with it a new number to add to the tally of the sons and daughters of this nation who have lost their lives in the cause of freedom.  Even as we grieve, O Christ, we pray for the transformation of hearts and minds blighted by anger, we pray for new evidence that the curse of war and terror are lifting.     

              May your Spirit, O God, continue to direct our ministry as we elect new officers to lead our church.  Grateful for those who have responded to the call to assume leadership in the church, may we as a congregation support and encourage them as they seek to faithfully serve you. May their diligence in service and prayer be an example for all to emulate.

              Even as we praise you for your attending mercies, O God, we thank you for the hearts and hands of those who have committed themselves to sustaining the ministry of this church.  On this commitment Sunday we call to mind the blessings you have bestowed upon us that we might offer blessings in return. Time, talent, and treasure held in trust for you, we praise you, O Lord, for those who have heard the call to be your stewards and have responded.

              Great and good God, there are prayers that have not been spoken, prayers lying on the heart of the grieving, the fearful, the lonely, and the depressed.  In your mercy bring comfort and consolation to those who face particular challenges today.  Be with the homebound of this congregation, and all those who in whatever way may feel estranged from this ministry.  Not present to worship with us this morning, may they know that they are present to you and to us, through the intercession of your Spirit.

            For the gift of life and hope, and all things bright and beautiful we give you thanks in Jesus’ name, dear Lord,