The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for September 9, 2007

Texts: Psalm 100/2 Corinthians 5:17-21

Title: “Neophobia”

              There is a store on Magazine Street that has successfully staved off the march of time and fashion.  No small feat. The name of the store is “Neophobia.”  The store’s name is derived from two Greek words, “neo,” for “new,” and “phobia,” for “fear,” or “dread.”  If you maintain a fear or dread of things new the diagnosis might well be neophobia.

              Neophobia is the whimsical name that matches perfectly the quirky, eclectic offerings the store has for sale.  If you want to put your hands of a 33 1/3 recording of Guy Lombardo’s Greatest Hits, Neophobia is the place to go.  If you have been searching for a pedestal ashtray, try Neophobia.  Vinyl loveseat in lime green? Nixon campaign poster? Try Neophobia.

              Neophobia is a child of the sixties who never grew up, a great place to visit if you feel nostalgic and would like to take a step back in time. I felt completely at home in the store on a recent visit, for many of its offerings could have been found in the home in which I grew up. Remember pole lamps?  Chrome dinette sets?  The fourteen inch black and white television set encased one of those fine cherry or mahogany cabinets?

              Neophobia celebrates the offerings of a bygone era.  While fear or dread of things new might prompt us to resist change, relatively few of us hold out for long.

              The household furnishing my mother selected from the showrooms of McKinstry and Sons, the local furniture store back in the late fifties and sixties, were definitely in fashion for that era.  But over the subsequent years the living room, dining room, and kitchen were all, piece by piece, deconstructed in favor of more contemporary and up to date furnishings.

              When you think about it, the whole process by which decisions are made to modernize is fascinating.  The couch, the lamp, the television might be in perfectly good condition, and promise many more years of usefulness to come, yet most of us get swept into the current of the times, not only in household furnishing, but in the clothes we wear, the way we style our hair, the automobiles we drive. As long as the Jones have it or wear it, we want it too.

              Virtually all areas of our personal lives, and our lives in community, definitely reflect the times.  The fact that change is gradual, in many cases barely perceptible, is rarely a source of neophobia for the majority of us.  However, if you take out that photo album at home, or watch the home movies from the sixties and seventies, massive change is what you will see.

              Whether we fear it or embrace it, the new is something with which all of us must contend.  In the Apostle Paul’s case the new, insofar as it was established in Jesus Christ, was definitely something to be embraced.  “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away…”  The new creation to which Paul referred possessed possibilities even he hadn’t exhausted.

              Paul viewed his personal life in Christ as a new creation, expressing in letter after letter his boundless enthusiasm for what he was experiencing. New creation for Paul meant a whole new self understanding.  In another place he talks about the experience of being “born again.” He spoke of baptism as drowning that which is in us that is not of God that we might emerge from the waters clean and new.  First and foremost new creation meant for Paul reconciliation with God, the pardoning of our sins and the declaration that we are righteous.

              There is a new creation waiting to be born in us.  The new creation is the person God sees when he looks at us.  What he sees is untapped potential.  He sees people accustomed to living within the confines of a series of assumptions we maintain about ourselves and our world. What God offers is a way out of that neighborhood. 

             You and I find it risky to move on and out.  However much we look forward to that new job, a new school, the move to a new town, it is the rare person who isn’t seized to some degree by neophobia. 

             These past weeks have seen parents across American load up the family van or SUV that will take their sons and daughters off to college. As I observe students entering college today, I see young people who are much better prepared to move on and out than the young adults of my generation. They have been raised to be less naïve and gullible than we were, less willing to accept the counsel of their elders at face value. Yet I doubt that there is a young person of this generation who wasn’t seized by neophobia when he or she entered a college classroom for the first time.

              Neophobia may well be in our genes, but by the grace of God it doesn’t stifle us. The college student may pause at the classroom door before that first hour of her college career, but she will walk in to be, in many ways, born again.  That first day of class and the subsequent days to follow will in many, many ways begin a process that will change that person forever.        

            Neophobia may well be in our genes, but by the grace of God it doesn’t stifle us. The church has to deal directly with neophobia, the reluctance to let go of old ideas and move on in new directions. The church, you see, is called to serve as a midwife for new creation, but that happens in tandem with vacating the old.

             This being rally day let me suggest some old ideas that need to be vacated. There is the idea that our Sunday school program can be a take it or leave it proposition. We are blessed with some dedicated people in this church who have covenanted to provide Christian education to the children and adults of this church. They have agreed to see to it that there is quality instruction in the faith for the next nine months.  Preparation for a lesson on Sunday morning requires their time, study, and prayer, in return for which they have a right to respect that children, and adults, attend regularly, and attend on time. Is that too much to expect?  I think not.

              This is not rally day as we once knew it.  We do not have the children, nor do we have the adults, we once had. That said, the commitment of those who teach is not diminished by that fact. Can we expect a like commitment from those participating in our programs?  Parents, we are offering the most important foundation your children can have, please don’t deprive them. Sunday school was never conceived to be a take it or leave it proposition, but an opportunity to be cherished.

              There are old ideas that need to be vacated.  There is a notion among far too many adults in this church that an hour or and hour and a half of a Sunday morning is the sum of what they can surrender. For others Sunday school has displaced worship altogether. There are options afforded you in this church, in worship, but also in Sunday school, to explore the faith in greater depth, don’t deprive yourselves.     

              Old ideas and habits die hard, but they do die, others are put to death. While we adapt to the times with the furnishing in our homes, the automobiles we drive, and the clothes we wear, our core beliefs in the realms of morality, politics, and religion are quite unadaptive. Neophobia, the fear, dread, of practices or ideas we deem alien to deep seated beliefs or prejudices is something each of us face.  

              Neophobia, of course, is prominent across the church, particularly in denominations like ours that have been around awhile, and enjoy the comfortable familiarity of our well established rituals and routines.  In most instances the fear is kept at bay so long as we retain a certain membership number, and can meet our budget, but when one or the other, or both become vulnerable, fear asserts itself. It asserts itself because if forces us to reconsider what we are doing.

              Fear is prominent across many of the churches in the established denominations of America, for many are losing members.  When opportunity to call new leadership becomes an option, hope is inevitably aroused that the new minister will be the breath of fresh air that the church has for so long needed.

Churches seeking pastors are looking for pastors who can allay those fears by preaching timely and inspiring sermons, with humor, be an effective administrator, but most importantly, attract new members. Yet many of the members of those churches want these ministers to carry on without requiring anything substantial from them, least of all to change.

              Neophobia, fear or dread of the new.  There is much new to embrace in Lakeview as population returns, businesses open, and our facilities, church and day school, continue to progress toward completion.  We will be a new Lakeview demographically and in many other respects.  That is a given.

               The unanswered question is what do we have to offer the new Lakeview?  It is becoming more and more apparent to this minister, and other leaders in the church, that it will not do to simply continue doing what we have been doing.  I do not say that to advocate any specific change, that is for all of us to decide, but simply to suggest that this is not the Lakeview of the sixties, when “if you build it they will come,” saw this church grow to over six hundred members.

               In 2007 churches like ours must offer some very convincing reasons as to why those outside these doors will come, and it will not do to focus on just one area of ministry.  While we will introduce ourselves to many through a worship service, there is not a single area of ministry from Christian education, to fellowship, to mission in community and world, that can be neglected in assessing who we are as a church of Jesus Christ.

               In the next several weeks Lakeview and other Presbyterian churches in greater New Orleans will benefit from the experience and counsel of a church consultant who specializes in church transformation. “Transformation,” the word itself can inspire dread.  Well versed in the realities churches like ours are facing these days, there may well be some things we can learn from the experience he brings.  I will keep you posted on any opportunities the congregation might have to interact with him.

                The proximate goal of ministry here at Lakeview is to effectively minister in this community, it is a goal we share with every church, it is a goal Jesus himself would endorse.  Effective ministry might be the proximate, or most immediate goal, on our horizon.  But the ultimate goal is the goal to which the Apostle Paul steadfastly pointed, that being to renew our lives, and offer the gift of renewal to the world. Nothing less than a new creation would do for Paul, a frightening prospect for those living in the embrace of neophobia, but at the same time it is the ultimate source of freedom God, in Christ Jesus, guarantees us.  The old is passing away.  We are called to make room for the  new creation

PRAYER         

              Heavenly Father, all nature testifies to the wonders you have wrought, and we behold those wonders with awe, grateful for the five senses through which we perceive them.  The vastness of the galaxies, the ecological mystery through which creatures are sustained in the depths of the sea, and the complex chemical response through which the food we consume is metabolized as an energy source, are each of your design. The seasons pass one after another in the ordered pattern you devised.  New life springs forth, as life expires and returns to dust. Over all, O God, you reign.

              We assemble today, O Lord, from different places, bearing our individual hopes and dreams.  Each of us is at a different point in our journey. Some have years of education ahead.  For some career paths have yet to be established, and other major life decisions have yet to be made.  Still others are at the end of careers, or have already moved into retirement.  Some of us are establishing households, while others of us are downsizing.  Some are raising children, while some have seen children move on and establish independent lives. We assemble today as people who find ourselves at different places in life, but your grace has formed us into a community, and for that we are grateful.

              We are the church, O Christ, your church, people called out to serve brothers and sisters in Jesus’ name.  We are called out to preach the Good News of salvation.  We are called out to be a beacon of hope for our community and world. We are called out to be stewards of creation.

              Great responsible rests on the church, responsibility we are not always ready to assume, particularly when the challenges we face seem so imposing. Grant us wisdom, but also ardor, as we make decisions bearing on the goals and mission of our ministry. Abide with those upon whom responsibility for ministry rests, O God, grant them the patience to serve even when such service goes unacknowledged or unappreciated.

              As we begin a new year of Christian education we give thanks for those who have volunteered to teach.  May they be blessed in their service, even as they bless those whom they will teach.  O God may the covenant this church has made to provide Christian education to our children be matched with the commitment of parents to support the ministry by encouraging their children to participate regularly.

              Living God, this week we will mark the anniversary of an event that introduced dramatic change to our lives.  Homeland Security emerged as a national priority, with a series of decisions made leading us into a war that continues to exact a tragic toll in lives lost, and economic resources allocated. Lord, even as the debate continues over strategies to extricate ourselves from Iraq, we pray that those who represent us in the White House and Congress may think more broadly about our role in the world, and what our efforts have achieved, or might yet achieve.

              O Christ, our brother, your patience with the brothers you called to ministry was tested time and time again.  They fell short, and we fall short. We test your patience today for we set priorities and make decisions that fail to reflect your will.  We expect to be served rather than to serve, to consume rather than provide.  In your mercy forgive us, even as recommit for the ministries for which we have been equipped.

              Lord, in your mercy, hear us as we lift Shane, Pam, Rudy and Wayne into your presence. Strengthen them for the challenges they daily face. Help them to manage the burdens they bear with the confidence you can provide.  Be with Ken in these last hours.  Be with Bobby as he sets a new course for his life.