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A new Pastor in a small Oklahoma town spent the first week making personal visits to each of the church members,
inviting them to come to his first services.
The following Sunday the church was all but empty.
So, the next week the Pastor placed a notice in the local newspaper.
He said that, since the church was dead,
it was time to give it a decent Christian burial.
The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon.

Out of curiosity, a large crowd turned out for the “funeral.”
The church was packed for the first time in years.
In front of the pulpit, they saw a closed coffin, covered in flowers.
After the Pastor delivered the message,
he opened the coffin and invited his congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.
Wanting to know what the corpse of a “dead church” would like,
all the people eagerly lined up to look in the coffin.
Each “mourner” peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look.
In the coffin, tilted at just the right angle, was a large mirror.
Every church, like every organization or living organism, has a life cycle.
Plants, animals, people and churches are born, they grow, they mature, and they also die.
When an organism’s or organization’s life is full and complete,
when it goes through it’s life cycle naturally,
death is often welcomed and seen as a fitting ending.
But if the death is not from natural causes,
if it comes early or is unexpected,
then death is seen as an unwelcome intruder.

First United Methodist Church is dying.
If present attendance and giving trends continue,
First United Methodist will have to become part-time church in 2 years or so,
and by the end of this decade,
there will fewer than 30-40 people worshiping here on a Sunday morning.

A church that has been a part of this community for over 170 years will be on life support,
perhaps breathing its last breath.
A congregation that once had over 500 people attending Sunday School,
now has fewer than 20 on any given Sunday morning.
Worship attendance that averaged over 400,
now hovers around 80.
Many of the people here today will not be here in 10 or 20 more years,
and since my arrival we have had more than 120 members die.
The funerals I conduct each year far outnumber the baptisms, new members we add, and the weddings I perform,
even when they are all combined together into one number.

Financially our church has also struggled for years.
Even before I got here, there were deficits at times of almost $50,000 a year.
And though we have been able to survive some tough times through several large bequests and the regular giving of our members,
the deaths of so many have begun to take a toll on our finances.
Your bulletin this morning tells you that we have a deficit of $16,000.
The fact is that this deficit is based on giving and expenses coming in and going out in equal rates throughout the year.
Of course, this is not how giving and expenses work.
As of last month our deficit was actually $25,000,
and our giving for the year was down $5,000 from last year at the same time.
We could very well end the year with another $50,000 deficit.

Needless to say, this can not continue for very long.
First UMC is dying.
We are hemorrhaging members and money and we are not long for this world if present trends continue.

Now if we are reaching the end of natural life cycle then fine.
Let us celebrate what has been accomplished here,
the many ministries that have been carried out,
and the hundreds, even thousands, of people who have come to a saving knowledge of Jesus because of First Church.
Let us acknowledge what has been done,
give God the glory,
give the church a decent and proper burial,
and then move on.

But what if this isn’t our God-given time to die?
What if our life as a congregation is being cut short by unnatural causes?
What if we are killing the church by what we are doing or not doing?
I think this is what is happening.
First UMC is dying because we are killing it,
We are choking the life right out of it in two notable ways.
First, we are not living our lives in Christ.
Second, our priorities are all messed up,
that is, we are not at all concerned with what is most important:
the lives and souls of people.

First, we are not living our lives in Christ.
Paul talks about life in Christ in our reading from Colossians.
So if you have been raised with Christ, Paul says,
seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
You must get rid of all such things-anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

And then he goes on to add in verses just after the ones we read:
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
to which indeed you were called in the one body.

Some of you know that I have been trained as a conflict consultant.
In addition, I was appointed to two churches that were high in conflict before my arrival – in Tamaqua and Elysburg,
and have done consultations in over seven churches.
In my experience there is nothing that kills a church faster than its members not being in Christ.
Churches in conflict and decline are known for high levels of pettiness, and they are places where people have forgotten about the dangers of the tongue.
You remember what James said about the tongue, don’t you?
“The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With it we bless our Lord and Father,
and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.
My friends, these things ought not to be so.”  (James 3:8-10 ESV)

And in case you don’t think these verses apply to First Church,
let me say that I have seen some of our members leave Church in tears because of things that were said to them or that they overheard someone else saying.
People have walked into our church while members of the church stand outside its doors loudly complaining about things that bothered them about the service they just attended.
And when it comes to issues we might have with others,
with mistakes they make or concerns we might have,
we will talk to anybody and everybody about them,
but never approach the person we have an issue with.
This is not life in Christ,
and this kind of behavior is deadly for a church.

What would our church be like if we truly practiced, in Paul’s words,
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love?
What a place of joy this church could be if we got “rid of . . . anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from” our mouths.
What if we actually tried to work with each other and treat each other as fellow children of God and followers of Jesus?
And what if, instead of complaining and griping to each other,
we followed the advice of Paul who once wrote to the church at Philippi:
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.
What would happen if we did this?
Well, maybe, just maybe, we could not only live again but thrive.

Second, our priorities are all messed up.
In this way, we are very much like the rich man in today’s gospel reading.
He has spent all his time and energy in trying to get ahead,
but he has forgotten the most important thing of all.
Many churches do the same thing,
and I am afraid that we are a part of that many.

Let me ask you,
what is the purpose of the church?
What is our reason for being?
Anyone?

And yet how much time or energy do we spend sharing Jesus with the world?
How much of our budget is focused on ministry or mission?
How much time do we spend in committee meetings talking about Jesus and our calling to make disciples?
I’ll tell you how much:  not much at all.

Instead, almost all of our time and energy is spent on preserving the church for ourselves and our needs.
Our focus is internal rather than external,
on maintenance rather than mission and ministry.
I don’t know about you,
but I do not want to be a part of a church that is almost exclusively concerned with keeping its doors open while outside of its doors is a world that is going to Hell in a handbasket.

I want to be a part of a church that, in the words of  Darryl Dash,
is willing to follow Jesus wherever he goes, whatever it costs.
A church willing to turn its back on everything – its building, programs, staff, everything – in order to follow Jesus.
A church where institutional advancement is not as important as Kingdom advancement,
and a church that is not concerned with its own institutional survival,
and where pastors are not CEOs managing/leading people toward a goal,
and plans/goals/numbers/budgets are not the main thing.
I want to be a part of a church where following Jesus is the main thing.
Where, in fact, it is the only thing.
Any focus that is not on Jesus, that isn’t geared toward mission and ministry is a focus that will lead to death.

Evangelist Robert Linthicum said this at a Presbyterian Church conference in New Orleans recently.
“If the church is caught up in trying to preserve itself and its institution, then preservation and continuance is exactly what is going to slip out of its grasp. Trying to save the store is the surest way to lose the store.”
Rather than trying to save itself, Linthicum said the church has to focus on its changed surroundings and serving the community.
“The church will not be saved by trying to preserve itself
but by giving its life away in service to the world.
Such service and ministry to the world is the surest way to salvation.”

It was the great Christian write, C. S. Lewis, who once wrote:
It is so easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects – education, building, missions, holding services.
[Yet] the Church exists for no other purpose but to draw men to Christ,
to make them little Christs.
If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

Another (Wade Hodges) has added:
The greatest crisis facing most churches in America is not a financial/attendance crisis.
It’s that our ministry in the world, our way of being in the world,
looks so unlike the ministry of Jesus in the gospels.
And to this, John White, says:
Our churches, like secular associations, are concerned with fund-raising, beautiful buildings, large numbers, comforting sermons from highly qualified preachers, while they display indifference to the poor, and to the pariahs in society – drunks, whores, homosexuals, the poor, the insane, and the lonely. Jesus himself would have no place in our all-too-respectable churches, for he did not come to help the righteous but to bring sinners to repentance.
Our churches are not equipped to do that sort of thing.

And not only are we ill-equipped to reach out to the world beyond our doors,
but on the rare occassion when the world actually comes to us,
we can be cold and distant and unwelcoming.

Last week I met a woman who attended one of our worship services while I was away.
I was saddened to discover that her experience was less than satisfactory.
In fact, she said that not one person in the church actually said hello to her or welcomed her,
let alone tell her that they were glad she was here.
I say saddened rather than shocked,
because I had heard the same thing before.
Here is a letter I received a few years ago from a woman who attended our church one time.
And please note, this woman actually took the time to sit down and write.
Her words are a warning to us.

To the Pottstown Methodist Church

Sunday, June 25th, I went with my daughters to visit your church.  I am a life-long Methodist from Kansas and visit in this area often.  We have been trying to find a church in this area to attend.  This church seemed like the right kind.  However, I think we must have been invisible.   As we stood in the dark entryway a woman’s voice called down “The sanctuary is up the stairs.”  We traipsed up the dark stairway to be met by an usher who handed us programs but made no attempt at a greeting.  We found our own plae to sit in a nearly empty church.  The organist was very good and the service was good.  We enjoyed the hymns. [But] no one looked at us; no one even nodded to us; we left at the end and no one seemed to see us.  We were invisible.  I hope this was an unusual occasion because you will never have a church in this way.

I think she was and is right.
And what this woman wrote about 4 years ago has become a word of prophecy for our church.
Will we heed it?
I hope and pray that we will.

Now I realize that I have been a little harsh this morning.
But I am critical because I care,
and if you are like me,
you care about our church as well.
If you are like me you want to see First UMC live.
You want to see us rise above the negativity and pettiness.
You want to see us get our priorities straight,
and you want to see this congregation be a light for the world around us.
You don’t want to see our church die a premature death.

If this is true,
then let us begin this morning to reject attitudes and a focus that will only lead us to that death.
Let us put on Christ,
who has been, is and will always be the source of our life.
Let us strive to reorder our life and focus so that it is only on Jesus Christ,
and let us reject the ways that lead to death and seek to live.

I end with some words from Dallas Willard, who wrote:
Now, some might be shocked to hear that what the “church” – the disciples gathered – really needs is not more people, more money, better buildings or programs, more education, or more prestige.
All it needs to fulfill Christ’s purposes on earth is the quality of life he makes real in the life of his disciples.
Given that quality, the church will prosper from everything that comes its way as it makes clear and available on earth the “life that is life indeed.”
To that I can only say, Amen.

John Irving, writing about his novel “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” has this to say about his title character:
As a full-grown adult, Owen Meany will stand only five feet tall and weigh only one-hundred pounds –
the minimum acceptable size for the U.S. Army,
As a child,  he’s so small that the other children in his Sunday-school class can pick him up and pass him back and forth in the air – over their heads,
while they remain seated in their chairs.
They do this because they love to hear him complain.
Owen has something wrong with his voice:
his voice doesn’t grow either.
He speaks in a permanent, cracked falsetto,
a kind of strained squeak.
And although Owen takes himself very seriously,
it is extremely hard for anyone else to –
because he is so small and his voice is so absurd.

But Owen is a very serious character.
Owen believes that he is a chosen one;
that his life is following a Divine Plan,
a narrative authored by God.
To Owen Meany everything that happens to him happens for a reason –
he believes that he is small for a reason,
and that his voice never changes for a reason.
So says John Irving.

Now if you want to know what that divine plan is,
you will have to read the book,
I’m not going to give it away.
But I do want to say that Owen Meany has a profound impact upon his best friend, John Wheelwright.
We see this in the opening paragraph of the book when John writes:
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice –
not because of his voice,
or because he was the smallest person I ever knew,
or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death
[again, you have to read the book to understand this]
but because he is the reason I believe in God;
I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
I make no claims to have a life in Christ,
or with Christ –
and certainly not for Christ,
which I’ve heard some zealots claim.
I’m not very sophisticated in my knowledge of the Old Testament,
and I’ve not read the New Testament since my Sunday school days,
except for the passages that I hear read aloud to me when I go to church.
I make no claims to be especially pious;
I have a church-rummage faith –
the kind that needs patching up every weekend.
[But] what faith I have I owe to Owen Meany.,
A boy I grew up with.
It was Owen who made me a believer.

Now file those words away in the back of your mind for a few minutes.
Filed away?  Good.

Later in the book John is having a conversation with Owen about religion,
or rather John is listening to Owen pontificate on the Christian faith,
and it is this conversation which brings us to the theme of this day.
Owen in his cracked and squeaky voice tells John:
I find that Holy Week is draining;
no matter how many times I have lived through his crucifixion,
my anxiety about his resurrection is undiminished –
I am terrified that, this year, it won’t happen;
that, that year, it didn’t.
Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity;
any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas.
But Easter is the main event;
if you don’t believe in the resurrection,
you’re not a believer.

Let me repeat that last part:
Easter is the main event;
if you don’t believe in the resurrection,
you’re not a believer.

Now that statement raises a question for me,
and if you will allow me to be blunt,
I will ask it.
All those for bluntness, raise your hands.
My question is this:
Do we believe in the resurrection?
Do we really believe in it?
Do we stake our lives on that belief?
Or even more close to home,
do we live our lives as though the resurrection is a reality and not just some warm and fuzzy ending tacked on to a sad and tragic story to make us feel better,
like some big Hollywood movie production.
All the big hits from Hollywood have to have happy endings,
so is this story of Easter just more of the same?
Or did it really happen?
Do we believe it happened?

I ask this because there are times, many times in fact,
when I find it hard to believe that we really believe.
Most of the time, in fact, it is hard to tell that we are an Easter people,
that we are a people of the resurrection.
Study after study has shown that when it comes to moral behavior Christians are almost always no better than non-Christians.
Christians cheat on their taxes at the same rate as non-Christians,
Christians get divorced just as much as non-Christians.
In almost every area of ethics and morality,
Christians are about the same as those who have never become disciples of Christ.
Is this the way it should be?
Shouldn’t our lives look different if we really believe?

Paul, in our reading from Colossians, seems to think so.
You remember what we read a few moments ago,
a passage that is often read at baptism services:
“For you have died,
and now you have been raised with Christ.
Set your mind on the things that are above.”

One preacher writing about his own coming to faith and baptism had this to say about Paul’s words:
I walked home [after my baptism] with my wet clothes wrapped in a wet towel under my arm,
and I tried to think about what [the words the preacher spoke] meant.
After you have been raised from the dead,
you do not look the same,
sound the same,
talk the same,
or behave the same.

But what do you do?
Should I dress a little better than I’ve been dressing?
It wouldn’t hurt.
How do you talk?
What do you sound like?
I went to school on Monday morning wondering,
“Is anybody going to know that I’ve been raised?
Do I talk another way?
Do I throw in a verse or two of scripture now and then?
What do I do at ball practice?
Are they going to say. “Well, it looks like he’s been raised from the dead”
How do you walk?
How do you relate?

How does it show that we have been raised with Christ,
that we believe,
not only in his resurrection,
but even in our own?
When you go to work,
when you go to school,
when you hang around with your friends,
how does it show?

Just beyond the verses we read in Colossians,
Paul gives his answer to the question.
He writes:
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
sexual impurity, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).
These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life.
But now you must get rid of all such things-
anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another,
seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.
And in that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew,
circumcised and uncircumcised,
barbarian, Scythian, slave and free;
but Christ is all and in all!

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Bear with one another and,
if anyone has a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

So you want to know what the life of a person who really believes in resurrection looks like?
This is what it looks like:
It is compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient, forgiving and filled with love.

We must live our lives like we believe Jesus rose from dead.
We must live as though we too have bee
n raised to new life in Christ.
Why?
Well, for one, because people look at our lives to see if the living Christ is a part of who we are;
to see if our lives are informed by the power of Jesus’ resurrection or not.
Second, and even more important,
because we ha
ve something the world and the people in it really need – hope.

There are, of course, many sources of hope in this world,
but most of them provide little more than false hope.
Politicians and politics or government.
Doctors and medical science and the hope for a miracle cure.
The search for that one person who will fulfill all our dreams and desires.
Money and material possessions,
which are perhaps best symbolized by the quixotic power of these:
(Hold up some lottery tickets.)
I was at the 7-11 last night,
and even though the jackpot wasn’t 230 million,
the line for lottery tickets was quite long,
and we all know how long the odds are for hope being realized in these slips of paper,
don’t we?
And yet millions of people place their hope in things like these and other pursuits that will prove just as futile.

But, my friends,  we have real hope.
A hope that comes from the power of resurrection.
Another of my favorite books is “Cold Sassy Tree” by Olive Burns.
I’ve used this quote before,
but it bears repeating today.
In her novel Burns has one of the characters in her book ask his grandfather about Jesus rising from the dead.
“Gosh Grandpa, You mean you don’t Jesus rose from the dead?”

“I’m a sayin thet did he or didn’t he ain’t important son.
What’s important is thet when the spirit-a Jesus Christ come down
on them disciples later,
they quit settin round a-moanin and a-tremblin,
and got to work,
They wairn’t scairt no more,
and the words they said and the things they did had fire in’m.
Compared to a miracle like thet,
Jesus rollin’ back a dang rock and flyin off to heaven ain’t nothin.

And thet same miracle is still a happenin right here in Cold Sassy,
in July of nineteen aught-six.
A crippled person or a invalid, or the meanest thief of most
despairin misfit,why, if can ketch aholt of the spirit of Jesus Christ,
he can quit bein scairt and be like risin from the dead.
Once his soul gits cured,
no matter what his body’s like,
why he can start a new life.”

We have this hope to offer, my friends.
New life.  Resurrection life.
In Jesus sin has been conquered.
He is the alpha and the omega,
the beginning and the end
He holds the keys to hell and death
In Jesus, death has died.
This is the hope that the world needs.
That every man, woman and child needs.

And this thought, this truth, brings me back full circle to Owen Meany and his friend John Wheelwright.
John Irving says that Owen Meany was an instrument of God,
that God used Owen to do his work, to do his will.
Isn’t that what God does with all of his children?
Isn’t that what Jesus expects of his disciples?
Not only to live our lives as though we believed in Easter, in resurrection.
and in their life-transforming power,
but also to be his instruments and to share the hope we have in Christ with everyone we meet?

John Wheelwright said,
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice –
not because of his voice,
or because he was the smallest person I ever knew,
but because he is the reason I believe in God;
I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
What faith I have I owe to Owen Meany.,
A boy I grew up with.
It was Owen who made me a believer.

If we believe, really believe in Easter and in resurrection,
don’t we owe it to God,
don’t we owe it to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,
don’t we owe it to those who are not here this morning,
and who are not in any church today,
to share our faith, our love, and our hope with them?

When the angel met the women at the tomb on that first Easter,
his words to them were simple and to the point:
Go and tell, he said.
And when Jesus met them on their way back to the city,
his words were the same:
Go and tell.
Go and tell my disciples.
And later in this same chapter he will repeat and add to these words:
Go and tell,
Go and make disciples.
Help others to believe so that they too may live,
that they too may have hope,
and that they too may know my love.

This morning we have told each other that Christ is risen.
When we leave here,
let us tell the world,
everyone we meet, the same,
showing them by our words and with our lives that we really and truly believe.