One of the ways church leaders talk about the renewal of communities of faith these days is “missional church.” Harold Percy in his book Good News People makes six distinctions between what he calls a maintenance congregation and a mission congregation. 

1. In measuring effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, “How many pastoral visits are being made?” The mission congregation asks, “How many disciples are being made?” 
2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, “If this proves unsettling to any of our members, we won’t do it.” The mission congregation says, “If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it.” 
3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregations ask, “How will this affect me?” The majority of the members in a mission congregation ask, “Will this increase our ability to reach those outside?” 
4. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our past.” The mission congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our future.” 
5. The pastor of the maintenance congregation says to the newcomer, “I’d like to introduce you to some of our members.” In the mission congregation the members say, “We’d like to introduce you to our pastor.” 
6. When confronted with a legitimate pastoral concern, the pastor in the maintenance congregation asks, “How can I meet this need?” The pastor in the mission congregation asks, “How can this need be met?”

There is an Easter sunrise service that I hope still takes place on the edge of the Grand Canyon. A giant boulder is heaved over the rim. As it goes crashing down the side of the Grand Canyon into the Colorado River far below, a two-thousand voice choir bursts into the Hallelujah Chorus. Despite all appearances, we live in an Easter world.

Several years ago, Rev. Gordon Cosby, pastor of the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., explained the biblical understanding of life to the children of the church by saying, “Life gets harder and harder, but life gets better and better.” I imagine most of us can readily identify with the first half of that statement. Life certainly does get harder and harder. As the years increase; so do the responsibilities. It is the other half of the sentence that bothers us; life gets better and better.

Many of us cannot believe this because it is simply not true in our personal experience. But remember, we live in an Easter world. The empty tomb may seem like an illusion. The situations and frustrations, the anxieties and the hurts that you and I encounter from day to day seem so overwhelming that not even Easter can take them away. What appears to be passes as reality and has many of us believing that most of the time we are in a Good Friday world.

We, too, want to know who is going to roll the stone away. We gather to celebrate Easter Sunday, but we know what awaits us on Monday morning.  Fear, indifference, laziness, selfishness, and sentimentality are all destructive. This is the crowd that gathered on Calvary to witness the greatest miscarriage of justice of all time. They assembled not necessarily to approve of what was happening, but also not to raise a voice of protest either. Being compassionate, but not confrontive. We often prefer guilt to responsibility.

Easter is not sentimentality. The temptation is to reduce the resurrection to something manageable: the coming of spring, the rebirth of hope from despair, truth that will never die, the memory of a life lived two thousand years ago. If Christianity is simply an affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth is just a great example, then I want out of the movement. The affirmation of Easter is that “Christ is risen!” and with us now. Now, not as a memory that will fade, but as a presence in the life of the creation and an undying presence in our lives.

Easter does not take away Good Friday. It destroys the force of Good Friday. Easter proclaims that God has the last word. Easter represents both a command as well as a promise; a command not that we sympathize with Jesus who was crucified, but that we follow Christ who is risen. So, now the question is: Are we going to live in a Good Friday world or in the reality of an Easter one?

Palm Sunday is the day Jesus went public with being the Messiah.  Up until then he had kept it under wraps.  It was a well kept secret.  He had said to folks he healed, “Go, but tell no one what happened.”  He had said to his disciples, “Don’t broadcast what you have seen.”  He had said to the multitudes, “Do not praise me.  God alone is good.”  Now, for the first time in his ministry, he is going to run the risk of going public.

 

When he entered Jerusalem the people loved him.  They were wild, as the public is inclined to be, whenever there is the prospect of a messiah on any terms.  In the frenzy, people literally tore off branches from the palm trees, waved them in the air, and cried, “Hosanna in the highest!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  It was about as close as you could come to a ticker tape parade.  This was the day Jesus went public.  It was the most dangerous day of his life.

 

Palm Sunday is the most dangerous day of Jesus’ life because he made himself vulnerable to public recognition.  King for a day.  This is the most dangerous day of his life and of ours because most of the evil done in this world is done by good people with good intentions who want to do good and think they are doing good because they have public recognition. 

 

Regardless of your politics, there are signs dotting Oak Cliff supporting a number of candidates running for public office.  No one knows who, if any, of these people will be the best choice to govern.  The only thing we know is that they are all supported by a lot of good people.  Whether you believe our intentions for fighting two wars are justified or not, it remains to be seen whether this will produce, in the long run, some form of stability that a temporary, and hopefully, lasting peace may be forged.  The only things we know for sure is that a lot of good people with good intentions are part of these interventions. 

 

In a few weeks a group of people in Kessler Park United Methodist Church will participate in a six month to two year process called Holy Conversations: The Way Forward.  People will be interviewed, information will be gathered, conversations will take place, information will be shared with the congregation, and recommendations will be made to the Church Council about moving forward.  No one knows for sure what is going to happen as a result of reading, prayer, study, conversation, and decisions that will be made.  What we do know is that a lot of good people will be faithfully discerning a way forward for the church. 

 

After viewing my ministry of over thirty plus years, I am clear that most of the folks I have hurt or disappointed or let down, I did with, by in large, the best of intentions, and at times, with the affirmation and support of the congregations.  How often and how easily we hurt folks we love the most and to whom we think we bring the best of intentions.

 

When Jesus enters Jerusalem. He goes to the Temple and turns over the tables of the money changers.  Clearly, he is keeping his own counsel; he is still his own man.  The crowds begin to whisper, his polls begin to fall.  The week begins with hosannas, but by Friday, there are cavalcades of “Crucify him!”  By Thursday there are only twelve.  Following the Passover meal, even the inner circle cannot keep awake as Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Finally, on Friday, Jesus dies alone.

 

The shadow side of Holy Week is that life is a lonesome journey.  The ultimate and final meaning of our lives is found, not finally in public recognition, not even in the relationship with folks we love and trust the most.  Life finally comes down to one, and we die alone.

 

But the promise side of this lonesome journey is that our lonesomeness itself leads us to God and, secondarily, to each other.  On the cross, Jesus trusts the mystery of the loneliness of his life to God.  Part of what it means to be human is to live with a certain level of loneliness and solitude that no one can take away.

 

This is true for our life together in the congregation.  When we join the church, one of the things we have in common is our loneliness.  It is in the church that we affirm our loneliness, own it, and build on it in community and ministry and mission as we go into the world to share in solidarity through the cross and empty tomb.

 

As we move through Holy Week may we give up our dependency on public recognition, our dependency on people that we love the most as ultimate and final meaning givers, so that when this week is over, we may stand naked and alone before the One who is.  When that happens, the stone will be rolled away and our lonesome journey will bring us ultimately to God and, then, to one another.

One of the great humorists of our time, or any other time, is Garrison Keillor. The following are excerpts from one of his commentaries entitled Defining United Methodists.

We make fun of Methodists for their blandness, their excessive calm, their fear of giving offense, their lack of speed and also for their secret fondness for macaroni and cheese.

I do believe this: these Methodists…are the sort of people you could call up when you’re in deep distress. If you are dying, they will comfort you. If you are lonely, they’ll talk to you.

And if you are hungry, they’ll give you tuna salad!

• Methodists believe in prayer, but would practically die if asked to pray out loud.
• Methodists like to sing, except when confronted with a new hymn with more than four stanzas.
• Methodists believe their pastor will visit them in the hospital, even if they don’t notify him that they are there.
• Methodists usually follow the official liturgy and will feel it is their way of suffering for their sins.
• Methodists believe in miracles and even expect miracles, especially during their stewardship visitation programs or when passing the plate.
• Methodists drink coffee as if it were the Third Sacrament.
• Methodists feel guilty for not staying to clean up after their own wedding reception in the Fellowship Hall.
• Methodists are willing to pay up to one dollar for a meal at the church.
• Methodists still serve Jell-O in the proper liturgical color of the season and think that peas in tuna noodle casserole adds too much color.
• Methodists believe it is okay to poke fun at themselves and never take themselves too
• seriously.

And finally, you know you are a Methodist when: 

• It’s 100 degrees, with 90% humidity, and you still have coffee after the service.
• You hear something really funny during the sermon and smile as loudly as you can.
• Donuts are a line item in the church budget, just like coffee.
• When you watch a Star Wars movie and they say, “May the force be with you,” and you respond, “And also with you.”
• And lastly, it takes ten minutes to say good-bye! 
  

Does this sound like anybody you know?