We observed “Back to Church Sunday” on 24 October 2010.

In this post, you will find
• the call to worship,
• an apology to people who have been hurt by churches at any time in their lives,
• a sermon by Bob Faser based on the lectionary reading(Luke 18: 9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector)
• a final comment at the end of the service.

Call to worship:

We gather to worship God, the Trinity of Love:
Creator, Redeemer, and Giver of Life.

We extend a warm welcome to all who are attending today’s service of worship for “Back to Church Sunday”, particularly to anyone:
• who may be worshipping with us for the first time,
• who are worshipping with us for the first time in a long time, or
• who are worshipping in any church for the first time in a long time.

After today’s service, you are invited to remain for refreshments.

For some who are here, you may be a former worshipper for any one of a number of reasons:
• For some, you may not have been encouraged by your church when you were younger to make the transition from being one of the kids in the Sunday School or youth group to being one of the adults in the congregation.
• For others, as a child or young person you may have been brought to church frequently by your parents, but there were many times when you would rather have been elsewhere. As a young adult, making your own decisions, you may have decided to “take a bit of a break from church”, but the “bit of a break” turned out to be somewhat longer than you originally planned.
• For others, you may have moved from one community to another and were never able to link up satisfactorily with a congregation in your new community.
• For yet others, there may have been a time in your life when your work commitments, your family commitments, your sporting commitments, or your commitments to community groups made it difficult to be a regular worshipper, and you got out of the habit of attending worship.
• And then there are those who have been hurt by churches – or have family members or close friends who were hurt by churches. If that is your situation, I will be making an apology in a few minutes that I hope will be relevant to you.

To all, welcome!

Apology:

It usually happens at a wedding reception, or at an afternoon tea following a funeral, or maybe at a barbeque following a baby’s baptism. Someone whom I don’t know – usually but not always a man – comes up to me and begins a conversation. The person knows that I’m a clergy type because he’s just seen me in action, and he begins by saying something like this:

“I don’t go to church much. In fact, I hardly ever go to church. I used to go a lot when I was younger, but I don’t now. But I believe I lead just as good a life as most of those who do. … ”

My experience is that this fellow is usually genuine. He – or she - is the sort who would enrich any congregation by being part of it. This person still expresses a lively faith. Frequently he expresses his faith in specifically Christian terms. This person usually still prays. He often has a story – almost always a sad one – about the reason for his non-involvement in a church.
• There was a man who heard far too many hell-fire sermons in church during his childhood, some of whom caused him serious nightmares.
• There was a woman who, in her youth, had a strong interest in the sciences. She lost confidence in the church because of the antagonism toward evolution she heard expressed by the leaders of her congregation.
• There was another woman who attributes her strong sense of personal worthlessness and low self-esteem to the way the church in which she grew up taught her about sin and judgement.
• There were those who left some congregations because of the hate-filled attitudes they heard expressed toward Jews, Muslims, people of other faiths; and sometimes even toward the members of other Christian churches.
• There also were many people who – back in the “bad old days” - married a member of another church, and the couple soon found themselves rejected by both churches (and often by some family members, as well). Many families have their stories about “what happened when Aunt Betty married a Catholic” or “when Uncle Frank married a Presbyterian”. These stories often end with “and that’s why we don’t go to church any more”.
• Then there were those who were furious about the way they were treated – or the way family members or friends were treated - by clergy who were overly pedantic on the question of whose children can be baptised – or on the question of what can happen in a Christian funeral.
• Others were active in a church, and got caught up in one of the petty, trivial, bitter internal fights that churches sometimes have. “Never again!” was their response.
• There were others who were exploring aspects of their sexuality – either in youth or as an adult – and, as a result of their self-exploration, found themselves rejected by their churches - cut off from congregations where they once felt at home.
• And, of course, there are those of whose cases we hear frequently in the media, those who were sexually abused by people with responsibility in churches, whether clergy, lay church staff, or lay volunteers.

And there were many other sad stories.

If any of these stories are anything like your story, or the story of a family member or a close friend, this apology is for you:

Somewhere, at some time, a congregation of the Christian Church has failed you at your time of need. This has been painful for you, and it still is. People have hurt you, and they have hurt you in the name of Christ. Whatever the denomination of those who have failed you, I apologise to you on behalf of the Christian Church.

Sermon:

There were these two men, and they walked into the temple. … It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but the jokes usually have three people, not two:
• the Englishman, the Irishman, and the Scotsman arguing in the pub,
• the minister, the priest, and the rabbi playing golf on their day off,
• or the blonde, the brunette, and the redhead driving down the freeway.
They say nothing about the Welshman (or the Cornishman), the imam, or the grey-haired lady. They dodge the burning question of how many blonde, Irish rabbis it takes to change a light globe.

Today’s story isn’t a joke, but one of the parables of Jesus, a parable which, in my opinion, ranks alongside the stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son in terms of its impact and its challenge to our lives.

Briefly, two men went to a place of prayer.
• One used the time of prayer as an opportunity to celebrate his own virtues.
• The other took the opportunity to engage in some honest self-assessment in God’s presence.
Jesus left us in no doubt as to whom he thought made better use of his time while praying.

Let’s look first at the second man, the one whom Jesus said made good use of his time of prayer.

He was a tax collector. Now, even in the best of situations that would have made him unpopular. Nobody enjoys paying taxes. But it’s one thing to grumble about paying taxes in our own context, where we periodically have the opportunity to scrutinise the politicians and select the government. In our context, however you or I may vote, there is a legitimacy to whatever government which is formed which, as a result, gives a legitimacy to the taxes we pay. But still, nobody really enjoys paying taxes.

It was quite another thing in the context in which Jesus told his story. Nobody there and then had a vote. Pontius Pilate, and all of the people around him, never had to face the public in an election. Pilate was chosen as governor by the Emperor in Rome, and served at the Emperor’s pleasure. All of the various Jewish officials, ranging from the High Priest in the Temple to the local tax collector, served at the Governor’s pleasure. And the whole system was held together by violence, or the threat of violence, at the hands of the Roman army.

In that setting, there were many more issues at work than merely the fact that nobody enjoys paying their taxes. The taxes were collected for the Roman Empire with the people having no say in how much tax was collected or how the money was spent.

Even if the tax collector did his work honestly, he was still regarded as a sinner because he collected taxes from the people, not for purposes which the people could affirm, but for the Roman Empire. The tax collector was regarded by his neighbours as far worse than a mere nuisance to their household budgets. He was a quisling, a collaborator, a traitor. He made his living through the suffering of other people.

But then there was this other fellow in the story, the one who told God what a great bloke he was. (Not God, but himself, you know what I mean.)

Now, Jesus said this man was a Pharisee. Pharisees had some bad press in the New Testament, and their bad press was rather unfair. It’s the sort of thing that happens whenever two communities … or two movements … or even two individuals … experience a parting of the ways. The language gets increasingly bitter. And that’s exactly what happened when the Jewish faith and the emerging Christian movement parted company in the generation or so after the time of Jesus. And the Pharisees copped a lot of the flak.

Even today, using the English language, if you or I called someone a “Pharisee”, the word would be shorthand for a narrow-minded religious bigot, someone who was a bit of a killjoy, or, to use a good Australian slang term, a “wowser”. And none of this has any connection with the Pharisees who lived at the time of Jesus. The Pharisees were not wowsers.

The Pharisees were essentially a reform movement. They followed the message of the great prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures and, as a result, they wanted to transform the Jewish faith from a religion based on animal sacrifice to a religion based on prayer, study, ethics, and lifestyle.

And the great thing is that the Pharisees succeeded. By the year 100 AD, the Jewish faith had been completely transformed in the direction that the Pharisees advocated. The Pharisees were a reform movement, and turned out to be a very successful one at that.

But there’s one thing about reform movements. It’s very easy for members of a reform movement to get a bit self-righteous, a bit full of themselves. You can say that about the members of any reform movement, whether religious, or political, or whatever.

And so, the Pharisee gave thanks to God for his own virtues, many as they were: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.”

This man probably wasn’t lying, or engaging in “spin”. It was the sort of lifestyle the Pharisees had. He probably did fast twice a week. He probably did give a tenth of his income to charity. He probably was a genuinely good individual.

And I believe that this was a big part of what Jesus was saying there.
• In this story, Jesus took an obvious example of a very good person, the Pharisee.
• Jesus also took an obvious example of a very bad person, the tax collector.
• When the Pharisee catalogued his virtues before God, he was telling the truth.
• When the tax collector referred to himself as a sinner, he was also telling the truth.
• Jesus made the point that even a very good person had no reason for self-congratulation before God.
• Jesus also made the point that even a very bad person had access to God’s forgiveness.

As I said at the beginning, two men went to a place of prayer.
• One used the time of prayer as an opportunity to celebrate his own virtues.
• The other took the opportunity to engage in some honest self-assessment in God’s presence.

Jesus left us in no doubt as to whom he thought made better use of his time while praying.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

At end of notices, before final hymn:

Before we sing our final hymn, I want to say one more thing. I admit that the Christian Church has a checkered past and, in many ways, a tragic history. At many times in the past, including the recent past, the Christian Church really got many things wrong. But I believe that the Christian Church is, in many ways, trying to get its act together these days.
• Many churches today are trying to give greater emphasis to the extravagant love of God, rather than trying to bully people into faith with threats of God’s wrath.
• Many churches today are trying to re-interpret our beliefs so that they make sense in a scientific age.
• A growing number of churches today are affirming the role of women as the equal of men in both church and society.
• In many places today, a growing number of churches are trying to become more open-minded in our attitudes toward sex.
• Most churches today are improving their relationships with other Christian churches, and (in particular) it’s a lot easier now for couples in what used to be called “mixed marriages” to have their marriage celebrated in either of their churches, and often with both clergy involved in their wedding.
• Many churches today are getting far less arrogant in our attitudes towards Jews, Muslims, and members of other faiths.
• And, following recent scandals, all mainstream churches today expect far higher ethical standards on the part of clergy and other church workers than we ever did in the past.
I admit that the Christian Church is not perfect, but I believe most churches are honestly seeking to correct some of our more glaring mistakes. We have a long way to go. It will be some hard slog, but I believe it is happening.

(Copyright: Robert J. Faser, 2010)