Psalm 96: (Sing to the Lord a new song)
Revelation 3: 14-19 (poor Laodicea)
WE’RE STUCK!
As a teenager I often played the old vinyl music albums of the day and, as they got a little worn, they also got stuck – I’d hear the same few words and the same few notes of maddening music over and over again, and over and over yet again until I decided to do something about it.
Tell me the old, old story of Jesus and his love
Tell me the old, old story, (repeat)
Now you have to remember that this is my favourite album with my favourite recording so I really didn’t want to throw it out but…
Tell me the old, old story (repeat)
I got so tired of it repeating that I’d finally get up and give it a nudge, even just a light pressure was enough but…
…of Jesus and his love. (repeat)
It didn’t take long before it got into another groove and couldn’t get out. The words were now a little different, the notes slightly changed but maddening nonetheless...
…of Jesus and his love.
What happened to my dear old album, folks? There is a parable here for the church. We’re stuck! And we need more than an occasional nudge to get going again. We need reformation, or maybe that’s rejuvenation, or even transformation. In the old, old days, we’d call it a revival and sing:
“… revive us again
rouse the dead from their tomb.
May we now come to Jesus,
while yet there is room.”
There’s nothing funny about being stuck – well that’s true most of the time. In the Guyana Chronicle dated January 22, 2002, there was a front-page story about an American tourist on a flight from Scandinavia to the United States. She went into the small washroom cubicle provided on airplanes where you can’t even turn around. The story about her went like this: “She got sucked into the toilet after pushing the flush button while still seated, activating a system to clean the toilet by vacuum… stuck solid. She couldn’t get up by herself and had to sit on the toilet until the flight landed so that ground technicians could help her get loose… a spokeswoman said, ‘She was stuck there for quite a long time.’”
I don’t know about you, friends, but I don’t want to be stuck on a toilet while one of the most exciting trips ever – that is, life – passes by on the outside.
In the church there are seven deadly words more deadly than the seven deadly sins of old.
“We never did it that way before…”
Maybe you don’t agree we’re stuck, but we are in trouble as a church and as a denomination and we don’t seem to be going forward and many suggest we’re going backwards, and all agree that something needs to be done – they just don’t know what.
Awhile back in the Presbyterian Record (January, 2002) John Congram commented on things we need to leave behind. John was referring to things to be left in the past –in the old year in order for the new to dawn. He didn’t say it in words but he was telling us that if we’re ever going to get unstuck, we need to leave some things behind in order to move into the future God has prepared for us. He gave us a biblical 12 in number of things he would suggest but one and only one of his list I’ll mention: “The ‘poor us’ attitude”. “We are too small, too poor, too whatever to do anything significant. By almost any standard we would want to apply, our people {in Guyanese terms} are rich, gifted and able. We dishonour God who made us and endowed us with many gifts when we talk and act this way.” Negativity is a real danger, in this country and in this denomination. Time and again I’ve encountered the negative attitudes of people… about Guyana, about the problems it faces, about the politics and about the economics and about the racial attitudes and about the violence and about the… well just about everything you care to name. And it’s ever so true about the attitudes people carry with them about the denomination call the Guyana Presbyterian Church. Negativity is damaging this denomination.
The Apostle Paul didn’t like to give up who he was and what he had become. He liked being stuck where he was, and, for Paul, it took a blast from heaven and a blinding light to get him unstuck. Once unstuck, he became the prime moving force in the spread of the Christian church throughout the known world. It couldn’t have been easy for him because the law is a great comfort –
you know what to do,
you know what is expected of you,
you know how you are to behave,
and all the rest.
But Paul couldn’t stay there any more. It was time for him to move on. It was time to join the race that had already begun. This scripture was written for the likes of him:
“let us lay aside every weight
and the sin that clings so closely,
and let us run the race that is set before us.”
Strange that the bible uses the imagery of the ‘Journey’ and the ‘Race’ for our Christian life when most often we don’t even get up to a crawl. John Fraser wrote an article with the title, ‘The Road Ahead’ and said ‘Although the official title of this article is: ‘The road ahead’, the truth of the matter is I really don’t know what lies ahead except it will be, for the most part, different than what we are expecting or even what we can imagine.”
He’s right. The road ahead will be anything but what I imagine. I have spent two months pondering the road ahead for the assessment Presbytery has asked me to compile, and the short answer is that I really don’t know any more and I can’t see any clearer than when I first began. But I do know the dangers and the pitfalls, and I do know that the journey is worth the risk. We’ve reached a crisis but that is good! A crisis can get us unstuck; a crisis is maybe just what we need to nudge us forward. The Chinese character for crisis is made up of two individual characters – danger and opportunity. Any and every crisis presents both danger and opportunity, and it is usually up to those of us involved in the life of the church as to which we will emphasize. Only God knows the plans prepared for us, plans to prosper and not punish, plans to bless this earth for which his son freely, willingly, eagerly died and gave his life to save. I have no idea, not being prophetically inclined, as to the shape of the future, but I do know it will not look like the past, nor will the tools of the past help build the future.
What does it mean to be stuck?
Ask the church of Laodicea.
Don’t get me wrong.
If you read scripture, you’ll find the people of Laodicea are nice enough people all right. But they’re stuck, and I mean real stuck. They are God-fearing and they are church-going types, just like us. That’s not the problem. The problem is that they are passionless and therefore powerless.
I wish you were hot or cold but please God, not lukewarm, anything but lukewarm.
Hot, I’d seek to channel your fire into the great works of God.
Cold, I’d seek to revive your flagging zeal
And fill your life with enthusiasm.
(I love that word enthusiasm. Do you know where it comes from? Two little Greek words meaning ‘in God’, so I’d seek to fill with ‘God’ the emptiness and the void.)
But this lukewarm stuff, what do you do with what is lukewarm? You spew it from your mouth. You spit it out and try to get rid of the taste it leaves behind.
The song ‘Amazing Grace’ speaks about being lost, wretched, blind – it is the condition we find ourselves in when the good news grows stale, when our faith journey becomes stuck, when the vision dims or dies.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
We need to get on the move again, get unstuck and be about our Father’s business. And verse 19 is Christ’s solution for the Laodiceans as they seek a cure for their malaise. Christ says: “Be earnest (or zealous or enthusiastic) therefore and repent”, which means to turn around and head again in the direction Christ would wish us to take. That means, get on with our journey of faith.
The problem of being stuck as individuals, as a congregation, as a church family and as a denomination, affects all of us.
What about the preacher? Yes, that is a good and maybe even the best place to start. Over an hundred years ago, Spurgeon said the most necessary thing for the preacher of the word was – earnestness! “What in a Christian minister is the most essential quality for winning souls for Christ? I should reply earnestness… an intense zeal, consuming passion for souls and an eager enthusiasm in the cause of Christ…” Sounds like it came right off the page addressed to the Laodiceans.
When I ask my role in helping get unstuck the church I dearly love I must first look at myself, and my answer is clear:
Passionate preaching for passionate people addressing pressing problem.
OK, that sounds rather radical when I say it like that, but listen to how scripture puts it and that should give a proper perspective. “…I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke and encourage with the utmost patience…”
You must forgive me. I’ve just finished a preaching course for the Lay Leadership Development Course of the Guyana Presbyterian Church and tend to see answers in terms of proper preaching. But I am not alone. John Stott in ‘I Believe in Preaching’, said: “Nothing is better calculated to restore health and vitality to the church or to lead its members into maturity in Christ than a recovery of true biblical, contemporary preaching.” My own mentor, Stanley Glen wrote ‘The Recovery of the Teaching Ministry’, precisely to promote this point.
I must admit that sometimes it is the preaching itself that can help us get unstuck – as a way forward is seen and acted upon. Revivals have come with powerful preaching! Preaching can also be the enemy of progress in the church. Henry Mitchell once said church folk are simply tired of “all that analysis that leads to paralysis” in reference to the preaching of his day. I have promised to do my best to always challenge the people of the church. But you have your role to play and that doesn’t include shooting the messenger!
I think what I just said is true for preaching and for the preacher or pastor of churches large and small but what about the people? Do you feel stuck? Or worse, do you have any idea that you are stuck? Scripture says you probably don’t even know what condition your condition is in. Verse 17 says, “You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.” Every survey says the church is stuck and can’t seem to get going in the 21st century, as if unaware of the world around us. The death knell of this denomination very well might be the seven deadly words that have taken the place of the seven deadly sins of years gone by –
We never did it that way before!
If you ever had to define what it means to be stuck, these sevens words will do very nicely.
And this whole passage is about the deadly things that bring doom to those who are lukewarm. Now ask, why is this the message directed to this particular church at this particular time? The answer isn’t very surprising when you think about it: “I reprove and discipline those whom I love.” What other motivation is worthy of the Christ? What other attitude has us so concerned for the church and the denomination we love and cherish? It is because of love we wish to get unstuck, to nudge the record enough to continue the tune, to sing the new song, to regain the journey of faith. If we didn’t already love the song, we wouldn’t be so concerned to hear it again and again. But remember, we are here in order that the song may be song, that the new song, the whole song, is sung to the Lord.
The song tells the old, old story but it makes the story ever-new -a story meaningful for you, for me. It is the story of salvation, of the mighty deeds of God among all the peoples. It is a song that sings the honour and majesty of the Lord, that proclaims again and again that strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. It is a song that affirms the sovereignty of God, the judgment which is to come, the righteousness and truth which are integral to the proclamation of the good news. But the song will be one that is new to meet a new generation, a new situation, a new opportunity. If we’re not singing the song, or if we’re stuck on a bar or two, then, as those who love the church, it is our God-given task to nudge ourselves forward into the future, into the plan and purpose of God.
O sing to the Lord a new song;
Sing to the Lord all the earth.
Sing to the Lord, bless his name;
Tell of his salvation from day to day.
Do you know what you have to do when you’re stuck? I love to sail and I’ll readily admit that I’ve been stuck. When stuck on the bottom, one of the first things you’ve got to go is rock the boat. Now rocking the boat for rocking’s sake doesn’t often work but if everyone will work together and all lean in the same direction and really put their weight into it, the keel will often come off and the boat resume course and the race continues. Friends, it’s time to set sail!
“Tradition is the living faith of the dead:
Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” (Jaroslav Pelkin)
(The moral: We should always honour the former and always avoid the latter.)
