The

AncienTFuturE

Church

 

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you . . .

 (1 Corinthians 11:23a)

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on All Saints’ Sunday, November 4, 2007

Volume 2 Number 18

 

 Seems, after six weeks of Oxymorons for Christian Living, that I needed a seventh to round out this series.  The idea for this sermon came to me some weeks back when I received a mailer about a church leadership conference sporting an intriguing image – a stairway leading to light, but the stairway’s top half is of ancient stone, a rusty patina witnessing to the passing of centuries, a stairway such as I’ve climbed many times in Jerusalem.  The bottom half of the stairway is shiny escalator such as you might find in any modern mall or office building.  And the name of the Conference, right at the juncture of the stone and shiny metal, is “The AncienTFuturE Community.”   I found the blending of AncienT and FuturE into one word to be fascinating, and honestly, too much the Oxymoron for me to pass up as a fitting conclusion to this series, especially on All Saints’ Sunday, for as we look back to celebrate our heritage, do we not also look forward?

 

The AncienTFuturE Church is who we are, and perhaps in no image of the faith is that better conveyed that the Lord’s Table of Holy Communion.  Paul was talking about Holy Communion when he wrote, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed to you.”  We receive what others offered.  We give, so that others might receive.  They give so that yet others might receive. Throughout the generations this passing on of the faith connects us as an AncienTFuturE Church, and it is this sense that we are part of something far grander than ourselves, which provides motive to invest our talents, our gifts, and our tithes in order to ensure that the church is not slack in its mission to reach new generations. 

 

I saw another, very different yet very similar image recently.   Not just an image, in fact, but a very real church steeple doubling as a cell phone tower.  It’s called Camouflaged Communication Structures.  Cellular companies have learned that church steeples have an aesthetically pleasing design, and that one way to hasten the permit process in difficult zoning locations is to ride piggyback on existing vertical structures.  Church steeples naturally blend into the community, so cell companies are leasing church steeples to hide their antennas from view. 

 

An ancient stairway merged with a modern escalator.  Modern technology linked profitably with church steeples.  If you ask me, that’s All Saints’ Sunday material, the blending of our ancient past and our exciting future into The AncienTFuturE Church.

 

Professional baseball umpire Durwood Merrill tells that during his rookie year of umpiring, he called a game behind the plate with fastball pitcher, Nolan Ryan, on the mound.  The second pitch of the game was so fast, Merrill says he never saw it.  He froze, unable to make the call.  Finally, he yelled, “Strike.”  At which point the batter in the box backed up, looked at Merrill and said, “Ump, don’t feel bad.  I didn’t see it either!” 

 

We live in a world changing so rapidly that we see only a blur of change. Technology has gifted us with many blessings, and with concomitant dilemmas.  Technologically speaking, the fast-forward button is stuck in “On” position, and sometimes we who are anchored in ancient church tradition want desperately to push the pause button on progress, because change is not easy.  I love the bumper sticker that says, “Change is good.  You go first!” 

 

This is our world, every bit as disconcerting as it is exciting.  In our Information Age, an accepted yardstick is Moore’s Law, postulating that technical knowledge is doubling every 18 months.  It’s a blur of change, and with it the church is facing challenges, moral dilemmas which previous generations of the church never faced and so have little to counsel us beyond guiding principles. 

 

Most technological change has occurred in the past 100 years.  Go back to 1907, and the world was just emerging into a technology that held the seeds of the rapid change we experience today. Journey another 100 years back, to 1807, and technologies of transportation and communication didn’t look much different than it did in Jesus’ day, and that not much different than the Sumerians of 3,000 years before Jesus.  By 1905, however, the seeds had been planted, and things were about to explode.  In 1905 only 14% of U. S. homes had bathtubs.  Less than 1 in 10 had telephones.  There were less than 10,000 automobiles in the U. S. and only a couple of hundred miles of paved roads.  It was a slow moving world, with the maximum speed limit in most cities being 10 mph.  Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.  The population of Las Vegas was a whopping 30, and the tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.  The average wage in United States was 22 cents an hour, yet most families could afford to live with one wage-earner.  More than 95% of births were in homes.  Most women washed hair once a month using Borax or egg yolks for shampoo, and there were less than 300 reported murders in the entire country. 

 

The vast gulf between now and a mere 100 years ago is too obvious for comment.  It won’t slow down.  We are entering one of the most exuberantly creative periods in history, a period of intellectual exploration and discover surpassing all previous standards.  We are in the midst of the most amazing upsurge of knowledge and wealth ever seen on earth, moving from Terra Firma to Terra Incognita.  It’s a wildly exciting time in which to live but, at the same time, a wildly disconcerting time.  The velocity of change is enough to take the breath away, yet is slower now than at any time in the future.

 

So the question becomes, will the forward movement of science and technology rip the steeple from its moorings, or will the steeple hold fast, contributing to the shaping of new values in those areas where modern technologies affect our day-to-day lives?  How will fare the church?   Already we sense in the community loosened ties of faith and of religious identity, leaving a new generation, in the words of Thomas Lynch, a funeral director for nearly 50 years in Michigan who writes about the changing funeral customs in the United States, “ritually adrift, bereft of custom, symbol, metaphor, and meaningful liturgy or language of faith with which to face transitions of life.”  Time formerly spent in worship, he reminds us, contemplating the larger questions of Who and Why we are, are now spent in recreation or shopping or Web-browsing or passing time.  Many Americans, writes Lynch, are now “spiritual tourists with no place to call home, no core beliefs to return to.”   We of the steeple have the increasing sense that something is missing.  Something is.  And what is missing is caused by a separation of that vital link between the Ancient and the Future.

 

All Saints’ Sunday is a day to celebrate that connection of Ancient and Future.  Lynch points out that the old look back, longing, while the young have the same longing, only looking forward.  The old write memoirs.  The young write resumes.  One remembers.  The other imagines.  And the one remembering, remembers what the other is imagining. 

 

And so it is with The AncienTFuturE Church.  The generations stream through on their journey through life.  The young become old, the resumes of youth become the memoirs of the aged, those looking forward with imagination now look back with fond remembrance.  And, at last, a generation passes to join those saints who have passed beyond the veil.  This generation might not understand all the ways of the emerging church it leaves behind.  Yet the departed have received, and have given, leaving themselves in this emerging church.  And all are one, as we sang at the opening of this service in William W. How’s great hymn, For All the Saints: 

O blest communion, fellowship divine!

We feebly stuggle, they in glory shine;

Yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.

Alleluia, Alleluia!

 

Paul said, “For I received from the Lord what I also handed to you.”  Behold the church’s link through the centuries.  We received.  Now let us give.  In this way we are, forever, an AncienTFuturE Church. 

 

Sources and notes:

“Steeple People,” a sermon in HOMILETICS, Volume 11, Number 5.

 

Dr. Leonard I. Sweet, SoulTsunami: Sink or Swim in the New Millennium Culture, Zondervan, 1999.

 

Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking:  Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, Penguin Books,