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Y’all remember the good ole days? How we used to just travel light going from house to house proclaiming the Good News that, “The Kingdom of God is right here with us now. Come get on board.” We’d go and actually bring peace to people in their homes, the peacefulness of God’s presence. Remember how Jesus gave us authority, a real power, not power to get people to toe the line but power to heal; to heal the sick, the troubled, the broken. We’d heal people…wow, remember that? Jesus even gave us authority to set people free from those dark, sinister, sub-personal powers that had taken them over …remember that? People used to come out in droves because it was obvious that wherever we followers of Jesus went things that only God could do happened. The Kingdom of God was at hand. Jesus was present with us by the Holy Spirit…remember that? Those were the good ole days. Remember? Things were booming, moving forward, growing. Sure, sometimes we’d get run out of town, but hey, that’s their loss. The good ole days. How I long for the good ole days. Remember?
Now, let me guess. You’re saying to yourselves, “Randy, those aren’t the good ole days we remember.” In fact, that sounds a little weird, even scary. We didn’t go to people homes. They came to church and if you didn’t go to church, you knew you should. We remember when we had 150, 200, 300 or more in church, whole families, lots of children. We had Sunday School classes for every grade and a children’s choir and Bible School, a junior and a senior youth group. There were more than thirty-to-fifty people in the choir with lots of men singing. Even though the best nap you got all week was during the sermon, this place was full. We had money for this and money for that. Generously supported an overseas missionary. We were thinking about building a bigger church building. Everybody used to be Christians back in those days, even politicians. Randy, those were the good ole days we remember and long for. Remember?
Well, I do remember those days too and to be honest, every couple of generations of the church over the centuries and millennium has had their good ole days to look back on and long for as the Church has changed, adapted, morphed, evolved over the centuries. Societies change and so has the church. In the beginning, Jesus’ first disciples went forth proclaiming the Kingdom of God is here, at hand. They proclaimed peace and brought forth healing. They formed small communities that met in homes and were known for the way they loved one another. They virtually eliminated poverty in their midst. It was obvious that God was present and reigning in their midst as opposed to the world around them that was ruled by corrupt leaders who had the Roman military enlisted to be their thugs.
A few centuries later after many outbreaks of persecution, the church had grown and became a more predominant social force, Emperor Constantine realized he needed a common religion to bring unity to the Roman Empire and started the wheels rolling to make Christianity into that unifying religion. Over the next couple of centuries, the church grew politically powerful and the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire and instead of bringing the peace of Christ kings and bishops got people to kill in the name of Jesus. Thus, the Age of Christendom where Church and State walked hand in hand in an unholy alliance. The Church served the purpose of God-stamping the work of the State as well as being that organization that defined acceptable, moral, societal conduct. So often we got it wrong like when we called slavery and racism good.
Outside of occasional renewal movements that changed the course of history, the Kingdom of God as the first disciples knew it stayed eclipsed behind the illusion of Christendom, but still present. Oddly, those renewal movements began in homes and usually involved meals. First-hand accounts often reflect that Jesus was felt in their midst, present in their midst through the Holy Spirit. The peace that Jesus breathed on his disciples on Easter evening when he appeared to them as they hid behind locked doors afraid for their lives was felt among these renewal movements. Healings and other “miracles” are attested as well. The Kingdom of God has always remained “at hand”. Another marker of those renewal movements was a noticeable lack of political affiliation. In fact, they were too often at odds with the powers that be, particularly when those powers were situated in the Church.
The good ole days that we remember are likely situated in the 1980’s and over the last twenty years we have witnessed the greatest decline in religious affiliation in Western History if not World History. The good ole days that we remember are likely, hopefully (if you will pardon my hope), the last hoorah of Christendom. Though an inordinate number of individual “church members” are associated with mega-church Christianity which is also in decline now, 80% of congregations are less than 60 in membership, meet in a big building like we do, and average attendance is 20-25 on a Sunday. 5 years ago in Canada, there was at least one church closure a week. I haven’t seen recent numbers on that. It may have peaked. The people who attend these small churches are getting on in years, faithful, kind, prayerful, hospitable, generous, back-bone of the community kind-of-people. They also have formed the backbone of volunteer organizations in the community that like the local church are disappearing as people just don’t have the time to be community oriented anymore.
This is a harsh reality for us to face, we whom I’ll call the remnant,. The emotions we predominantly feel are not good: sadness, shame, guilt, disillusion, regret, fear, overwhelmed, confusion. These emotions are not what God’s faithful remnant should feel. Joy and gratitude ought to be toping our list. In a world that thinks faith in Jesus Christ is either irrelevant or a scandal, you folks are still inclined to pray, to hope. For some odd reason you still have faith; not just beliefs, but faith. You know the Solid Rock upon which you stand. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here. Just getting out week after week and letting God know whose side you’re on is what I would call “rocking it” these days. If God wanted more from us, then God would make it possible.
This is probably a bad analogy. Forgive me if it is. We recently had to say good bye to one of our cats. He wasn’t that old, but he got kidney disease like old cats do. The last year and a half of his life I spent a lot of time scooping a lot of litter, making sure he ate the special food I put out for him (and not his fat buddy). He had the world’s worst breath. If he started to clean himself, the smell would gag you. He started to look really scruffy. But that last year of his life, pretty much every morning when I sat on the couch praying and reading Scripture, he was there in my lap. He, and I, needed that time of familiarity in his last months. Jealous Nellie, the dog, would gather there too with her head on my thigh and where two or three are gathered, Jesus is there in their midst. God’s faithful remnant still gathering to pray and just be with one another…well, that’s us in the familiarity of our congregations. Jesus is still in our midst. He’s still here.
That said, the Kingdom God is still at hand. There are new ways of being church that are developing out there where people are gathering in homes around tables. The peaceful presence of Christ is in their midst. Healings are happening. People are being set free from dark, sinister, sub-personal powers that have taken them over. New, wonderful, and powerful things are happening even in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The harvest is plentiful and the labourers though few are out there. That said, that doesn’t mean we can’t try new things. Home gatherings, gathering for fellowship and meals and prayer and study at times other than Sunday morning are a good and welcome thing to do. Anything we can do to share the familiarity of the sense of loving community that we enjoy with each other is a good and welcome thing to do. Opening the doors to the community for community events is a good and welcome thing to do. But, in the end, the most powerful thing we can do is to keep coming out to worship and to pray. Amen.
