William H. Willimon - "You Call This a Church?" (April 6, 1997)
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| - | In the church's year, this is traditionally known | 0:10 |
| as Low Sunday, the Sunday after Easter. | 0:13 | |
| The choir doesn't believe that. | 0:19 | |
| (laughing) | 0:23 | |
| Well, after the women discovered the empty tomb | 0:25 | |
| in the 20th chapter of John, this is the next, | 0:30 | |
| the very next story, the first Easter story | 0:33 | |
| which is told as today's gospel. | 0:37 | |
| When it was evening of that day, | 0:41 | |
| Easter, first day of the week, | 0:44 | |
| the doors of the house where the disciples met | 0:47 | |
| were locked for fear of the Jews. | 0:49 | |
| Jesus came and stood among them and said, | 0:51 | |
| "Peace be with you." | 0:55 | |
| After He said this, He showed them His hands and His side. | 0:58 | |
| Then His disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. | 1:02 | |
| Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. | 1:07 | |
| "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." | 1:10 | |
| When He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, | 1:14 | |
| "Receive the Holy Spirit | 1:18 | |
| "and if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. | 1:20 | |
| "If you retain the sins of any, they are retained." | 1:24 | |
| But Thomas, who was called a twin, | 1:29 | |
| one of the 12, was not with them when Jesus came | 1:31 | |
| so the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." | 1:34 | |
| But Thomas said, "Unless I see the mark of the nails | 1:38 | |
| "in His hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails | 1:41 | |
| "and my hand in His side, I will not believe." | 1:44 | |
| A week later, the disciples were again in the house | 1:49 | |
| and Thomas was with them. | 1:54 | |
| Although the doors were shut, Jesus came | 1:56 | |
| and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." | 1:59 | |
| Then He said to Thomas, | 2:03 | |
| "Put your finger here and see my hands. | 2:05 | |
| "Reach out your hand and put it in my side. | 2:08 | |
| "Do not doubt, but believe." | 2:11 | |
| Thomas answered, "My Lord and my God." | 2:14 | |
| Jesus said, "If you believe because you have seen me, | 2:21 | |
| "blessed are those who have not seen | 2:25 | |
| "and yet come to believe." | 2:27 | |
| Now Jesus did many other signs | 2:30 | |
| in the presence of the disciples | 2:32 | |
| which are not written in this book, | 2:34 | |
| but these are written so that you might come to believe | 2:37 | |
| that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, | 2:41 | |
| and that through believing, you may have life in His name. | 2:45 | |
| This is the word of the Lord. | 2:51 | |
| In my ministry, I have been privileged | 3:01 | |
| to visit and to preach at scores of different churches | 3:03 | |
| and it's quite a privilege | 3:10 | |
| to see the rich breadth and diversity of the church. | 3:14 | |
| In one month last year, | 3:19 | |
| I found myself preaching in a college chapel, | 3:22 | |
| where about 100 students gathered with book bags | 3:26 | |
| and after the service, they went out, | 3:30 | |
| back to the library, back to doing what they were doing. | 3:33 | |
| The next Sunday, I was in a great city cathedral | 3:36 | |
| where a couple of thousand gathered. | 3:39 | |
| And then the Sunday after that, | 3:41 | |
| in a little country church in a pine grove in Georgia | 3:43 | |
| where just 30 or so folk gathered to hear the word. | 3:48 | |
| I noticed that there's not a lot in common between churches. | 3:55 | |
| Churches look vastly different | 4:03 | |
| and gather under vastly different circumstances | 4:07 | |
| and some of these churches just seem to have everything. | 4:12 | |
| There's a church in Houston that has five bowling alleys. | 4:19 | |
| Some churches, it's just amazing what they have. | 4:26 | |
| The same church has an Olympic-size swimming pool, | 4:29 | |
| a helicopter landing pad. | 4:33 | |
| And it's Texas, but still, it's impressive. | 4:37 | |
| (laughing) | 4:41 | |
| Some churches seem to have everything. | 4:44 | |
| A lot of people think that about this church. | 4:47 | |
| Our building, this neo-Gothic marble, | 4:51 | |
| four organs, a huge choir, adorable preaching. | 4:55 | |
| (laughing) | 5:02 | |
| Now what else would you want to have church, | 5:05 | |
| church as it ought to be. | 5:09 | |
| Indeed, last Sunday on Easter, there was a couple | 5:11 | |
| that informed me at the door | 5:14 | |
| they had driven over three hours | 5:16 | |
| to be with us for the service, and when I asked them why, | 5:19 | |
| they said to me, "Because you people here do chapel, | 5:22 | |
| "you know how to do it right." | 5:25 | |
| This is church, this is church as it's supposed to be. | 5:28 | |
| But all that is in sharp contrast to today's gospel | 5:35 | |
| 'cause there you got a picture of a church | 5:40 | |
| that appears to have nothing. | 5:46 | |
| They don't even have one organ, not even an upright piano. | 5:49 | |
| They don't have a choir. | 5:54 | |
| There's no preacher. | 5:57 | |
| In fact, in one sense, here in the 20th chapter | 5:59 | |
| of John's gospel is a glimpse | 6:02 | |
| of the church as bad as it can get. | 6:05 | |
| Here is the church of Jesus | 6:10 | |
| gathered after His resurrection, and look at it. | 6:13 | |
| Look at First Church Jerusalem. | 6:19 | |
| There, hunkered down behind closed, locked doors, fearful, | 6:22 | |
| for many chapters of the gospel of John, | 6:30 | |
| Jesus has been preparing His disciples for His departure. | 6:33 | |
| He's told them, "You're to be the branches of my vine. | 6:37 | |
| "You're to be the ones that are courageous | 6:41 | |
| "and faithful and believing." | 6:44 | |
| And here, at the end of the story, | 6:49 | |
| when it comes time for the disciples, | 6:51 | |
| the church to show what it's made of, look at it. | 6:54 | |
| Fearful. | 7:00 | |
| Somebody wasn't paying attention through all those chapters | 7:03 | |
| of the gospel of John, cowering like frightened rabbits | 7:06 | |
| behind their bolted-shut, locked doors. | 7:11 | |
| They were supposed to be the ones walking confidently | 7:18 | |
| out into the future, full of the Holy Spirit, | 7:21 | |
| announcing the Easter triumph of God, | 7:25 | |
| but just look at them, hunkered down there, cowering, | 7:27 | |
| hoping nobody in town will hear that they're there. | 7:29 | |
| Here is the church at its worst, | 7:34 | |
| scared, disheartened, defensive. | 7:39 | |
| Tom Long, I asked, what kind of advertisement | 7:47 | |
| would this church put in the paper | 7:51 | |
| on Sunday morning to attract people? | 7:54 | |
| Couldn't say as some churches say, | 7:59 | |
| friendliest church in town, no. | 8:00 | |
| Locked doors are not a sign of warm hospitality. | 8:04 | |
| A church with a warm heart, bold mission? | 8:09 | |
| Hardly. | 8:13 | |
| This is the church of the sweaty palms and the shaky knees | 8:15 | |
| and the firmly-bolted front door. | 8:19 | |
| And how could that be called a church? | 8:25 | |
| Not only has it got no sanctuary and no pulpit | 8:30 | |
| and no choir, it's got no plan, | 8:34 | |
| it's got no mission, no conviction, nothing. | 8:38 | |
| While back, a preacher asked Robert Schuller | 8:42 | |
| of Crystal Cathedral, "What do you think | 8:45 | |
| "is the most essential thing for a church to have | 8:48 | |
| "in order to grow?" | 8:51 | |
| And Dr. Schuller answered, | 8:53 | |
| "A large and accessible parking lot." | 8:55 | |
| (laughing) | 9:00 | |
| Now, I know that those of you who trooped up | 9:01 | |
| through the woods this Sunday would say | 9:03 | |
| there's a lot to be said for a good, accessible parking lot. | 9:05 | |
| But you admit surely, surely for the church | 9:10 | |
| it ought to be more than that. | 9:17 | |
| Not long ago on a questionnaire, | 9:20 | |
| we asked churches of my denomination, | 9:23 | |
| we asked laity, what do you look for in a church? | 9:26 | |
| Number one thing they look for is friendliness. | 9:32 | |
| I want a church that's friendly. | 9:37 | |
| Second thing, we want bold, we want interesting preaching. | 9:43 | |
| And I noticed on the questionnaire, | 9:49 | |
| nobody put down, we want locked doors, | 9:51 | |
| we want members that are frightened. | 9:54 | |
| Yes, it's Low Sunday and the gospel is appropriately | 10:01 | |
| the church at its low ebb, it's the first church. | 10:06 | |
| Here is a church, the first church, | 10:13 | |
| the great, great grand-daddy of us all churches. | 10:18 | |
| Here's a church that's got nothing. | 10:22 | |
| It's got nothing except that when it gathered, | 10:27 | |
| the risen Christ pushed through that locked door, | 10:36 | |
| threw back the bolt, and stood among them. | 10:41 | |
| And maybe that's as close to church as you ever get. | 10:51 | |
| Even the church in Houston | 11:00 | |
| with a dozen bowling alleys and the pool, | 11:01 | |
| or even this church with its big choir | 11:05 | |
| and its gorgeous windows, its preacher, | 11:11 | |
| left to our own devices, we're nothing. | 11:16 | |
| We're nothing more than a huddle of confused and timid | 11:23 | |
| and half-understanding, bewildered, cowering failures | 11:29 | |
| who all got F's in the course following Jesus 101. | 11:35 | |
| We ministers and musicians | 11:43 | |
| I think have learned that here at Duke Chapel. | 11:45 | |
| At Duke Chapel, we're supposed to set a kind of standard | 11:51 | |
| in liturgical worship and in music | 11:54 | |
| and that means that every afternoon at 1:30, | 11:58 | |
| we have the meeting of the ministers and the musicians | 12:02 | |
| and believe it or not, we carefully evaluate the service | 12:06 | |
| that has gone before, we put down the pluses | 12:09 | |
| and we put down the minuses, | 12:13 | |
| and then we get to planning future services. | 12:15 | |
| And believe it or not, we coordinate every hymn, | 12:18 | |
| we look at the prayers, we look at the scripture | 12:22 | |
| for the day, and we write all that down | 12:24 | |
| and we proofread the bulletin for the next week. | 12:30 | |
| And Dr. Wynkoop was a math major | 12:34 | |
| so he reads it very closely and all | 12:37 | |
| and we agonize over the spacing | 12:40 | |
| between the letters and everything. | 12:42 | |
| (laughing) | 12:44 | |
| But we have noted that despite all that meeting | 12:47 | |
| and all that effort, I don't care how much evaluation | 12:50 | |
| and dedication we give it, | 12:53 | |
| we learn that worship, real worship is not of our creation. | 12:57 | |
| It's a gift. | 13:07 | |
| It's a gift. | 13:10 | |
| And sometimes we plan and we work | 13:12 | |
| and it just doesn't happen. | 13:15 | |
| In fact, sometimes I think | 13:20 | |
| that maybe all of our laborious planning | 13:21 | |
| and selecting and evaluating | 13:24 | |
| is just another form of those disciples' locked doors | 13:26 | |
| 'cause we plan the service and we proofread the bulletin | 13:32 | |
| and we make sure everything is tied down and planned | 13:35 | |
| and just right, and maybe it's our subconscious attempt | 13:37 | |
| to keep everything fixed and predictable | 13:41 | |
| and under our control and to make sure | 13:44 | |
| we know where we're gonna be by noon, | 13:46 | |
| but that can be deadly. | 13:49 | |
| But sometimes, by the grace of God, | 13:54 | |
| by the breath of the Holy Spirit, | 13:59 | |
| somehow the risen Christ slips through | 14:04 | |
| those big oak doors at the back. | 14:07 | |
| Our plotting through the bulletin, | 14:11 | |
| our respectable reverence, and sometimes there's worship | 14:13 | |
| and it's not of our creation, it's a gift. | 14:19 | |
| And sometimes you just want to take off your shoes | 14:27 | |
| like Moses before the burning bush. | 14:30 | |
| Sometimes you just want to shout out with Jacob. | 14:32 | |
| Surely the Lord is in this place | 14:37 | |
| and that's when we get to be church. | 14:43 | |
| Number of years ago, the late Bob Wilson and I, | 14:47 | |
| we thought of writing a book | 14:51 | |
| entitled "The Successful Church" | 14:53 | |
| and our thesis was there's a lot of churches out there | 14:56 | |
| that when you first look at them, | 15:00 | |
| they look really successful. | 15:02 | |
| Got a good crowd on Sunday morning, | 15:03 | |
| membership is growing moderately, | 15:05 | |
| they've got a prosperous, a full, thriving program, | 15:07 | |
| well-maintained buildings, and yet, | 15:11 | |
| at heart, they are cold and dead. | 15:15 | |
| Let's keep everybody busy. | 15:20 | |
| Let's keep going to meetings | 15:23 | |
| and ceramics classes and yoga classes | 15:25 | |
| and 12-step programs for every malady. | 15:29 | |
| And maybe nobody'll ever notice | 15:31 | |
| that there's no room for God. | 15:33 | |
| So Stanley Hauerwas and I, in our book "Resident Aliens," | 15:38 | |
| said that there's a good deal of atheism | 15:41 | |
| in much of our church life. | 15:48 | |
| There's a lot of churches that just are atheistic. | 15:52 | |
| They just don't need God to make them work. | 15:55 | |
| Things keep cranking along and their ceramics classes | 15:59 | |
| for older adults and yoga classes for busy homemakers | 16:02 | |
| and trips to Disney World for the youth, | 16:05 | |
| it's so that you just think | 16:08 | |
| we could just get along fine without God. | 16:10 | |
| They're so successful, it makes them | 16:17 | |
| kind of moral uplift society for the youth | 16:18 | |
| or a place for retirees to hang out during the week. | 16:23 | |
| It just never got around to being church. | 16:28 | |
| So if you want to see us stripped of our traffics, | 16:34 | |
| our pretenses peeled away, then you need to look here | 16:39 | |
| in the 20th chapter of John. | 16:45 | |
| A pitiful huddle of timid souls, | 16:48 | |
| hugging onto one another behind locked doors | 16:52 | |
| without the presence, the presence which transforms | 16:59 | |
| our human gatherings into the church of God. | 17:04 | |
| Well, this, this is about all we are. | 17:10 | |
| But the good news, the good news is that | 17:16 | |
| it was to that church, this church, | 17:21 | |
| here in the 20th chapter of John, | 17:25 | |
| church which is hardly church that the risen Christ | 17:28 | |
| came saying "Peace be with you." | 17:32 | |
| Because He had been with these people before, | 17:37 | |
| He says it a second time, "Peace be with you." | 17:39 | |
| Into this busy, buzzing void, there was a voice. | 17:44 | |
| There was a presence and there was a peace | 17:53 | |
| not of our advising. | 17:57 | |
| You might have thought that here was a church | 18:02 | |
| that sometimes happens in churches of my denomination | 18:06 | |
| when they don't do what they're supposed to do | 18:12 | |
| and they don't pay their apportionments and all, | 18:13 | |
| sometimes we send out a district superintendent down there | 18:16 | |
| to lean on them and be the heavy and he'll say, | 18:19 | |
| "You call this a church? | 18:22 | |
| "Shame on you. | 18:23 | |
| "This isn't a church." | 18:24 | |
| But no, the risen Christ comes among them | 18:28 | |
| and says, "Peace be with you. | 18:31 | |
| "Peace be with you." | 18:36 | |
| And then He says, "I'm sending you into the world." | 18:41 | |
| And then He breathes on them | 18:46 | |
| and He gives them the same Holy Spirit that is His | 18:49 | |
| and He bestows upon them the awesome power to forgive sins. | 18:54 | |
| In other words, John says, | 19:03 | |
| he gives that little huddle group of disciples | 19:06 | |
| everything He's got. | 19:09 | |
| Here is church as church as it ever gets. | 19:14 | |
| John Calvin said, "Church is wherever | 19:21 | |
| "the word is rightly preached | 19:24 | |
| "and the sacraments are duly administered." | 19:26 | |
| Well, yes and no, | 19:30 | |
| because even in our right preaching | 19:35 | |
| and due administration, even that can't make church. | 19:39 | |
| Church is a gift of God, a God who refuses to leave us be. | 19:46 | |
| He comes to us. | 19:54 | |
| It's His presence that makes His church. | 19:55 | |
| To the church that had absolutely nothing, | 20:00 | |
| the risen Christ is everything. | 20:05 | |
| Spirit, mission, forgiveness. | 20:08 | |
| We, you, we are the church, | 20:14 | |
| not because we got the building built and paid for, | 20:18 | |
| not because the choir or the organ, | 20:22 | |
| the preaching, various activities, | 20:24 | |
| we're church because even to us, | 20:27 | |
| Christ has come and given His gifts | 20:29 | |
| of spirit, mission, forgiveness, | 20:33 | |
| commissioning us to go into the whole world | 20:37 | |
| and do what He did, and that's why we can call it church. | 20:40 | |
| My first church was in rural Georgia. | 20:51 | |
| I was fresh out of seminary and I wanted to be | 20:55 | |
| a good pastor in my first parish. | 20:58 | |
| I was in graduate school at the time, | 21:03 | |
| commuting out to the Hinterland from Atlanta | 21:05 | |
| on the weekends, and most Sunday mornings at dawn, | 21:08 | |
| it was a tough trip out there from Atlanta. | 21:14 | |
| I used to say a little prayer | 21:20 | |
| when I would go out to that church on Sundays, | 21:21 | |
| and my prayer was this. | 21:25 | |
| Lord, I know it's October, | 21:28 | |
| but a blizzard would be good right now. | 21:30 | |
| (laughing) | 21:35 | |
| You know, one that would close the interstate. | 21:36 | |
| I used to say, that little church, | 21:40 | |
| it only takes about 30 minutes to get out there, | 21:42 | |
| but you travel 30 centuries to get there. | 21:44 | |
| And the first day I visited one of those churches, | 21:51 | |
| fresh out of seminary, ready to serve that church, | 21:56 | |
| first day I went out there, I got out to the church | 21:58 | |
| and there was this big chain and padlock on the front door. | 22:01 | |
| When the lay leader showed up, I said, | 22:04 | |
| "What is the padlock doing on the front door?" | 22:06 | |
| He said, "The sheriff put that on the front door." | 22:07 | |
| "The sheriff, for what?" | 22:10 | |
| "Well, a couple months ago we had a meeting | 22:12 | |
| "and things kind of got out of hand. | 22:14 | |
| "People got mad, started ripping up carpet, | 22:16 | |
| "dragging out pews they'd given in memory of their mothers, | 22:18 | |
| "and we had the sheriff out here | 22:22 | |
| "and he said he was just gonna put a padlock on it | 22:24 | |
| "til the new preacher came and settled things down." | 22:25 | |
| (laughing) | 22:28 | |
| And that rather tempified my time at that church. | 22:33 | |
| (laughing) | 22:37 | |
| I spent a year out there, lasted a lifetime | 22:40 | |
| and I tried everything. | 22:44 | |
| I worked, I planned, I taught, I pled, | 22:45 | |
| but the response was always disappointing. | 22:49 | |
| The arguments, the pettiness, | 22:55 | |
| the fight after the administrative board meeting | 22:57 | |
| one night in the parking lot. | 22:59 | |
| It was tough. | 23:01 | |
| (laughing) | 23:03 | |
| And I think my benediction on them the last day | 23:06 | |
| was something like, "You call this a church." | 23:10 | |
| I muttered that as my tires kicked up gravel | 23:15 | |
| in the parking lot on my last Sunday. | 23:18 | |
| "You call this church." | 23:20 | |
| Just a couple of years later, | 23:26 | |
| I was down visiting at Emory and I ran into this young man | 23:28 | |
| who told me he was now serving that church | 23:33 | |
| and my heart went out to him, | 23:39 | |
| such a dear young man and only 24. | 23:41 | |
| And he said, "They still remember you out at that church." | 23:44 | |
| (laughing) | 23:48 | |
| And I said, "Yeah, I guess I'll never forget them either." | 23:51 | |
| "Remarkable bunch of people," he said. | 23:58 | |
| "Remarkable?" I said. | 24:03 | |
| "Yeah, you know, it's my first church | 24:07 | |
| "and sometimes they're just amazing." | 24:09 | |
| You know, that little church is now supporting | 24:13 | |
| about 20 families in that little pitiful community | 24:15 | |
| around that church. | 24:22 | |
| By the way, you'll be glad to know | 24:24 | |
| the free daycare center is going great | 24:25 | |
| and you know, you just don't find | 24:28 | |
| that many interracial congregations in Georgia. | 24:29 | |
| I could hardly believe what he was telling me. | 24:35 | |
| What happened? | 24:37 | |
| "I don't know," he said, | 24:42 | |
| "but one Sunday last fall, it was just like | 24:43 | |
| "things kind of came together. | 24:47 | |
| "Wasn't anything in particular, | 24:50 | |
| "it was just when the service was over, | 24:51 | |
| "we knew that Jesus loved us | 24:55 | |
| "and we knew that He had plans for us." | 25:00 | |
| I tell you what I think happened. | 25:09 | |
| I think that church got intruded upon. | 25:12 | |
| I think someone greater than I | 25:17 | |
| knocked the lock off that door and kicked it open | 25:19 | |
| and offered them peace and the Holy Spirit | 25:23 | |
| and mission and forgiveness. | 25:28 | |
| And now, nobody laughs when you call them church. | 25:33 | |
| Church, it isn't my hard work or your earnest effort | 25:43 | |
| and it isn't long-range planning or heavy-duty giving. | 25:49 | |
| Church, it's a gift, it's a visitation, | 25:51 | |
| it's an intrusion of the living Christ | 25:58 | |
| standing among us, breathing upon us. | 26:04 |
