When I first came to Norridgewock I included in my self description the philosophy that the church is a “hospital for souls”. Imagine my surprise when I learned that First Congregationalist’s emeritus pastor, Cecil Jones, was fond of saying, “the church is a hospital for souls, not a sanctuary for saints”. How could it be that the two of us could come up with such a clever turn of phrase? The answer is that it is not original with us. I read that the church fathers used to talk about the church being a “hospital for souls” and I think they clearly got the idea from the original, Jesus Christ, the great physician.
This brings me to my thinking about Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. This passage is about souls. It is not about the physical nature of man but about his soul. It talks about being “poor in spirit” and it describes a reality as “blessed” that has little to do with physical or social being. Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, rejoicing when persecuted, being pure in heart and being merciful are not formulas for worldly success.
In my musings I have been thinking about the mentality of our now so secular world. I wonder about my role as a minister in it and the role of the church in a world that so effectively blocks out God. It strikes me that we have decided that the best thing in life is to be a “healthy animal”. When our society raises children it says they need to be healthy physically–pediatricians, dietary considerations, plenty of sunshine, athletic pursuits all take priority. In our desire to raise our children as “healthy animals” we want a certain amount of intellectual health–school, remedial education, even music or drama can demand more and more of our wealth and time. We even want our “healthy animals” to be good members of the herd, to have social health so we enroll them in boy scouts and clubs and watch their choice of friends and hope they will make good choices of mates. Even the psychology of our “healthy animal” is dominated by doctors studying rats in mazes and a philosophy dominated by secular evolution with no room for a special creation of man, man with a spirit.
All these aspects of raising children are good. We are physical, social, psychological, and intellectual beings. It is good that we care for these things, but it is not everthing. Jesus did not come to earth to make us healthy animals. We are not God’s pets. Jesus died to save our souls. God made us to have fellowship with Him. Adam walked with God and talked with Him. We are more than healthy animals.
The last few centuries have been a pretty steady march of secularization. During the first few decades of the last century colleges stopped being Christian in a self-conscious effort to become free of their denominational ties. Large rich foundations held out the carrot of endowments for schools that adopted secularization. As time went on more and more of life became secularized. In the sixties we banned prayer in school–it was no longer a necessary component of raising healthy animals. “Toleration” is now defined as everybody believing that everything is relatives,that there is no such thing as truth, it is not defined as respecting each others strong beliefs.
The average person drives by a church without thinking of going in. They are too busy being “healthy animals”. Ministers are all about as relevant as Father Mulcahy of M*A*S*H–benign relics, living antiques to decorate weddings or funerals. Sunday School or Vacation Bible School may be nice experiences for young “healthy animals” as long as they don’t interfere with soccer or field hockey games and as long as there isn’t homework to be done.
I sometimes ask myself, what makes a person take a look at the spiritual side of life. Often it is a glimpse of the despair of life without a soul. Many of those in church are old and they have lost many loved ones and they have had to ask themselves, is there something more? Others are people who have seen the despair of their own lives as alcohol or drugs or some consuming passion overcomes them–the first step of the 12 steps is recognition of helplessness with the recognition of a need for God.
The sermon on the mount represents a strange mindset to most. Can you imagine taking the spiritual life as seriously as jesus wants us to? Can you imagine that it is that important to be reconciled, or to forgive, or to be faithful? This certainly represents a different mindset than the herd of “healthy animals”. But it is an invitation from jesus Christ to a life that is far deeper than the herd offers. It is an invitation to the salvation of our souls to have the fulness of what Christ offers.
Russell
October 04 2008 | Meeting Times | No Comments »
As we celebrated the 10th anniversary we had quite a time. It is remarkable that a congregational church of Maine has a Phoenix like revival after so many years. It had federated with the Baptist church for many years. For a few of those years it held summer meetings in its old house of worship on the north side of town but in the 40s even that burned down. For many years the federated relationship was a happy one–Cecil Jones, the pastor for 20 years said you looked out on the congregation and couldn’t tell who were Baptists and who were Congregationalists. And many of those years were very productive, I have heard stories of 100 attending a two week vacation Bible School or of great youth groups. At some point in the 1990s a toxic personality drove many of the congregationalists out of the church. What we celebrated on Sunday September 24 was the fact that these people pulled their congregational selves together and in a couple of years had a going church. Amazing.
This only begins to tell the story. As we celebrated we did some math. Of those who remain who originally decided to build, one of them is almost 99 years of age, one is almost 98, only one is young enough to be still in her late 70s. Doing some subtraction we discovered that the group of 14 were seniors, even by senior citizen standards. It is also clear that when they voted to build that many of them had no idea that sitting in a safe deposit box was a little nest egg that would help them realize their dream. This was an act of faith–and if you talk with Dwight Newman about it he will tell you that that is exactly what it was–an act of faith.
Most people are like some flowers, they have but one blooming. We have the course of our life and our accomplishments come in the 20 or thirty years of youth and middle age. But God showed these people that they had another blooming. Their kids may be grown, they may be retired, their health may even be waning, but they still had a magnificent bloom in them–this church and its building. Now many of these people have gone to be with the Lord but think about the heritage that they left.
For this reason I chose as my text Mark 9:23 where Jesus tells another group of people in a discouraging situation. “All things are possible to Him that believes”
September 26 2008 | Meeting Times | No Comments »
Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Is He, Jesus in this case, Kidding? Rejoice? Be exceedingly glad? The whole of the beattitudes are filled with this sort of reverse world. Meekness, Mourning, Poverty, Peacemaking all are presented not only as paths to happiness but sources of happiness in themselves. But this is the kingdom of God–which is not of this world. This is life in Christ–which requires us to die to ourselves. This is the wisdom of God–which is foolishness to this world. This is the power of God–which is revealed in our weakness.
Jesus himself refused the deliverance of the hosts of heaven and went to the cross with the mocking title “king of the jews” posted at the top. And yet this is the pathway to His victory over sin and death.
Around the world millions of christians are facing persecution in communist countries like Korea, Laos, Cuba, and China. In Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan christians are under constant threat. Other countries like India have pockets of severe persecution. Will Christianity ultimately fail? According to scripture God ultimately wins.
In the mean time, what are we doing with our liberty? We can have as many Bibles as we like–do we read it? We can attend church freely–do we? Jesus said blessed are we when we are persecuted for His sake–are we willing to do anything for His sake? Millions worship inspite of a threat to their lives.
I remember a church elder who didn’t want a pastor who did pastoral counseling because he feared the church could be sued for malpractice. I thought of the early church and wondered what they might of thought of such a timid pillar of the church as they went to their death by martyrdom.
I wonder if the many christians could even recognize persecution if it punched them in the nose. Secularization seems to have closed many expressions of faith beginning with prayer in school till now military chaplains are being coerced to pray without specific references to Christ. Are we to end up with a sort of universalist establishment church?
But a note of hope. Not too many years ago, the Soviet Union was an establishment of atheism. No one could practice his religion without fear of persecution, and yet there is freedom of religion in the former Soviet Union. Even China offers hope as its persecution seems to diminish.
Remember God wins in the end.
August 21 2008 | Meeting Times | No Comments »
Sunday School starts at 9 AM. Meetings will resume starting in September.
May 30 2008 | Sunday School | No Comments »
Pastor Lane is happy to introduce you to this new venue for reaching the community here in Norridgewock.
May 30 2008 | Meeting Times | No Comments »