This should be more difficult, don't you think?
Preached at Decatur First UMC
Decatur, GA
Winter, 2023
Luke 3: 7-18
7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
10 And the crowds asked him, “What, then, should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
15 As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So with many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people.
They wanted to be baptized.
We don’t know why, or what they were expecting.
We do know that John the Baptist wasn’t having it. He seems to think, that THEY think, that he’s offering something easy. And he starts talking about axes, and roots, and bearing fruit worthy of repentance.
My favorite part of this story is the part where he calls them a brood of vipers.
My second favorite part of this story is what they say back to him after he tells them this is more than they bargained for - what then should we do?
There was a time in my life when that response surprised me. I was surprised that they stuck around and basically said, “Ok, then. What’s next?”
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s, there was a popular idea in church leadership, that church needed to be easy in order to be attractive. The expert advice was that people wanted to come to worship, feel blessed, and go home until next Sunday. I remember hearing once that a pastor told his staff “people don’t come here to work, that’s your job.”
And it made me cringe, because that sounds miserable for the staff, and meaningless for the congregation. But that idea, that people just wanted to feel good at church, was everywhere and it was supposedly the key to growing your church. Of course people want it to be easy. Who doesn’t want things to be easy?
So to hear that people came to John the Baptist for baptism, and he yelled at them, called them names, and said,
No.
This is bigger than you think.
This is about the life that you live, the fruit that you bear.
This is about the stuff that you have and what you do with it,
the job that you have and whether you are honest in it.
This is about the power that you have and how you use it.
Axes are at the roots of trees.
Wheat is going to the granary and the chaff is burning with unquenchable fire.
This is about everything.
That doesn’t end today, it starts today and goes on forever.
And they responded, “Ok, then. What’s next?”
That response used to surprise me, but it doesn’t any more. I get it now.
In the fall of 2014 - just over 8 years ago - Decatur First began a visioning process. We don’t talk about this much anymore, mostly because we don’t need to. But I can’t read the story of this crowd without thinking about the church that we were in 2014. We were living in some real tension between the church that we had been, and the church we needed to be.
We were a good faithful congregation, and yet, we were going in circles, repeating the same things we’d been doing for years. We weren’t moving forward.
So we started this visioning process, beginning with an evaluation of the church, by the church, led by a professional church consultant. We were asked to honestly and prayerfully reflect on the church’s strengths and weaknesses, both internally and for ministry out in the world.
At the end of the evaluation, our consultant told us what we already knew, but had not been able to articulate or admit to ourselves - Decatur First was faithfull, strong, committed, compassionate AND we were disconnected from each other, isolated from our community, we lacked identity and vision.
So, at that point we could have stopped. We paid the consultant in stages, and this was the end of stage one. The consultant's report was not unlike John the Baptist saying to the crowd -
This is not what you thought it was going to be.
Your years and years of faithful ancestors can’t get you out of this.
This is about changing everything, not just going through a ritual.
And you, Decatur First United Methodist Church, didn’t flinch.
Like the crowds you said, “OK, then. What’s next?”
What came next was a more intense time of prayer and discernment, in which 243 people met in groups of three to pray for and discuss God’s will for our church. These groups of three met 10 times within 100 days, and at the end, each triplet turned in a list of 10 ideas or hopes for the future of Decatur First. The consultant took those 810 ideas and looked for patterns and themes, and he came back to us with three scenarios for how Decatur First could live into their calling as the Body of Christ.
The consultant gave each scenario a name, but I nicknamed the first scenario Decatur First Plus. The idea was to stay basically the same, and play to our strengths. Focus on what we were doing well, and build on that.
The second scenario was called Decatur First Next. The idea was to transform into a congregation that would minister intentionally to younger adults.
The third scenario was called Decatur First: Missional. That scenario imagined a Decatur First that reoriented its focus outward in terms of our mission and ministry. The consultant described it this way, “If you’re standing on the porch on Ponce, currently the congregation is focused inward, on programming and ministries inside the church. The Missional scenario says that you face inward on Sunday mornings for worship, for prayer and study, but the goal is not to stay facing inward. The missional scenario is a congregation that faces outward to live out their calling beyond the walls.”
In August of 2015, almost a full year after we began this process, the congregation saw presentations from lay-lead writing teams, imagining what Decatur First might look like in 10 years, if they followed each of the three scenarios. Following the presentations, there was a vote and it wasn’t close. The congregation overwhelmingly felt called to be a missional church.
And this is where you know God is up to something. Because while John the Baptist didn’t give the crowd an easy out, our consultant did. Like Morpheus in the original Matrix movie, our consultant offered us a BLUE pill. We could vote for Decatur First Plus and forget all that we had learned about our disconnection and lack of vision. We could go back to thinking “We’re Decatur First, we’re fine, everything’s fine.” And we’d never have to do the hard work of following Jesus on this new path. We wouldn’t have to recognize that there is chaff among the wheat in our programs and ministries. We wouldn’t have to consider which trees bear fruit and which ones don’t. We could just keep going in circles.
But instead we said, “Ok, what’s next?” There’s a whole other sermon about the ups and downs of reorienting ourselves. We had some missteps and outright mistakes, but honestly we still have those sometimes. Being missional means taking risks.
We also had to start reconsidering what our “normal” looked like. I think that’s what John the Baptist was describing to the crowd, the tax collectors, and the soldiers. Your “normal” is about to change. Every time they asked, “What then should we do?” John had an answer, and it wasn’t particularly religious.
You have two coats and someone else has none, and that might not have bothered you before, but now you’re going to give one away. Your plate is full while your neighbor is hungry, and you didn’t think that mattered before, but now you know it does. You probably didn’t think much about how you used your power before, but you have been claimed as God’s own forever, so now you are going to think about it. You know who you are now, and your “normal” has to change.
Here’s a real life example, Decatur First used to host a Fall Festival on the Friday before Halloween. If you’ve ever been to any Fall Festival, then you’ve been to this one. It was good. It was fun. It was mostly attended by Decatur First families. By 2014, it was organized and implemented by the Decatur First staff, and lay people were mostly begged into volunteering for it. It was fine, but it was not missional.
After we completed the visioning process, we tried for a couple of years to MAKE it missional. We invited families with foster children to attend and provided costumes for them. We created a Hygiene Kit station at the festival to have a missional component. We tried.
But in the end, this event that it seemed like we had always done, just didn’t create meaningful connections within the church, and didn’t serve the community.
For a church that’s looking inward, there’s no reason to stop having that Fall Festival. It’s well attended, fun for our own members, and there’s already a budget line item and children’s ministry staff to do the work. But, we had taken the red pill. We were looking outward. We knew who we were supposed to be. We had to let the Fall Festival go.
This is a little tricky, because in a different context, a Fall Festival might be missional, and one day, we might need to have one again to meet our community where they are. A missional church is a discerning church, so we have to stay open to new opportunities, and sometimes even old ones.
But for now, when you burn up the chaff, you can focus on the wheat. This past October we sent a group to march in the Atlanta Pride Parade, our Avondale Pattillo visioning team began meeting, we were gearing up for the warming shelter to begin operations in November, we packed 50,000 meals for Rise Against Hunger, AND, we still had fun. Before we packed those 50,000 meals, we ate about 5,000 donuts. We celebrated the spooky season with the Blessing of the Costumes, which requires a fraction of the time and money that the Fall Festival required. It’s fun for kids and easier on parents.
None of that was a part of our October in 2014. And while I celebrate and give God thanks for everything we did in October of 2022, I don’t expect we will do it the same way in 2023. A missional church is a discerning church, because the needs of the church and community shift and change.
It’s funny to me, that after yelling at the people coming to be baptized by him, calling them names, and telling them how wrong they are, the scripture passage for today ends with - “So, with many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people.”
Did this sound like good news to the crowd that day? It’s rough around the edges for sure, but it must have sounded like good news, because not only did they not run away, they stayed and asked themselves if this grumpy man with high expectations was the messiah. It sounded like God to them.
I have to wonder if they wanted someone to expect more of them. They wanted someone to tell them that their lives mattered, not just when they got dunked or sprinkled, but every day, always. They mattered, their actions mattered, their lives had eternal value and cosmic significance.
The good news, for them and for us, is that following Jesus is not easy. And we don’t want it to be. If we wanted easy, we’d be at brunch right now. The good news is that Jesus changes everything, knowing who you are changes everything, you don’t come away from baptism and the only thing different is wet clothes or wet hair.
This is about the life that you live, the fruit that you bear.
This is about the stuff that you have and what you do with it,
the job that you have and whether you are honest in it,
the power you have and how you use it.
Axes are the roots of trees.
Wheat is going to the granary and the chaff is burning with unquenchable fire.
And that’s Good News.
This is about everything, it doesn’t end today, it starts again today, and goes on forever.
Amen.
