The Gospel of Matthew (not the Gospel we heard from today) ends with the famous words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations....” These words have been at the heart of how we understand ourselves as a church, and have inspired centuries of mission work and evangelization. They are the basis for just about every single church program, every single church report, and every single church mission statement. This idea that Jesus commands us to go out and grow the church dominates everything we do. And over the centuries, we have developed this idea that making disciples means gaining members. We look at churches and we judge their success, or their failure, by whether or not they appear to be following this command. We look at churches and assess whether they are true disciples by how many members they have. We probably know the names of churches like the Crystal Cathedral, or Willow Creek or Saddleback - we know about the mega-churches of the late 1990s, churches that stand as icons for church success, and that have inspired countless membership drives and outreach programs. We think of these churches, and we envy their success. We don’t grow in the numbers that they do, we don’t make disciples with the sheer volume that they do. We don’t seem to be quite the Christians that they are.
But we try. Boy, do we try. At National Conventions, and Synod Assemblies, and Congregational Annual meetings, we try. We receive reports on how many members we’ve gained, or lost, we gather up information about much money has brought in, or spent. In our attempt to make disciples, we look at Jesus’ command through numbers, so that we can get a handle on how well we’re doing. In sociology research, you can either do qualitative research, which means gathering the stories of people and doing interviews to gather information, or you can do quantitative research, which means collecting data like demographic information or income, information that can be counted. And when we get together as a church to see how we’re doing, we look for quantitative information. We want numbers. We try to figure out whether we’re growing in faith, whether we’re growing in love, and whether we’re growing in service by the numbers. By how many bodies are sitting in the pews and attending church programs. The number of bodies tells us whether we are doing a good job being Christ’s disciples.
And this is all fine, until we hear this morning’s Gospel reading. And in the Gospel of John, all of a sudden we run into something very different. Jesus says a bunch of icky stuff about flesh and blood and his body and eating and drinking, and then Jesus says something so scandalous and offensive that his followers turn away from him. Now, we’ve heard this so often that we’re kind of used to it, but the word that Jesus uses in, “Does it offend you?” means something so unbelievably contrary and repugnant that his listeners are scandalized - horrified, appalled, disgusted. But what is this scandalous thing that Jesus is saying? Well, in the original context, the scandal is the idea that people should eat flesh and drink blood. Blood is meant only for God - that’s why in Solomon’s time, they sacrificed hundreds of animal to consecrate the altar. And even today, we still hold blood to be sacred. So there’s the scandal of that. But what I really want to look at is the scandal for today. What could Jesus possibly say that is so scandalous to us today? What could Jesus possibly say that would turn us - us - away?
Well, there’s one line in particular that jumps out at me. One line that I think has the power to scandalize us, and offend us, and even cause us to turn away, if we truly take it seriously. And I’m not just engaging in some preaching hyperbole and exaggeration here. I do really believe that if we take this scandalous saying of Jesus and seriously apply it to our own context, that we will find our church life - congregationally, and synodically, and nationally, and even globally - upended in unimaginable ways.
Jesus says, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh is useless.” To understand why this line, of all of them, should scandalize us, we have to break it down a bit. When the Gospel of John talks about flesh, it’s talking about the body. So when Jesus says the flesh is useless, he’s saying that the body is useless. Which is a weird thing to say right after he tells his disciples that they will have to eat his flesh. But the Gospel of John was written during a time when the Christian community that gave birth to this Gospel was being persecuted, and being told that they weren’t true followers of God, and that they ought to be shunned by other members of their religious community because they were Christian. They were a minority, their influence and power on society and in culture was dwindling, and their numbers were dropping. Sound familiar? And so here we have Jesus, in the words of John, saying that the flesh, the body, is useless. In other words, we have John using Jesus to tell his listeners that bodies are not as important to what it means to be a follower of Jesus as we think. We have Jesus saying that, when it comes to being a disciple and when it comes to be a community of Christians, bodies are insignificant, irrelevant, unimportant. What is important, as we have heard over and over again this summer, is being one with Christ and the Father, which means loving our neighbour as Christ loves us. What is important is the Spirit. Being one with the Spirit, loving as the Spirit loves us, and living as the Spirit inspires us to live. The Spirit gives life; the flesh is useless.
So what is so scandalous and offensive about this? Well, in the Gospel of John we hear a message that runs very contrary to what we hear in the Gospel of Matthew. (And, by the way, as an aside, this diversity of voices, and even opposing presentations of who Jesus is, is what makes the New Testament such a gift to us.) But in any case, we hear a very contrary message to Matthew. Matthew tells us to go out and make disciples, to grow, to gain more bodies. And John tells us not to. John tells us that bodies are useless. John tells us that we need to stop trying to be get more bodies, and to stop trying to be the majority. John tells us to accept our status as a minority group of followers, and to stop trying to go out and gain converts. When the group of disciples turns away, Jesus doesn’t even try to get them back. The flesh is useless.
So, at the risk of saying something offensive, I believe that this is what God is saying to the church today. In this congregation, and in this Synod, and in the National Church, I believe this is one of God’s messages to us today. That we are to turn away from the Gospel of Matthew and turn toward the Gospel of John. That we are to turn away from the flesh, and turn toward the Spirit.
Like Jesus, I know that this saying might be too hard for some people. It is a radical shift in how we understand our role as Christians in the church. It is a radical, basically 180-degree turn from what we have understood the role of church in society to be. That we should stop putting our efforts into growing the church. But I say this because I believe that it is Good News. I believe that is is the Gospel of Christ. I say this because I believe that history has shown us that Christians follow Christ much much better when we are a minority. We follow Christ better when we rely solely on Christ for our survival, and not on the best programs, or the best seminars, or the best Alpha courses. We follow Christ when we stop trying to get new members and when we focus our efforts on trying to be better Christians ourselves. I will be honest - I haven’t always believed this. I have, for most of my pastoral ministry, been a follower of Matthew’s interpretation that a good Christian congregation is supposed to grow by gaining more people. And I have looked into Alpha classes, and Invite a Friend to Church Sundays, and evangelizing in the community. I believed that more numbers meant God was blessing the church, and that fewer or declining numbers were a bad thing. But I no longer believe this to be true, because I’ve seen what happens when the church goes out and makes numbers and bodies a priority. I’ve seen that it doesn’t work and that we lose our way. Sure, there are bumps in numbers, but those numbers eventually decline. The Crystal Cathedral has closed. Willow Creek and Saddleback are declining. Some people may say that this is just a sign of the times, but I believe that, as Jesus says, “No one can come to me but through the Father,” and that smaller numbers means that God is calling us to look at discipleship in a new way.
So what is this new way? In John, Jesus tells us that the Spirit gives life where the flesh is useless. So what is this new life that the Spirit is trying to give us? I believe that, instead of growing, God is calling us to deepen. Instead of growing in faith, God is calling us to deepen in faith. Instead of growing in love, God is calling us to deepen in love. Instead of growing in service, God is calling us to deepen in service. Deepening means developing spiritual maturity, and stronger faith, and more sacrificial service. Deepening in the Spirit means becoming more vulnerable to the world by giving up on numbers to protect us. It means turning to God and trusting God to hold us, rather than relying on the money we get every Sunday, or on the numbers of people who are sitting in the pews, or on the numbers of kids in Sunday School or Confirmation. Deepening in the Spirit means actually rejecting any attempts to deliberately gain new bodies; it means turning away from old-fashioned evangelizing programs in order to focus on simply loving others, and being vulnerable to strangers, and serving those in need, regardless of whether they are or become Christians. Did you get that? Even our service to others is to be done out of love, and regardless of whether those we are serving become Christian or not. Our goal as followers of Christ, as people who want to be one with Christ, is not to make disciples but to give others life.
Is this scandalous to you? Does this offend you? If I have spoken clearly enough, it should. The idea that we should stop trying to gain new members, that we should actually reject attempts to gain new members, is scandalous. But the truth is, what have these attempts gotten us? Has trying to grow strengthened our faith? Has trying to get more members made us better servants of Christ? Has being concerned about numbers - of either people or of money - made us love God’s people more? Despite all our attempts to think otherwise, new members do not make us a more faithful Christian community. The flesh is useless.
The Spirit gives life. As we begin again this fall the work of discerning where God is calling St. John next, and even where God is calling this Synod, and where God is calling the ELCIC, let us turn away from this obsession with flesh and bodies and numbers, and turn instead to the Spirit. Let us focus our efforts instead on deepening in faith, deepening in love, and deepening in service. In these things God will make us more faithful disciples of Christ, and will give us life, which is the life of Christ. We may be scandalized and it may be easier to go away, but God gives us the strength of Peter to say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.
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