SUNDAY 23 OCTOBER 2005
Deuteronomy 34: 1-12; Matthew 22: 1-14
Whether writing a sermon or a letter, a novel or an academic text, many people find that getting the first sentence formed is one of the most difficult parts of the whole operation. "It was a dark and stormy night?ñ" is the classic clich?àd opening sentence for a novel ?± but not quite what one would want for a sermon. That first sentence and the first paragraph can be problematic for many writers. And just as problematic can be the concluding paragraph. Endings are just as difficult for writers, and also (by way of an aside) in music.
I have a friend who was studying law at Otago University when I was doing theology. We both lived in Knox College, and he was the organist for the daily evening services in the College chapel. The services on Monday evenings were always conducted by one of the theological students in residence. No staff were usually present, and so sometimes there was an unpredictability about the services ?± such as, what the organist might do to liven things up. I remember one occasion when a theological student ?± not me ?± was taking the service. He walked to his place, sat down, and then when the organ voluntary came to an obvious conclusion, he stood to be ready to begin the service. Except, the organist slipped seamlessly into another kind of musical conclusion, and then another, and another, and another?ñ The hapless student stood suspended half-sitting, half-standing, not quite sure what position to take. By the time it all finished, the student congregation was in helpless laughter and it took some time before any semblance of worship could begin to take place. On another occasion, when I was taking the service, as I entered the chapel the organist slipped from what he was playing into "God save the Queen." Just to end the aside ?± that student organist is now Master of Knox College and pro-chancellor of the university. I wonder what happens to anyone who misbehaves in his chapel these days?
Now, back to written beginnings and endings. The Torah, what we sometimes somewhat inaccurately call ?´the Law??, is for the Jewish people the very heart of their scriptures. Everything else ?± the works of the prophets, the wisdom literature and poetry like the psalms, the writings of the history of the Hebrew people from the time of Joshua onwards, are all commentary on the Torah. The Torah, the first five books of what we call the Old, or First, Testament from Genesis through to Deuteronomy, is what matters most. The Torah begins, "In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth?ñ" The Torah concludes, "Then Moses went from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land?ñ"
On the face of it, the final verses of the Torah are about the death of Moses. That is how the New Revised Standard Version heads up this final section of Deuteronomy ?± "Moses Dies and is Buried in the Land of Moab". But in fact the text shifts from Moses preparing to die, to a vision of the land just beyond the river, the land of promise. If it were just about the death of Moses, this would certainly be a firm conclusion to Torah. But it isn??t. The focus shifts, backwards and forwards. It shifts from Moses, to the vision of the land of promise, then back to Moses to his death and his burial in an unknown place. The passage reads, "The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days;" and then quietly abruptly goes on, "then the period of mourning for Moses was ended." Suddenly, the focus moves away from Moses and on to Joshua, who was, it says, "full of the spirit of wisdom?ñ" The focus moves from death to life, from past to future.
The effect of this shifting focus is that the final snapshot of Moses is less about his death than it is about him standing tiptoe on Mt Nebo while God points out the features of the land that had been promised, but which Moses will never enter. The promise is reinforced, that one day Israel will reach the end of the journey and live in this land. And so the concluding section of the Torah is not a conclusion. It is like an ending to be followed by another ending, and another, and another?ñ The central point of the text is that the death of Moses is about the future, and so the conclusion becomes another beginning. The introduction of vision in the death story of Moses points the Torah that is just about to conclude, to the future, which makes it an incomplete story. The almost blunt statement "then the period of mourning for Moses was ended" and the introduction of Joshua into the concluding narrative recognises that the people must move forward, and the story must go on.
I began last week??s sermon by mentioning the file in my filing cabinet labelled "St Lukes BC" ?± "BC" meaning "Before Clark". During the morning tea after church, someone commented to me that he thought I should probably open another file, "St Lukes AD" ?± meaning "After David".
There is a bit of sense in that idea. Don??t worry ?± I??m not planning to move on just yet. Assuming I stay until retirement at 65, I still have seven years to go until retirement in 2012. Those seven years will constitute the major part of a decade between now and 2015 during which we will see shifts in the Presbyterian Church every bit as great as, if not greater than, the shifts we have witnessed over the past forty years.
Forty years ago, 1964 was a significant year in the story of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. In the annual statistics of the national church, for the first time it was recorded that there were more communicant members of the church than there were on average adults attending worship. Each year since, the gap between the number of members and the average attendance figure, has grown. Up until forty years ago the Presbyterian Church, like the Anglicans and Methodists who also began a significant slide around the same time, and also like the Roman Catholic Church, had been a church that was constantly regenerating itself through births and baptisms leading through Sunday school and Bible Class to confirmations and membership and adult commitment and worship attendance. But once you have more people who are members than you have people who attend worship, where does your regeneration come from? The past forty years have seen an increase in the gap between membership and worship attendance, and a decrease in both those figures.
There is nothing particularly magic about the year 2015 in and of itself. It is just a year that Kevin Ward, a teacher at our School of Ministry who is a specialist in sociology, has noted as potentially marking another particular point in the life of the Presbyterian Church as we have known it.
Between now and 2015, something like 150 ministers (including me) will retire. Most of the remaining liberal ministers in the Presbyterian Church are among that number. If the School of Ministry continues to produce an average of six graduates a year, that means at most sixty to replace one hundred and fifty, and very few of them anything near what we would understand as ?´liberal??. Already the majority of parishes in Southland, which one might have considered a hot-bed of Presbyterianism, have no ordained minister to lead them, and are increasingly unlikely to ever get one. Increasingly in rural parts of the country, congregations are led by part-time lay pastors, some of whom come from Presbyterian stock and some of whom come out of other church experiences.
This hasn??t hit Auckland in a significant way yet ?± Auckland is the kind of place many ministers want to move to, even if only a part-time position, and once here won??t budge. Nevertheless, we are aware of parishes where the ministerial position becomes vacant, and it seems unlikely that it will be filled by an ordained minister unless the parish amalgamates with another. But the point remains that by 2015 the number of ordained ministers available for traditional parish ministry will be seriously depleted. All kinds of questions about the ministry needs of the church, and the point and the role of ordained ministry anyway, are hovering around waiting to be asked and answered. I have a scenario in my mind which involves two species rapidly becoming extinct ?± it is either the funeral of the last organist conducted by the last ordained minister, or the funeral of the last ordained minister at which the last organist plays, because musicians in the classical, traditional church mould are also diminishing, especially those who can play the pipe organ.
But more important than the diminishing numbers of ordained ministers between now and 2015 is the reality that the demographics of a denomination like ours mean that in the next ten years the bulk of those who have led and served and made up the church at congregational level will die. I conservatively estimate that our congregation is likely to experience around 40% loss of current members; I know of congregations where the loss is more likely to be around 60% to 70% or more. That in turn means that in the next ten years a huge number of congregations currently just making ends meet will become economically unviable.
The next ten years could be about a great number of endings, like the conclusion to the book of Deuteronomy was about the ending of Moses. Except, as I pointed out, the conclusion to Deuteronomy and the Torah was not just an ending, but also a beginning. The ending was about the future.
I am not very good at mirror gazing and prognosticating the future. I do, however, believe that St Lukes like a number of other Presbyterian Churches, is well-positioned to creatively deal with the future, just as last Sunday we celebrated the creative response to the future as it was seen a quarter of a century ago and realised twenty-one years ago in the creation of the Community Centre. The regeneration that unintentionally came out of that and which has seen us through to 2005 will continue. It is a regeneration which comes not from the old traditional source of birth ?± baptism ?± nurture ?± confirmation. Rather, it comes from intentionally positioning ourselves as a faith community in the liberal / progressive tradition, drawing in people disaffected from more conservative forms of Christianity, and also from earlier church leavers who now wish to re-examine and re-express Christian faith.
A "St Lukes ?± AD" file would be one that contained strategies and programmes to enable such regeneration. It would intentionally set out to not only replace that large number of loyal and visionary St Lukans who will die over the next ten years, but also to build on the legacy of openness and exploration they have given us by developing other ways in which another generation of St Lukans can belong and witness and serve. The file might intentionally look at the matter of succession to the current ministry, and set in train before 2012 the necessary steps to ensure a continuation of ordained liberal ministry. The file would contain details of networking with other liberal / progressive Christian communities around New Zealand and also Australia, as have been initially established by the ?´futurechurch?? conference held a couple of weeks ago here at St Lukes, ensuring that as our churches by and large become smaller and more conservative, the liberal / progressive tradition will continue to be alive and assertive so that the gospel can continue to be proclaimed and lived with honesty, openness and integrity.
I say to the handful of younger, progressive ministers that in many ways I envy them going into the next decade and more. It will be a time that demands more creative thinking than we have had to do thus far, more imaginative initiatives, more rethinking and rewriting of theology such as the theology of ordination, more vision and more courage. The rapid demise of traditional denominational church as most of us have known it might be sad. Thirty days of mourning may well be appropriate at some stage. "Then the period of mourning ?ñ was ended." The ending becomes a beginning, the death opens up the future, the vision of what yet can be calls us beyond any anxiety about the present and the immediate future into a commitment to a future which will be at least as blessed and as marvellous as has been our past, if not even more so.