Download There was a man, put together rather nicely, went to church, had a

There was a man, put together rather nicely, went to church, had a wife two kids, had
a good job, wore a suit to work every day, his name was brougham Coachman, and as he
traveled the road, the road was kind to him and in turn, he was kind to his clients, told them
Good morning sir, and asked them how are you mama, got tips of silver coins because he
was so good as serving the customer as he grappled down dusty roads.
The man now into his forties had worked hard his whole life, still works, needs the
money to support that wife and two kids. And as he walks down the road, still dusty, dirt
filling the cracks on his boots, he sees four wheels, a carriage of metal, and hears a racket of
sound, and walking down that street, that forty year old man starts to cry, because he
knows his job is dead, its outdated, because, this man lives in 1908, in new York city, and
the first cars are now valuable, the ford modal T and he taxis people around in a horse and
carriage and he sees that car and knows his job is going to be gone… and woe to the horse
and carriage man. Woe to any person who the world progresses out of a usefulness, woe to
the factory man, replaced by robots the mailman, replaced by email, the newspaper man,
replaced by websites, the elder replaced by the younger and strangely nowadays, the
church man... replaced by... What exactly?
Now not a lot of people knew it, but last week, during our Easter service, I was
preaching part one of a sermon series on resurrection. You see in the weeks while I was
preparing for Easter, writing sermons, planning for how everything would go, I was also
keeping my eye on the Sunday after, and the Sunday after, and the Sunday after, to see if I
could figure out what God was telling me to talk about… so as I said not a lot of people knew
it, but last week was part one on my sermon series on resurrection… I will be honest, I
didn’t know it… but what I was planning, through prayer and discernment has transformed
into a series on resurrection in creation.
And so for that, let’s touch on what we talked about last week, as last week it was
resurrection day.
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the
spices that they had prepared. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but
when they went in, they did not find the body. [A] 4 while they were perplexed about this,
suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. 5 The women[b] were terrified and
bowed their faces to the ground, but the men[c] said to them, “Why do you look for the living
among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. [d] Everyone should get used to Luke 24, its going to follow us for the next two weeks,
the entire sermon series rests on it.
This is what we as Christians believe, we believe that Jesus came back to life, that we
don’t worship a lie here this Sunday. We believe Jesus is God and God is not dead, as
that movie, that isn’t that great, Kevin Sorbo, who I last saw in Hercules, is not a fantastic
actor.
But its title is worth talking about. God is not dead. Jesus lives through resurrection,
and that is surprising and awesome. We know there is a God, and God is alive. That’s why
we can agree with what the psalmist says in psalm 53.
Psalm 53
1 Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they commit abominable acts;
there is no one who does well.
2 God looks down from heaven on humankind
to see if there are any who are wise,
who seek after God.
3 They have all fallen away, they are all alike perverse;
there is no one who does good,
no, not one.
4 Have they no knowledge, those evildoers,
who eat up my people as they eat bread,
and do not call upon God?
5 There they shall be in great terror,
in terror such as has not been.
For God will scatter the bones of the ungodly; [a]
they will be put to shame, [b] for God has rejected them.
6 O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion!
When God restores the fortunes of his people,
Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.
And we can see the psalmist point outside of the moralizing, it is foolish to say there
is no god, the resurrection is clear, still faith, but clear. In my time studying at western, and
just in vernal, most arguments I have seen are on the side of God’s existence. It’s almost
laughable to say God doesn’t exist, or at least some kind of god like being... it would be as if
all the bricks and glass in this entire building just fell into this church, without anything
guiding them, to make this church, but to say there is no God, is to say that not with the
church, but with the universe.
So why churches aren’t full, why are there empty seats? Why is the church
shrinking? If the truth is on our side, why do people not seem to care about that truth?
Like, go into any church on Easter and you can feel the truth of resurrection on that Sunday
last week, if that truth exists, what is going on in our world? How could anyone feel
that and not believe?
While, just as the high priests tried to cover up Jesus’ resurrection, and still claim
that Jesus was dead, There is more than one way beyond saying the resurrection isn’t real
to disbelieve, there is more than one way to not fall into God’s kingdom.
There is a second type of death of God the Christians especially should care about,
foolish or not, this isn’t the crucifixion, this is something different. It’s a death of disbelief.
Here let me read you something.
“Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and
ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: ‘I seek God? I seek God!’ As there were
many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of
amusement. Why! Is he lost? Said one. Has he strayed away like a child? Said another. Or
does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea-voyage? Has he
emigrated? the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub. The insane man jumped into
their midst and transfixed them with his glances. ‘Where is God gone?’ he called out. ‘I mean
to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done
it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole
horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now
move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly?
Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we
not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it
not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not
have to light lanterns in the morning? God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed
him! How shall we console ourselves. ? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has
hitherto possessed, has died under our knife—who will wipe away the blood from us? With
what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have
to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to
become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event—and on
account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history
hitherto!’—Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were
silent and looked at him in surprise. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it
broke in pieces and was extinguished. ‘I come too early,’ he then said, ‘I am not yet at the
right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling—it has not yet reached
men’s ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need
time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them
than the furthest star—and yet they have done it!”.
This is a very famous story, it’s from a philosopher who critiqued the church, and his
name is Nietzsche, do you know the English word, Nietzsche, often used in the sentence
finding your notch, finding your place, your part of the world, that word come storm his
name, and he said what he wrote here meant this, that whole point of that story was, “The
most important of more recent events—that ‘God is dead’, that the belief in the Christian
God has become unworthy of belief—already begins to cast its first shadows over Europe.”
And he wasn’t totally right, as the story says, it’s not yet, but a few world wars, this
was written close the 1900, round the same time as the model T, and he is pretty close to
right, that decline of the church is happening, albeit slowly. All 5 mainline protestant
denominations are declining. The Catholics and the Pentecostals are doing alright, but
church membership in the west is going down. How can that be when we have truth on our
side, we know Jesus was raised, we know all he said was true as we celebrated last week,
what has caused this death that we are speaking of? And that the passage I read before
seemingly predicted? Why don’t people believe? I mean we can talk about the resurrection
all we want, and how defendable and believable our faith in it is, but, it doesn’t mean
anything if people don’t care. Truth sadly is not enough, so what’s going?
Well, perplexingly, and I don’t mean this we as in awe at saint Lawrence, I mean this
we in general as the church, but what caused the death, well, we did, we have taken that
truth of Christ, and often used to be hateful, or hurtful towards what we saw as evil, or
sinful, we have been dampers instead of encouragers, we have hated instead of love, and we
have made that same God of resurrection, and justice and love that we celebrated last
Sunday, into a god of exclusion, and one that is resistible, because of what we say about
God. That forth commandment about taking the Lords name in vain, it isn’t about swearing,
it’s about saying we do something in God’s name, when it isn’t what God would want and
people who follow God have broken that commandment a whole heap. God and the church
are different, and often we say the two are the same, but the church often gets conflated
with God, and so if the church dies, that’s going to mean something for God’s worship on
this earth…. So is God dead, can this church thing be saved? Is the God we follow not
worthy?
As a congregation that just celebrated his resurrection, we know our answer, the
God we follow is worthy of worship, Jesus came back, and that despite those who said the
worship of our God is dead, we follow a God of resurrection, and that need not be so.
I was reading an article this week concerning the decline of the church, and it was
rather condescending, it was comparing the church to horse and buggy travel that was
eliminated because of the invitation and proliferation of the motor carriage… I mean the
car.
And the metaphor was clear, the God we follow is Gone, and dead, not needed
anymore, I told that story at the beginning for this reason, the article believed the church
might be the same.
But I was thinking about their comparison, nothing in essence changed about what
humanity needed in that modernization. From hoarse to car. People didn’t stop needing to
travel, it was just the mode of travel that changed, so the articles metaphor was off, it
seemed to be claiming, just as notches story was claiming, that the church, or God is no
longer necessary when in reality, humanity still needs to communion with God, and be told
about the hope of the Good news, and the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. We are carrying truth
with us.
What the problem is that the mode of how God gets communicated needs to change,
as well as how it has been said in the past.
The culture around us may look at us as church and seem to say we are hoarse and
buggies, just a smattering of older ladies and gentleman, holding on to some old ideas, led
by a younger man, with a few young adults and kids hanging on.
And Yet, there are churches, in the Presbyterian church that are successful, that
thrive, that do well, and it’s because they aren’t horse and buggies anymore, even if they are
filled with people who remember them, and it’s as if God has been resurrected in them, they
focus on Christ, on hospitality, on being kind, and they are just fine. They are great, because
the communicate what the Mary’s did to everyone, that Jesus is alive, and that God is alive,
and they know God to be.
So what are we, are we a part of that resurrection of God? Can we be, these are
important questions for us as a church and you might think No, we can’t be, I am too old,
this is all too outdated, but don’t think that is my point, this isn’t an old wine skin message,
to say we need to modernize, although we are doing that, this is a message about
resurrection.
I would remind you again, a dead man came back to life we believe, and that God is
not dead God can use us, to tell people God is alive in this spot in London, at 910 Huron
street.
Here let me read you something, I want to read you a conversation I had with
someone about this church.
And everyone here is a part of that… I didn’t just read this to build myself up, that is
a young woman, who has had her faith life turned around at this place. The worship of God
has been resurrected for her, in this place and if that can happen with one, that can happen
with many, and we can be that place. God is not dead, we believe he is alive... even in this
culture of disbelief, God can and is being resurrected... and we can be a part of that, if we get
up off our chairs and do something about it... To God be all glory honour and praise. Amen.