Quo Vadis?

September 11, 1988

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Quo Vadis? It’s a strange title for a sermon, I must admit...not even English.

Before the Latin aficionados in the congregation get hold of me, let me say quickly I know the phrase originally referred to Jesus, and the verb is second person, singular....present indicative. In the original it was supposedly what Simon Peter asked the Lord when the Risen Christ appeared to Him outside of Rome that day....

The Big Fisherman was fleeing persecution at the hands of the Romans...this was when Nero was Caesar....He was fleeing for his life, down the Appian Way, when he saw a vision of the Lord, it was said, resolutely, steadfastly plodding back into the city. They were traveling, as had happened more than once with Peter, in opposite directions.

 “Quo vadis, Domine?”, Peter is reported to have asked. “Whither goest thou, Lord?”

And Jesus just looked at him for a moment, gazed deeply into his eyes, with that chilling look Peter had seen so many times, and then He said quietly, “I am going into Rome to be crucified again.”

Whereupon Peter, stung and chastened, spun on his heels, and returned to the city, to his post and his destiny.

That’s the story.[1]

It’s the question, though, that I want us to lift out and consider. Quo vadis? It’s the question I’d like to ask today of our church, and by “Church”, right now, I mean this congregation. “Quo vadis, ecclesia?” Where are you going, Church?

In what direction do you see yourself heading? What is your vision, your goal, your dream of what lies ahead out there in the dim unknown?

Quo vadis?

We have a new committee in the church. Nothing very surprising about that, I suppose. Methodists are forever, incessantly, congenitally forming new committees. If we had as many converts as we have committees...well, that’s another story. But this is a very special committee, this new committee. It really is. It’s a blue-ribbon committee, made up of some talented, committed people, who represent a genuine cross-section of the congregation. There are some old members, some new members, some men, some women, some veterans, some youth...and for want of a better name, we’re calling it for now a long-range planning committee.

Maybe we can come up with a name that emits a little more pizzazz, but the intent is that this group as our representatives will take a good, honest, realistic, careful, daring, creative, faith-filled look at who we are and what we need to be about as His people set down here in Winter Park, in Orange County, in the State of Florida over the next decade, or 2,3,5 decades down the road.

What really is our identity, our mission, our calling, our purpose... Where are you going, Church? Quo vadis?

The committee will have its first meeting next week. Will you be praying for it as it meets that first time to begin and then continue its deliberations?

And will you give me permission this morning to try to make some personal input into that formulative process?

This seems like a good time to do it. Today is Christian Education Sunday....Labor Day is over....it’s the fall of the year again, almost. School has started... a time of new, fresh push after vacations.

I’ve had the privilege of being here now 2 full years, plus a summer, long enough to get some feel for the makeup and personality of the Church. I think you trust me enough to let me be honest and candid with you. This seems like a propitious moment to offer at least some elements of my own vision of our place and purpose.

What I have is only a beginning, not a neatly wrapped, definitive package... wouldn’t that be an arrogant way to approach the Almighty....

But I offer it as a start, as grist for the committee’s mill, and as a stimulus to help us all together think about where we’re going and what we want to be as the Body of Christ, the people of God, the “ecclesia”, the “royal priesthood”, as 1st Peter calls it, the Church of Jesus, in one of the most strategic places, and in one of the most exciting and perilous moments of Christian history.

My vision of where we’re going has to begin with a quick, but penetrating look at the past. There is no way a Church....or a nation or a person, for that matter... but certainly no way a Church can plot its course ahead without knowing where it has been, where it came from.

This congregation, to be true to itself, and even to have a future, must never forget that its roots are sunk in the Bible, which includes the New AND the Old Testaments—the full cosmic story.

Its roots are sunk in the Primitive Church, with its catholic (small “c”) understanding of its calling and its mission.

Its roots are sunk as well in the Protestant recovery of the Biblical truth, and in the rich, vibrant Wesleyan heritage, and in the American Methodist experience of the frontier, with its emphasis on evangelism, Scriptural holiness, and a concern for the welfare of one’s neighbor.

Wow! What a heritage! This is who we are.

It’s these streams, and others, of course, coming from way back, which have borne us here, and we acknowledge readily and gratefully our indebtedness to our spiritual ancestors.

It means as He fashions our dreams, that we don’t just start in a vacuum. We are, and will continue to be, a United Methodist Church, unapologetically so, a part of historic, mainstream Christianity.

What does it imply? Well, it implies, on a rather obvious level, that we affirm as United Methodists a commitment to the United Methodist way of doing things. We don’t regard that way as sacrosanct, we don’t make a fetish out of it, but we do regard it as useful and worth preserving.

We think it’s good for us to be a CONNECTIONAL Church, to be joined by ties of commitment and structure to others of like mind around the globe. We think it’s good that our ministers are appointed---not just called by the local congregation.

Methodist preachers don’t belong to the local church; they belong to the Annual Conference, a practice which not only provides a flexible strategy, but makes for a wonderfully free and independent pulpit.

You can’t fire the preacher, technically, because he doesn’t work for you, technically, though, admittedly, you can get him sent somewhere else pretty quickly, if you’ve of a mind to.

We even think in our hearts, though I may not get unanimity of agreement here...we even think in our hearts that it’s good to have apportionments---no matter how much we despise the word---because we know that what it really means is sharing together, cooperatively, to reach out in helpful love and service to the world.

THIS IS WHO WE ARE. Some of this organizational heritage that has come down to us may conceivably crumble some time out there, but I doubt much of it will change in our lifetimes. It’s part of the given within which we make our plans, and dream our dreams, and we find the harness while occasionally chafing, on the whole comfortable enough.

BUT THAT DOESN’T TELL US ENOUGH ABOUT WHO WE ARE. The heritage that bestows our definitive identity is bigger than that. We are conscious somehow of being a people caught up in a great cosmic drama......And it’s the drama, and the caughtness, and the greatness of it all that gives us our identity.

Just by ourselves, frankly, humanly speaking, frankly, we’re a pretty motley crew. If that doesn’t sound much like a compliment, at least it’s not meant to be derogatory. Because this is precisely what defines us.

The Church, humanly, speaking, has always been a pretty motley crew. The first disciples were a motley crew....fishermen, tax gatherers....who would have thought it?

The initial followers of John Wesley were a motley crew....The Circuit Riders in 18th and 19th Century frontier America were about as motley a crew as were ever assembled in a common enterprise.

There used to be a rainy day saying in the Ohio Valley in the early 1800’s, “There ain’t nothin’ out in this kind of weather but frogs, crows, and Methodist preachers...”

That’s motley.

THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE CHURCH WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT FROM THE BOTTOM-----made up of a wild variety of people, of varying shapes and sizes, of varying degrees of talent, of varying temperaments...most ordinary, commonplace, erratic, even sinful... SURE, but by the grace of God, FORGIVEN. That’s the only thing that makes the difference.

THIS IS WHO WE ARE...This is what the Church is all about, what it’s always been all about, and what it will always be all about when it’s true to itself---not an exclusive club, not an elite society, in fact, the qualification requirement for membership in the Church of Jesus Christ consists of being unqualified... isn’t that wonderful news?.... But that’s exactly the basis of the Church’s acceptance... for all of us.

I know I’m not worthy of what God in Christ has done for me. I know I don’t deserve it. But precisely for that reason, I want to belong to His Church and give it my best, to show my gratitude, and to share with others what He’s done for me.

This is who we are humanly speaking, not much to write home about... or as 1st Peter puts it, “Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people....”, people set apart, not by achievement, but because we’re conscious somehow that God has laid His hand on us, and is making us into something more.

Where are we going? It comes out of who we are. AND THERE’S MORE TO OUR HERITAGE. We are a people chosen... we are a people in DEBT. This is who we are. This is what our worship is all about. We worship as the people of God, as United Methodist people, in the awesome awareness that in Jesus Christ God has done something tremendous that has totally altered human destiny.

They tell the story at Princeton University about Albert Einstein and the splitting of the first atom during the 2nd World War. He was in charge of the Physics Lab on the campus, where he had been working with a special group of scientists on atomic energy.

When the announcement came by telegram from Chicago that some of his colleagues there using the Princeton research had successfully, for the first time in history, split a uranium atom and started a chain reaction (fission), that would be the basis for the first atom bomb.....when that announcement arrived, Albert Einstein, the little giant of physics, climbed up on a table in the middle of the lab, waved the telegram in his hand excitedly, and called out to his fellow workers in his clipped, German accent, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, listen to me. Now EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.”

That’s the mood in which the Church at its best comes to worship. This is who we are---the people who know that because of what God has done in Christ, now everything has changed. We worship in the consciousness that a cataclysmic event took place one day 2000 years ago on a little hill outside the city of Jerusalem in the Middle East, when the power of God and the power of evil collided in mortal combat... and the power of God prevailed.

It’s a big, big thing, my friends, an enormously big thing that stands at the heart of our Faith. It’s hard to worship casually, lightly, flippantly when the significance of that event, for YOU, gets inside your skin and bones.

THIS IS WHO WE ARE, the people who acknowledge the cosmic nature of that event, who keep it central in our worship, and never far from our life and prayers.

Where are we going? It comes out of who we are. AND THERE’S STILL MORE. A part of the heritage includes a commitment to the best in Christian Education. Wherever we go, we must take that with us, because it’s always been there. It was there from the start.........the Jewish father telling his children about the miracle of Passover...Jesus, teaching the 12 how to pray....John Wesley, starting Sunday Schools across England....this is our heritage.

I’m glad today is Christian Education Sunday. I applaud it, and I join in paying tribute to these Sunday School teachers, and counselors, and secretaries, and helpers, and all the rest who comprise our Christian Education team.

We believe that no Church can be a great Church in which there is a separation of the nurture of the heart from the nurture of the mind. They go together because they belong together. In the God we worship, truth and goodness are one. We are not afraid of truth, wherever it comes from, it is real truth, because we worship the God of Truth.

We don’t fear science, real science, because we believe real science, at bottom, or at top, is God’s science. WE BELIEVE, INDEED, THAT THE CHRISTIAN DISCIPLE HAS A MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE AS INTELLGIENT AS HE CAN BE, JUST AS SURELY AS HE HAS A MORAL OBLIGATION TO BE AS GOOD AS HE CAN BE.

A part of our inheritance is a commitment to enlightened truth. We believe our United Methodist materials reflect that. Others have good materials; but nobody has better ones. Our materials teach the Bible, and they teach it from a perspective which is mature, and Christian and balanced, a perspective which is neither narrowly fundamentalist, nor frivolously condescending.

They teach it on an appropriate level for every age group, from the youngest infant to the oldest retiree.

Where are we going? It comes out of who we are. We are a people with a heritage which combines into a seamless fusion the warm heart and the lighted mind, conversion and education, experience and nurture, faith and learning, the kind of vital union, that when it’s alive and pulsating can both enlighten AND warm a community, and at its living best can turn it inside out.

And I’ve got to hurry now. There’s more YET. A big hunk of our heritage, a profound part of our understanding of who we are, an integral part of the nature of the Church of Jesus Christ at its best is a burning compassion for persons, both within and beyond the flock.

When the Church is what it’s meant to be, what it’s called to be, there is a pressing commitment for caring for its own. THIS is who we are when we’re on target. God knows that in our midst, within our membership there are those who are lonely, and afraid, and perplexed, and burdened... there are those who are racked with mourning, there are those who feel totally abandoned. There are so many, more, I suspect, than WE suspect. Someone has said that anybody today who goes around looking for trouble just isn’t paying attention. It’s everywhere, and you can’t scratch the surface of a single family without finding it. How our hearts go out right now to Loise and the daughters, in this time of sadness, yet celebration over the homecoming of Phil.

I’d love to see us be able to have a minister of pastoral care on our staff, someone specifically trained in the healing arts, in Christian counseling... someone with sharply attuned listening skills who could be available to talk and share and just be with people when they were hurting....AND who could help sensitize all of us to be more open, more responsive, more alert to what’s really going on around us. Because the Church at its best is a healing community.

That’s who we are.

We can probably survive inadequate theology....we can get by, maybe, with inferior music, though I sure hope we never have to, we can limp along, I suppose, with incomplete organization, but where there is a lack of simple caring, an indifference to need, a coldness of heart, there is really no hope for more than a slow, lingering death.

I like the song, the theme in the T.V. program “Cheers”, where one of the lines goes, “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” That’s right. We all want that. I just wish that song had been written about the Church instead of about a tavern.

A healing community, a sensitive community, a community of caring....this is our heritage, coming from way back. This is who we are.

And it follows....it has to follow----Accompanying that concern WITHIN the flock, we are only ourselves, our true selves, when there is a comparable sensitivity to need BEYOND the walls... No church can be really Christian which is not generously, sacrificially, even extravagantly reaching out to those to whom it does NOT have a primary responsibility.

Missions is the word we usually give to it, but to be accurate and faithful to the New Testament, we ought to knock the “s” of the end of that word. We ought not to talk about “missions”, with an “s” at all. It’s not big enough.

Missions, with an “s” sounds like a potential elective, it sounds like an activity among others, it sounds like something we DO. But it’s deeper than that. We don’t support missions; WE ARE IN MISSION. We can’t be followers of Christ any other way. It’s built into our identity because God Himself is the Great Missionary and we are His people.

The Church, Emil Brunner said, “exists for mission as a fire exists for burning.” THIS IS WHO WE ARE.

It means, if we are true to our heritage, that the budget of the Church will have to reflect Gospel priorities. It means that the goal ought to be spending as much on others as we do on ourselves. It means we’ll remember that the Church is not at heart a money making institution at all... sometimes it’s not, anyway....BUT AT HEART it’s not a money making institution—it’s a GIVING institution, by calling and by definition.

It means when we know who we are, and whose we are, we’ll rejoice not in what we receive, but in what we’re able to spend, not in what we get, but in what, therefore, we are able to give, not in our assets, but in our service.

Any congregation with a large savings account needs to justify it... for the purpose of INCOME in the Church is OUTGO...for people, for the good of people... people for whom its Lord lovingly laid down His life.

They had a contest in a Church one time to see who could best represent artistically a dying Church. A lot of people entered. There were a lot of creative ideas. Most of the entries were pictures of dilapidated buildings, with cracked windows, and battered doors, sagging foundations, and roofs with gaping holes in them.

The judges finally picked the entry submitted by a teenage girl. She had painted an immaculate church building, freshly painted and spotless....The grass out front was mowed, the shrubbery was neatly clipped.

The front door was wide open and inviting.... But there in the vestibule on a table festooned with flowers was a mission box, and over the hole where the people’s mission money was to be dropped, there was a thick cobweb.

I’d consider being known as the pastor of a mission-minded Church the highest compliment I could receive. It’s not only a right, and Christian, it’s practical. Charles L. Allen says if he were sent to a Church which was heavily in debt, the first thing he would do would be to start a missionary campaign. I believe he’s right.

When people start giving for others, and do it systematically and generously, the local needs take care of themselves.

THIS IS WHO WE ARE.....GOD’S PEOPLE, chosen, forgiven, empowered, trained, sent out, to care and serve.

Our purpose is in our identity.....our map for the future emerges from our heritage.

Where are we going? Quo vadis? I never have gotten there, have I? The time has run out, and the sermon’s not over.

But I remember what Hendrick Craemer said. He was a famous Dutch theologian, no longer living now. He wrote a number of books, some on the mission of the Church, one especially challenging book entitled “The Theology of the Laity.” I have it in my library.

During the Nazi occupation of his beloved Holland, a group of Christian churchmen from a local Lutheran congregation came to him to ask his help with an ethical dilemma.

What about the Jews in our parish, they asked. We’ve been hiding some of them in our homes. We’ve been shuttling them from place to place among us. So far not one has been discovered.

But the Nazis know they’re there. And now they have given us an ultimatum. Turn them in, or they will send us to the concentration camp. We want to be Christian. What should we do?

Hendrick Kraemer said, “I can’t tell you what you should do. But I can tell you who you are.”

Our long range planning committee begins its work next week. Quo vadis, Domine?, said Simon Peter, fleeing from Roman persecution. Where are you going, Lord?

And Jesus just looked at him, looked at him, until his searing eyes burned into his soul. “I’m going back into Rome to be crucified again.”

And Simon knew who he was, and therefore what he must do.

Well....?

--

[1] This story is not from our Bible, but is considered part of the Christian tradition.  It is told in the apocryphal Acts of Peter.