"Impact"
Rev. Matthew Miller
This morning kicks off what we’re calling a season of gratitude. Four weeks from today will find us at the end of our church calendar as we dedicate pledges to our annual operating budget as well as receiving three-year commitments to our Sharing the Gospel and Ourselves capital campaign. The title, of course, comes from this morning’s reading from the first letter to the church in Thessalonica. Over the course of the next five Sundays we will dive into the facets of this good news that we have been called to share and how it shapes our own commitment to the specific mission and ministry of this congregation. Today, I want us to consider the impact the church has had, and continues to have in the Albuquerque area and beyond. And it would be helpful to consider that through the lens offered to us in this letter of Paul’s to the church.
The first letter to the church in Thessalonica is considered by many scholars to be the earliest writing in Christian scripture. It’s believed to have been penned a little over a decade after the death and resurrection of Jesus and the beginnings of the church as detailed in the book of Acts. As such it gives us a glimpse into some of the tensions that have existed from the beginnings of the church and that continue to this day. “We speak,” says Paul, “not to please mortals, but to please God.” Paul recognizes that there is always a pull to shape our message and our community based on its popular appeal, rather than the gospel message. This is what marketing expert Seth Godin calls, “the race to the bottom.” As he puts it, “the problem with the race to the bottom is that you might win.” Meaning, that in chasing after popularity- the kind that is often measured in terms of names on a list, or worship attendance, or giving- to make our message and community as palatable to as many people as possible, what we will end up with is something so bland it is indistinguishable from the world around us. By contrast, pleasing God is less about appeasing some angry deity and more about faithfully reflecting the good news that has claimed our lives for something far different, far bigger, and far more interesting than our world has to offer. The danger is in equating popular with better.
The Rev. Dr. Hugh Cooper wasn’t seeking popularity when he started the Presbyterian Sanitorium. He did it because he understood that the good news of God’s love for all people calls us beyond ourselves and what serves us to see and serve those in need in our community. My guess is that it would have been easier to confine his activity to the life of this congregation, but instead he saw the influx of tuberculosis patients to this area and sought to meet their need. Presbyterian Medical Services is now the largest private employer across the state of New Mexico. This is the impact we are called to have, sharing not only the words of the gospel, the message of a love that not even death can contain, but our own selves in service to that message.
I doubt the founding mothers of A Child’s Garden were seeking popularity in starting what began as a mother’s day-out program and grew into one of the best preschools in this city. In fact, they initially faced opposition from the Session of this church in a time when women were expected to be at home with their children. But as more and more women entered the workforce, there was a need, and A Child’s Garden grew to meet it. For generations of families, A Child’s Garden has been a place of safety, nurture and growth for young children and their families, impacting their lives with a tangible sense of wonder, play, and love.
But there is another side of this. Not long ago I was going through some correspondence in my desk and came across a letter from someone upset with something that we had done. They talked about the role a church of our standing in the community should play. Which got me thinking about that phrase, “a church of our standing.” I didn’t get the sense that this person was talking about our reputation as a source of mission to the neediest of our neighbors. No, it sounded more like a claim for our social status as a place of professional middle-class respectability. You know, the kind of thing that tends to please mortals.
That has also been the impact of this congregation. Certainly, this building would not have been built without the surge of population post-World War II that brought scientists and engineers and others in support of the nuclear industry anchored by Sandia National Labs. First Presbyterian became a popular place for young single people to gather. Many met their lifelong partners here, which contributed to programs for children and then a large youth group. But as is always the case when it comes to popularity, demographics shift. Trends change. And the golden age of programmatic white mainline Protestant Christianity was never going to last, because such trends never do. The successes we create that please mortals are never sustainable, but that doesn’t seem to stop us from trying. History is littered with the discarded remains of empires from Sumaria, to Egypt, to Macedonia, to Rome, to the Maya, to Britain and on and on who have risen only to fall. The grass withers, and the flower fades.
What happens as those past successes fade is the inevitable anxiety created when what we have created comes undone. This is a story that I hear far too often. With all love and affection, I am begging us to stopping wringing our hands as we endlessly repeat a story about our shrinking congregation and diminished standing in the community, because that narrative is killing us. That is a story born of trying to please something other than God. And the fact is that we can either continue chasing empire and the respectability that comes with it, our we can seek the kingdom, the kindom, the kinship of God that draws unlikely people together and invites them to look instead to the needs of the neighbors beyond their walls; those who are overlooked and excluded, offering not only the gospel of God, but our very selves to transform the world around us with God’s love. When that is what we seek, when that is what we faithfully reflect, then our impact has less to do with what we think we should be in order to appeal to more people, and more to do with how our lives are given to something that will always be bigger and more interesting than the passing trends that may please us, but have little to do with what pleases God. We will welcome the stranger like we did with asylum seekers, and the unhoused who look to us for shelter and assistance. We will feed the hungry like we do with partners like the Rio Grande Food Project and Comida. We will give glory to God not only through worship with our excellent choir and musicians, but in partnership with the New Mexico Philharmonic and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale. This is the impact we are called to have that is pleasing to God; when we share not only the good news of a life that truly is life, but our own lives given in service to a love that cannot be contained by what others think we should be, in order to become who God is calling us to be for the sake of something so much bigger.
