WikiChurch, April 17 Palm Sunday 2011

Isaiah 50
Matthew 20:29 - 21:19
This week a piece of information was sent to me over the internet, which shocked me.
75% of all the churches Catholic, Pentecostal and Protestant did not celebrate a single baptism last year There once was a time in which the identity of America and those of the Church were synonymous. For the last 50 years, churches have been losing members faster than they had been gaining, but still we comforted ourselves in the blanket that the world was “implicitly” Christian, that people do believe. Suddenly we awake to the realization that not only does the culture not worship as we had been doing, but in many parts of our world, there is a belief that those who claim belief in God are hypocritical, insincere and out of touch with reality.

Recently a good friend was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, he was over 40 and overweight, but as we talked together we came to realize that our families have a history of Diabetes and Heart Disease, we do not get enough exercise, we enjoy comfort foods and desserts and a glass of wine, and the result is self-fulfilling. The problem cannot be solved by a quick diet, instead there needs to be a change of life. Is not this the problem of the Church? We have become a people waiting for others to come and join us. We are a people known for our meals and our fellowship, for entertainment and programs that occupy our time rather than feeding the world, and serving others.

In 1966, an Issue of TIME magazine was published that shocked the world, the cover was completely black, with the words “GOD IS DEAD”. This should have been the climactic moment of Christianity professing faith in the Resurrection, that while Human Culture had killed God, God's compassion, love and sincerity could overcome even death's ability to destroy. But instead, we accepted the headline as truth and moved on. If anything the last 50 years have professed the reality that HUMANITY IS DEAD for we have become less and less concerned with the needs of others, and more and more preoccupied with our comforts, with our food, with entertainment and activities that fill our days. Nation upon nation are rising up in revolution, claiming that The Emperor has no clothes, all that we had trusted and believed in Religion, Science, Politics and Government, Education, the Economy cannot be trusted to provide for our needs.

Just as with Type 2 Diabetes, we need a change of life style. For Diabetes, it is as simple as two things, Diet and Exercise. For Christianity, the change is also in two things, from an Internal Focus to an External Focus, and from Program Development to Nurturing People. Christ's great Commission was not that we should sit back and wait for the believers to enter our church, not that we should do faith better, but rather that we were to go out into the world to serve and disciple as he had done for us. The point of faith is not what we get out of believing, but that our lives have different meaning, different priority. Time and again as Jesus is begged by the blind and lame and children “LORD HAVE MERCY, SON OF DAVID HAVE MERCY,” in Greek: HOSANNA. Jesus never stops to ask What's in it for me? And those who were healed are not described as going home satisfied, but rather that they each followed him him serving others. The point here is not a numbers game, of how many baptisms, or members or children, but instead focusing upon serving those who are in need without reservation or concern for limitations.

Having grown up during this time, I would share with you that the Church, and by that I do NOT mean the Presbyterian Church only, but all churches, had become so afraid of connotations related to EVANGELISM, that we were afraid to say the word, referring to Evangelism as The E Word and “SALVATION” had dropped out of the Church's vocabulary all together. The Gospels each tell a different story about the life and purpose of Jesus the Christ. But in every one of the the Gospels, those who cry out for need do not cry HEAL US! Or MAKE US COMFORTABLE! Or even MAKE US SAFE! But rather SAVE US, for the path each had been living, we each have been following only leads to death.

I am told that in California, there is a church in Bel Air, that recognizes the people who live in their community are involved in the entertainment industry, in making Movies and Television shows. And what they have begun doing is screening movies and watching television shows together, then talking about them. In conversation about the themes, in conversation about the characters, these who are producing and writing and acting in the shows are being effected by talking about their faith. What if we gathered together to talk about the real circumstances in our lives? Business decisions, our fears and frustrations over our kids and our parents, the very real temptations in marriage, what it means to retire. In recent years, in this community, we have created a series of non-profit corporations, for the Manor, the Food Pantry, the Clinic in Sudan, even short-term ecumenical activities, we have made into corporations. What if we put that same ingenuity into our faith?

One of the fastest growing parts of the Internet, is WIKIPEDIA. As a child, our family had an ENCYCLOPEDIA which contained all the information and knowledge at your fingers tips. One of the earliest versions of this was even referred to as THE BOOK OF KNOWLEDGE. Wikipedia is an electronic version of the Encyclopedia. The added difference being that as INFORMATION is expanding so rapidly, instead of Britannica publishing Wikipedia, all those using the resource are able to add information to the discussion. 13,000,000 people are registered users of Wikipedia; making it the 7th most populated site in the world, in the last month alone 135,000 people have not only received information from Wikipedia, but contributed their own information to the database as well. WIKIPEDIA has become the source of All Knowledge, and has spawned specialized information sources about every topic, one of my favorites is WIKI-WOOOKIE which is knowledge about everything in Star Wars. There was of course an earlier version, before Wikipedia, called Nupedia, but Nupedia required that all information being added had to be screened and checked by a controller before being published, which slowed things down and gave the interpretation of the editors. The world today lives in a WIKI-WORLD where each is able to participate and to add to the sum of all, the world's knowledge. Rather than being pure, abstract fact, Wikipedia is very definitely influenced by the users, with the body as a whole interpreting, and redefining as information is amassed. What if the faith were to move from the comfort and stability of Committees, where we control what is appropriate and how to regulate spending, to a WIKI-CHURCH, where every person were able to add to the conversation?

For over a thousand years of the Church's history we were the authority of what is true and just and right. In a Wiki-World we give up control, we trust the amassed body as a community to self-regulate. Several years ago, this church began allowing others to use the church's resources. One of the users was the Public Schools in a program for kids who had gotten into trouble and been expelled from their regular classes. Early on in about the second year, we discovered one of the kids was trying to sell marijuana, by hiding it in the trash can underneath the liner and five other kids were the buyers. We had a member of the Church who was a NY State Trooper, who along with their Teachers and the Pastor sat down with the kids to let them know they had been caught. Six months went by when once again we found marijuana in the bathroom, that one of the students was trying to pass to another. I recall the feeling of embarrassment and fear for the future of the program, when meeting with the Session to explain what had happened. But the Session had two responses “These are kids who have had a history of getting into trouble, we have to expect things like this might happen, and they got caught, right?” and “The first time six kids were involved, this time just two, that's success!” In a Wiki-World of being the WIKI-CHURCH we give up control, of dictating how people will interact, how we will teach, and instead we learn from one another, we learn from the questions that are asked and the needs that are presented rather than trying to teacvh what we are comfortable with having known.