"Paradigm Shift" - Sermon from March 20, 2011
Listen to the sermon from March 20, 2011, "Paradigm Shift" by Rev. Dr. Larry Bethune.
The Second Sunday in Lent
March 20, 2011
“Paradigm Shift”
Psalm 12; Genesis 12:1-4; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” – Psalm 19:14Poor Nicodemus. I feel for him. I really do. Forget the sermons you’ve heard about Nicodemus being frustrated with a dead Jewish legalism that doesn’t feed his soul. The religion of the Pharisees was always about more than obedience to scripture. It was steeped in warm devotion and active compassion. Think of the Pharisees as the most religious people of their day who love God, feel close to God, urge others to do the same. Like you!And those explanations that Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night because he’s ashamed to be seen doing so? The rabbis taught that night time was the right time for sacred study because daytime distractions were laid aside. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at the prime time for spiritual seeking.And the idea that Nicodemus is “lost” and needs to be “saved?” That only makes sense in an anti-semitic context which assumes this dedicated spiritual leader is hell-bent and ignores Paul’s claim in Romans that “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26). But if the story in John 3 isn’t about the salvation of the damned, what’s going on here?I suspect as a devoted seeker after God, Nicodemus perceives God is doing something new in Jesus, and he wants to get with the program. But he’s been working the only system he knows all his life, and it’s all he knows about how to find God and love God and serve God. Losing that to something brand new, even if God is doing it, feels like dying. He has to get past his denial and grief.In 1962 Thomas Kuhn wrote an influential book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which introduced the term “paradigm shift” to describe a change in basic assumptions that occurs when one scientific theory is replaced by another - like when astronomers shifted from a Ptolemaic paradigm that assumed stars revolve around the earth to a Copernican paradigm that put the sun at the center of the solar system and the stars as other suns.Such a shift creates chaos for a while. Can you imagine? Scientists steeped in a lifetime of work in the old way resist accepting a whole new approach – even to the point of violence. I mean, thos are the guys who invented guns! They experience such change as grief, as invalidation. So the change comes slowly at first, but then there’s a sudden shift – like tectonic plates causing an earthquake – and the old way is gone forever. There is no going back to the “before” once you’ve come to the “after.” Soon after Kuhn published his book, “paradigm shift” was being used in other contexts, especially to refer to cultural changes in the way people perceive reality and choose to live.What I want to say today is that among the many changes that have happened in the last twenty years, the Church as an institution is in the midst of a paradigm shift, and its leaders in every confession, denomination, and local congregation are trying to figure out what’s going on. According to the Pew Trust, the Millennial generation has the same basic religious beliefs as their grandparents did, with one exception: they do not think church matters. More than a fourth of the Millennials have no religious affiliation whatsoever. According to the Barna group, membership in mainline churches has dropped by 20% in the last fifty years and the number of its churches has gone from 80,000 to 72,000. One third who attend them regularly are over 60. Of those who attend all churches regularly, many attend more than one church, but only one out of five thinks participation in Christian community matters to their spiritual life. New forms of religious community replace the traditional church for many - house churches, on-line groups, single interest gatherings…. But the largest statistical growth is in the number of people who affiliate with no particular church and almost never attend.I could go on, but these statistics are enough to suggest a new worldview and a new way of being church in our time. The idea of a church as a group of people in continuing commitment to one another for common weekly worship, mission, spiritual growth, religious education, and prayer is shifting. The church of the 1950’s is gone, and it is not coming back.There is a perfect storm of reasons for this shift. First are the sins of the church which made itself irrelevant with scandals, fights, and trivialities that belie and betray the gospel it proclaims. We replaced the mission of the gospel with the survival of an institution. As one pastor put it: “They asked for God, and we gave them the church.” Second is a culture which is increasingly narcissistic, materialistic, and consumer oriented. People connect with church out of personal taste and convenience rather than a sense of responsibility for other people or commitment to God. Third is the rise of social networking as people’s preferred form of relationship and community. Can you believe Facebook just started in 2003? And many millennials are abandoning it to us “fogeys” as they move to still evolving forms of electronic connection. We can critique what is lost with face-to face-friendship, but there are also great benefits to these new forms, and there is no going back.Welcome to the dinosaur barn, my friends! You are old fashioned and out of step. You are a minority, but I know this about you: it’s never bothered you to be in the minority when you thought you were right! It’s just hard for us to know how to be on that prophetic, leading, missional edge at the moment because so many of us in this room are gray hairs, you know?So I identify with old Nicodemus. I am thoroughly educated and 30 years experienced in pastoring the church of my parents and my peers. But how to pastor the church of my children? It’s a brand new project! And I have to tell you: I feel no little grief about this. Some times, it feels like dying!I was in denial about it for a long time. I blamed myself, which is a perverse form of egotism. I have to preach better sermons, be a better leader. I told myself, “People will come back to the traditional church. We just have to work harder at outreach. Austin is a progressive city and they will come to a progressive church. We have to get the word out! We’re the best kept secret in Austin.” Then I saw: we’re not that big a secret and we’re not the only progressive church telling ourselves that, either. The truth is, progressives aren’t joining churches these days, and progressive churches aren’t the only ones wrestling with these changes.I have come to believe the capital “C” Church in the United States is experiencing a paradigm shift. Some people want to say the Church as an institution is dying and God will judge our nation for it. Others will tell you the Church is dying, and – good riddance - it needs to die. But I believe God is behind all this and the outcome will be good.There have been other paradigm shifts in the history of the church, earthquakes of different magnitudes. Not long after Pentecost, when Gentiles got included in the gospel. The aftershocks are all over the New Testament, but we don’t hear it because we live so long in the “after.” Constantine making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The breakup of the medieval synthesis, the Protestant Reformation, The Council of Trent, Vatican Two, the rise of the Baptists (oh my!), the explosion of Third World Christianity…. It’s happened before. The Church as they knew it died. God’s Church rose again. Isn’t that what the Church is supposed to do?“You must be born again,” Jesus tells Nicodemus. “You can’t control the winds of God’s Spirit.” Nicodemus can grieve the good old days, all his investment in a way of approaching God. It wasn’t wasted, but it isn’t coming back. It’s time to die to that, so he can rise again. Writes Marcus Borg:This is what the season of Lent is about, about being born again, about following the path of death and resurrection…. Some of us may need to die to specific things in our lives—perhaps to a behavior that has become destructive or dysfunctional, perhaps to a relationship that has ended or gone bad, perhaps to an unresolved grief or to a stage in our life that it is time to leave, perhaps to our self-preoccupation, or even to a deadness in our lives (you can die to deadness.) It is possible to leave the land of the dead. So, the journey of Lent is about being born again--about dying and rising, about mortality and transformation. When you think of it, who of us does not yearn for this? Abraham is led by God’s Spirit to launch out in a new direction, to risk leaving the familiar behind. Paul says it was a resurrection faith. God still calls us to risk dying in order to live.I think the Church is dying in order to be born again, and I can’t tell you exactly what that will look like in twenty years. But I have a few ideas about what we need to do now. Be faithful. Focus on our mission to proclaim a gospel that includes everybody, be a face-to-face community of joy and friendship to all who come, feed the hungry, care for the poor, advocate boldly for justice over greed, and in this place call students to walk with us in learning what it means to be Christian. I think we should not worry so much about survival as we do the mission of loving people in Jesus’ name. Trust God with the rest.For twenty three years I’ve had people ask me, “How are things at UBC?” I never know how to answer. I’m just too close to the challenges we face, I suppose. But also aware of the amazing things God has done among us. So years ago I took to this answer: University Baptist Church is dying – and rising!” Beloved, it’s happening once more. We need to be born again. You coming along? May we pray?Guide us God, beyond grief, beyond idolatry, beyond focus on the past to a new day and a new way to proclaim the eternal truth of your abiding love for every person and your call to us all to care for one another. By the power of your Spirit, renew the church and bring peace among all who follow your name through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.