One of the sad realities of life in the Church is that, from time to time, we lose people from the Church. It is always sad when that happens, but it does happen, and when it does, it usually happens in one of three ways. We can lose people from the Church for unavoidable reasons, such as when people die. That’s always sad of course, but what’s even more sad, in a sense, is when we lose people for avoidable reasons. We know that happens too because we all know that we lose people from the Church because of disagreements and arguments between members of the Church. And the reason losing people for that reason is so sad is that, in effect, we’ve lost those people because we Christians have failed to do the very thing we’re called to do above all else; we’ve failed to love one another as we should. And the third way we tend to lose people from the Church is when they freely choose to be lost.
That happens when people decide that they simply don’t want to come to Church or be part of the Church any longer and, in one sense, people leaving the Church for this reason is perhaps the saddest reason of all to lose them. That’s because people usually decide to leave the Church in this way for one of two reasons, but whichever reason it is, it’s a freely taken decision that has eternal consequences for them.
People leave the Church in this way because they’ve lost or renounced their faith; they no longer believe in God or believe that Jesus is their Lord and Saviour. And people also make the decision to leave the Church simply because they’ve not really understood what being a member of the Church and being a Christian means or involves. People don’t actually say that’s why they’ve left the Church, I’ve never heard anyone say that, in fact, but what they do say is, and what tells us why they’ve really left the Church, is usually something along the lines of, ‘I just wasn’t getting anything out of it anymore.’ And I’m sure we’ve all heard people say that and give that as a reason for leaving the Church.
The obvious answer to that statement of course is to say that you get out what you put in and to ask, or wonder, what they were putting in, either to the Church, or their Christian discipleship, or either.
But I think we have to take a step back from that question before we ask it, and ask what people actually expect to get out of coming to Church and being a Christian.
The statement itself, that people aren’t getting anything out of it anymore, tells us that, whatever it is people expected to get from coming to Church and being a Christian is something they felt that they were getting at some time. And in my experience of talking to people about this issue, that’s true, they did. But what they were getting really amounts to not much more than a nice feeling.
However they’ve got these feelings, and there are lots of things about Church life and being a Christian that can and do give people these feelings, they’re usually about pleasure and enjoyment. People have told me that they like going to Church because their friends go or because they’ve made new friends there. They’ve told me going to Church is a nice way to spend Sunday morning. People have told me that going to Church has made them feel that the world isn’t such a bad place and life isn’t so bad after all. People have told me that they’ve gone to Church so that they can feel good about themselves, because going to Church made them feel that they were nice people. In fact, one person whom I knew once told me that he didn’t like my sermons because they asked too much of people. He told me that that people didn’t go to Church to be taught that they needed to be better, but to be told that they were good enough already. That they wanted to go home feeling good about themselves, they didn’t want to have their consciences pricked and go home feeling that they’ve not been very good. But, as I pointed out to that chap, one of the main reasons we come to Church is to learn; to learn about Jesus and from Jesus so that we can be better Christians, so that we can be more like Jesus. We’re not going to do that if we try to hide our faults and failings, if we turn a deaf ear to what Jesus said, simply so that we can feel good about ourselves and about the way we are, regardless of the way we are.
In my experience, it’s people who have gone to Church to get these nice, warm, fuzzy feelings about themselves and to have those feelings in their lives, who are the same people who are likely to stop going to Church when those feelings stop, and who then say that they weren’t getting anything out of it anymore.
Now, I’m not saying by any means that going to Church shouldn’t be a nice experience, of course it should. Going to Church shouldn’t be all misery and doom and gloom; we’re a Resurrection people, and we should be joyful. But neither should going to Church, nor can going to Church, be all about having nice feelings about ourselves.
We come to Church to worship God and to praise the Lord for all that he’s done for us, and that is joyful, and should be joyful. But we also come to ask his forgiveness for our sins, for the times when we know that we’ve done wrong and been less than we know we should be as disciples of Christ. And we come to learn too, to learn about Jesus and from Jesus so that we can be better. So that we can be more like the people we’re called to be as his disciples. And in the Christian life, as in any other area of life, one of the very best ways to learn is through our mistakes; by looking at what we’ve done wrong and then learning how not to make those mistakes again in the future. But we can’t do that unless we’re open and honest about our mistakes. We can’t learn if we won’t or can’t accept that we need to learn. But we also have to accept that being open and honest about our mistakes, about our sins, means that, sometimes, we’re not going to be able to have those nice, warm, fuzzy feelings about ourselves. We have to accept that, in order to learn, we’re going to have to see ourselves as we really are, ‘warts and all’, and that isn’t going to be a particularly nice feeling. But, if we’re serious about coming to Church and about our Christian discipleship, that’s what we have to do. And so we have to accept that coming to Church isn’t simply about having nice feelings and that we shouldn’t expect it to be simply about that either.
Today, as we know, is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and Lent is that time of the Church’s year when we’re called at more than any other time to be honest about our faults and failings and about our sins. It’s the time of the Church’s year when we’re called at more than any other time to look at ourselves honestly, not as we’d like to be or as we’d like to think we are, but as we really are, as wayward people who are need of teaching, and as sinners in need of forgiveness. It might not be nice, it won’t give us good or nice feelings about ourselves, but it’s very necessary if we’re going to grow in faith and discipleship. And it’s very important that we grow in faith and discipleship if we’re ever going to get anything worthwhile out of coming to Church and being Christians.
We could well ask those who leave the Church because they’re not getting anything out of it anymore, what it is, or was, they put in. But what about us? What are we prepared to put in?
One thing that we all hope to get out of coming to Church and being a Christian is to share in Christ’s resurrection and when we have to leave the Church on earth when our earthly lives come to an end, to be raised to eternal life. But are we prepared to put in what Jesus tells us it takes to achieve that? Are we prepared to accept our faults and failings and learn from Jesus to achieve that? Are we prepared to see ourselves as sinners in need of forgiveness to achieve that? Are we prepared to go through the discomfort of doing those things for the sake of an eternal reward, or would we rather feel nice and good about ourselves now, at the risk of losing that eternal reward? Let’s think about these things as we go through this season of Lent, and make sure that we make the right choice, the one that will lead us to eternal happiness.
Amen.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 