"Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us."
That line, from today's Epistle reading, is either one of the most supremely egotistical statements in all of scripture, or it is an open invitation to participate in the deepest mystery of our faith. Pretty big either/or, isn't it?
I mean, at first blush, this really does look like an egotistical statement. Who in the world does Paul think he is, holding himself up as the prime example of the spiritual life, drawing attention to himself as the one everybody should imitate if they want to be a good Christian? How in the name of heaven does he get off with such egotism?
But I think it only takes a moment's reflection to realize that Paul is not really being egotistical here, even if it does look like it at first. When Paul invites sisters and brothers in Christ to imitate him, it isn't really himself he's drawing attention to. What Paul wants people to imitate is not him in himself, but the way he strives to be like Jesus. Only a few verses before our reading today, Paul had said "For Christ's sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." What Paul wants to draw attention to is not himself, but the striving to be like Jesus, the sharing in Jesus' death and resurrection, the divine energy that comes into our lives through the Holy Spirit when we give ourselves to Jesus as our Teacher and our Savior. That's what Paul himself is trying to be all about, and that's what Paul is inviting other people to come and share. The "imitation" that Paul talks about here is really the imitation of Christ, not the imitation of Paul, and it's the being-like-Jesus that Paul wants people to see and join in him. And joining in being like Jesus, joining in communion with Jesus, is the deepest mystery of our faith.
And for Paul, calling people to be like him in being like Jesus was not just a matter of personal devotion--it was the way the church worked. Paul's whole ministry was built around helping people become active in ministry as he was active in ministry, as Jesus was active in ministry. When Paul was traveling on his missionary journeys, his standard way of planting a new church was to come into a town, find out if there was a synagogue--or, if there was no synagogue, if there was a communal place of prayer--and then go to that prayer place and begin to teach the people about Jesus. With those who were interested, he would form the nucleus of a community, and around that nucleus he'd gather more people, and he would teach them. He'd teach them the story of Jesus, and the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the teachings of Jesus; he'd teach them about the Holy Spirit, and the gifts of wisdom and knowledge and faith the Spirit would give them, and the fruits of love and joy and peace the Spirit would grow in them; he'd teach them how to pray and how to baptize and how to make Eucharist. And as soon as the people started to grasp those things, Paul would have them do it: Paul would have the people start teaching and preaching and gathering others and baptizing and making Eucharist. Paul would build up his church communities by leading them, especially by leading them in how to be leaders. And then, after a year or eighteen months, Paul would turn the leadership over to the people, and Paul would move on, he'd go to another town and start a new church there. Paul would say "You're in charge now; if you need anything, write me a letter and I'll write back; I'm good with letters--but you're in charge now." Paul's pattern of ministry was to help people become ministers and then get them up and running doing ministry of their own. When Paul called brother and sister Christians to imitate him, it wasn't just his devotion he was talking about, it was his ministry: Paul wanted his fellow Christians to understand that ministry is all about helping others to be ministers. Paul believed--and Paul taught others to believe--that the church is a community of ministers who gather together to support each other, and mentor each other, and challenge each other, and stretch each other, and encourage each other, and pray for each other, in doing their ministries. Paul and his followers saw the church as the place where ministers are empowered to minister.
And that was the basic pattern of church life from Paul's time through the next four centuries. It was that pattern of church life--gathering people to teach them to minister and then sending them out to do it--that pattern of church life that caused the church to grow so fast, that caused the church to spread so rapidly throughout the entire Roman Empire. It was that pattern of church life that made the early church such a vital, vibrant, uncontainable, sometimes contentious, deeply faithful reality.
But then something changed. Somehow the pattern of church life that Paul got started, and that Paul called other Christians to imitate, got turned inside out. Historians point to several different factors; but what happened in a nutshell was this: the church came to be seen, not as a community of ministers gathered to support each other's ministries, but as one minister around whom gathered a group of people who needed ministry. The extended church came to be seen as a hierarchy of ministers who did ministry for the benefit of a largely passive laity. One metaphor for this was the metaphor of the pastor and the flock, the shepherd and the sheep. The minister was the shepherd, who took care of the people, who were the sheep. That is a very ancient metaphor--it goes back to Jesus himself--and it says some important things about the church. But it's not the only metaphor, and it doesn't say everything about the church that needs to be said. The problem with the minister and the people being like shepherd and sheep, is that sheep never learn to take care of themselves. Sheep never grow up into being shepherds. Sheep can never imitate the shepherd and start reaching out to gather others into shepherding of their own. Or we might make the same point in more contemporary language: most people today think of churches as places where where religious consumers gather to receive religious goods and services that are marketed to them by a professional religious provider. That metaphor has a lot of truth in it. But the problem is that consumers very rarely become providers--and many providers have a vested interest in keeping the consumers consuming. It sets up a kind of great gulf fixed between ministers and people--and that is the very opposite of Paul's kind of church, where all the people are the ministers, where leading and following and providing and consuming are circulated and exchanged and shared among them all.
And where Paul's pattern of church helped spread the faith throughout the entire classical known world, the clergy-provider/people-consumer pattern of church is, I believe, running out of steam. The mainline churches, steeped in this pastor/people model, are in decline all around our country. The Episcopal Church is in marked decline, having lost maybe a million members over the past thirty years; The Diocese of Minnesota is in precipitous decline, our membership shrinking, churches closing, while the general population of Minnesota has been growing; here at St George's, in 2006 we had about a fifteen percent drop in average Sunday attendance since 2005. Fifteen percent. It is difficult and painful to say so, but the way we have done church for hundreds and hundreds of years, the way we've done church during the lifetimes of everyone here--that way of doing church will not serve us well as we move forward into the 21st century, the third millenium of the church's life. We need to find a new way.
Or we need to rediscover an ancient way, Paul's way, the way of imitating each other in imitating Jesus in doing ministry, the way of being a community of ministers who gather together to support and encourage each other in doing our ministries.
What would that look like for St George's? What would it look like if we really believed that the main reason we came together was so that each of us could bring forth our passions, our ideas, our longings, our gifts, our senses of being called to do something, and find in each other the support and encouragement and shared resources to go ahead and do those things? What would it look like if we believed, not that the church had a ministry, and people had to be recruited to fill the slots in the church's work, but that the people had ministries, and the church was here to help them figure out how to do them?
What would it look like? I think we're starting to see what it would look like with the brainstorming group that's come out of the "Listening Into The Future" conference a few weeks ago, where people are coming together just to toss around new and innovative ideas for how St George's can share itself with the community. I think we see it in the folks who want to brighten up the narthex, the entryway, and who put out sheets of newsprint for people to share their ideas and their suggestions. I think we see it in Mary Poulsen and Maurine Bernier starting a prayer shawl ministry, because they want to knit and people want to pray and it seems like a great way to put them together. I think we see it in the pastoral care group, where people who have gifts for one-on-one pastoral ministry are being trained to go out and visit parishioners in a way we used to think only the clergy could do. I think we see it in the ISAIAH In-Reach follow-up, where a group of people are talking about ways St George's can grow as a learning congregation, offering education and formation for children and youth and adults and everyone. All of these ministry ideas are not things that are coming from some committee or from the Vestry or from me, but are coming from ideas and callings and passions bubbling up from people, who connect with other people, who find inspiration and empowerment to do what they feel called to do. All of these things are examples of how our church can be a community of ministers who gather together to support and encourage each other in doing our ministries.
I think that is the kind of church we are called to be. I think we're beginning to become that kind of church. I think we have a long way yet to go, much to learn about shared leadership, much to risk in getting used to coming forth with our own ideas rather than waiting for "the leaders" to come up with ideas, new habits to build of volunteering our own projects rather than waiting to be recruited for "official" church projects. We have a long way to go, but I think we are becoming more the kind of church that Paul envisions the church to be. I think we at St George's are ready to hear these words from Paul's epistle speak directly to us today:
"Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved."