The Rev. Keri T. Aubert       1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 10-16

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont Psalm 133

June 21, 2009 2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Proper 7, Year B, RCL     Mark 4:35-41

Maybe you’re heard about the new, sinister, and highly contagious syndrome making its way from the Americas over the ocean and around the globe. No, I don’t mean swine flu. What I’m talking about is Twitter.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Twitter, let me try to describe it to you. According to Wikipedia, “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users—known as followers—who have subscribed to them.”[i] In other words, a person sends short messages, which get routed to other people who have signed up to receive their messages. Messages can be sent or received several ways, for example, via the Twitter website or using cell phones. It’s all about sharing brief information quickly with large numbers of people.

When I first learned about Twitter, I immediately dismissed it as a waste of time. I still don’t really get it, but I found myself reconsidering my Twitter attitude this week, with news of the election in Iran. Consider this report from ABC News: “An opposition activist spreads word of an upcoming protest in the streets of Tehran. Another posts pictures of clashes between demonstrators and police. As Iran’s government cracks down on traditional media after the country’s disputed presidential election, tech-savvy Iranians have turned to the microblogging site Twitter. Its use to organize and send pictures and messages to the outside world—in real time as events unfolded—was a powerful example of how such tools can overcome government attempts at censorship.”[ii]

This reminded me of a story last month in Time magazine about the use of Twitter by churches.[iii] What threw me was the part about using Twitter during worship services. Let me try to describe for you what that might look like. Imagine that each of you has a laptop computer or a cell phone. Imagine a huge screen set up over my left shoulder. Imagine that throughout the service you all send messages to one another that also pop up on the screen. Imagine what you might post during the sermon: “What’s she talking about?” “I’m sleepy…” “I can’t wait for coffee hour!”

I’m kidding, but the thought of Twitter in church really does make me feel anxious. We live in a high-tech, high-speed world. For me, and perhaps for you, church is a welcome respite from it all. But while I cringe at the thought of Twitter in church, I also wonder whether we can afford to ignore the trends it reflects. In the competition with secular interests for limited time and resources, churches seem to be losing ground. Of immediate importance to us, Episcopal churches throughout the state are slowly shrinking. At the end of our history event two weeks ago, people expressed anxiety about this church’s ability to survive the cultural changes that surround it. I agree that we have many reasons to be concerned. But I am also convinced that the situation is not as hopeless as it might sometimes appear.

In the portion of the Gospel of Mark leading up to today’s reading, a crowd has been following Jesus everywhere. I’m not convinced that the members of such a crowd are really after Jesus, at least not Jesus exactly. I suspect that what they really want is a solution to the problems plaguing their lives, and they have heard that Jesus is performing miracles. Seeking a respite from the demands of such a crowd, Jesus suggests that his disciples join him in crossing the Sea of Galilee. In doing so they leave the crowd behind, but their crossing is soon interrupted by a great windstorm. Jesus confidently sleeps on, while the disciples become convinced that they will soon drown. The disciples wake Jesus, who not only calms the storm but also thereby further reveals the extent of his power. That’s where today’s story ends, but let’s go on a bit farther. In the following passages of Mark’s gospel, Jesus and the disciples complete their crossing, and Jesus cures a man possessed by demons. Jesus and the disciples then cross back, and a great crowd again gathers around Jesus.

Let’s think about the arc of events as a whole. In all this, Jesus temporarily removes himself from the crowd, but he never permanently disengages from it; Jesus’ healing ministry is shaped by and conducted through the members of the crowd. The time-out for renewal includes a period of chaos, but the chaos provides a channel for the breaking through of the Holy. I think this is important for us to hear. We are the living disciples who now with Jesus both minister to the crowd and retreat to the boat. As a community, we are called to engage with the demands of a world that still needs us, but we find our respite here in this sometimes chaotic church. Engagement with the world won’t always be easy; life inside these walls won’t always be easy. But hard times provide particular opportunities for the revealing of God through Christ.

We frequently hear that evangelical megachurches keep growing, while mainline Protestant churches keep dying. In her book Christianity for the Rest of Us, noted church development expert Diana Butler Bass disagrees. Inspired by her experiences in an Episcopal Church, she set out to examine other what she calls “spiritually vital”[iv] congregations. She studied fifty mainline Protestant churches representing six denominations. Bass says, “I was looking for a renewal in the practice of Christianity in mainline churches to discover whether a common pattern, language, and spiritual logic were taking shape….”[v] What she found was this:

From Seattle to Naples, Florida, from Boston to Santa Barbara, California, I discovered mainline churches that were deepening spiritually and, often, growing numerically. The fifty congregations involved in my study were not usually the largest in their towns. Rather, they were solid, healthy churches that exhibited Christian authenticity, expressed a coherent faith, and offered members ways of living with passion and purpose. They exuded a renewed sense of mission and identity, often having emerged from dire circumstances of decline, crisis, threatened closure, or spiritual ennui. The congregations embraced no evangelistic strategy, no programmatic style of church growth. Rather, they were their own best selves—creative and traditional, risk-taking and grounded, confident and humble, open and orthodox.[vi]

In the end, Bass found that these congregations followed varied paths but showed similar patterns.[vii] She writes:

All the congregations have found new vitality through an intentional and transformative engagement with Christian tradition as embodied in faith practices. Typically, they have rediscovered the riches of the Christian past and practice simple, but profound things, like discernment, hospitality, testimony, contemplation, and justice. They reach back to ancient wisdom and reach out through a life sustained by Christian devotional and moral practices. They know the biblical story and their own story. They focus more on God’s grace in the world than on the eternal state of their own souls.[viii] 

During her study, Bass heard a lot of people comment about their longing for a remedy to the disrupted communities that have resulted from the huge social changes that have taken place during the last fifty years. In the end, Bass found that spiritually vital communities were shaped by three “interrelated characteristics,” what she calls “a trinity of vitality”[ix]: tradition, practice, and wisdom. She says this: “Tradition connects Christians to the past, practice is the calling in the present, and wisdom pushes toward a future of eternal love.”[x] She adds, “Christianity teaches that the forward movement is not an endless, repetitive cycle. Someday the journey will culminate in peace, what the scriptures call shalom, when God restores the entire universe in love.”

Congregations that are: their own best selves; seeking God; serving others. It seems to me that All Saints Church is on the path that Bass describes, though for us the path might need to be further revealed and refined. The community labyrinth, which we will shortly rededicate, is an excellent example and symbol of this community’s desire and ability both to seek God and to serve others, all in its own unique ways. At the labyrinth, the old and the new fold upon one another, always leading to God who is at the center, and always leading back out to the world.

Aboard the boat that is All Saints Church, Christ’s presence is with us, calming our fears, preparing us for whatever comes our way. The world is continuing to change, as it always does, but it still needs us, and we still need it. I don’t know if Twitter is good or bad, but I suspect that’s beside the point. The point is that this is the world we have been given, the world we are called to participate in redeeming. Rather than seeing the bundle of particular challenges we face as our particular burden, perhaps we can see it as our particular opportunity. Perhaps I’ll even try to set aside my curmudgeonly attitude and say that if using Twitter in church might work for us, then maybe we should give it a try. After all, God can be found everywhere, even in the chaos of Twitter.