Preached Sunday, May 18, 2003 by the Rev. Steven J. Lashbrook, Pastor

First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Manistee, MI

There are some events and people that we just know we will always remember. It is true in our individual lives, in the lives of our family and friends and in our work. And it is especially true for ministers, because in our work, we come in contact with people at some of the most important times of their lives. Already, in the time that I have been in this profession, there are many people and events I remember. For example, there are the weddings I have conducted and the people I have married. There was the couple who left their marriage license at the bride’s home on the day of the wedding. The guests sat in the sanctuary for two hours while a groomsman drove back home to find the license. After making three phone calls back to the church, trying to locate the license, it was found in the back seat of the groom’s car, which had been at the church all the time. Needless to say, that marriage did not begin on an amorous note. There was the couple who repeated their vows, exchanged rings and then moved to the altar where they would light the unity candle together. After lighting the candle they stood facing each other, looking lovingly into each other’s eyes. The longer they stood the more nervous I became as the bride, whose veil spread widely behind her head, moved too close to the candles and the veil quickly began to melt. And there was the couple who came to me, asking to be married in the church at the stroke of midnight. The ceremony would be held at that hour because it was when his divorce became effective and the bride would wear bright red. It seemed appropriate to ask, "Why do you want to be married in the church?" "Where else do you go to be married?" was the response. They had come to the church because that was where people went to be married. Except for that couple.

For more and more people, the church is nothing more than a necessity. It is a necessity that exists to serve the needs of people at the time of birth by providing baptism. It is a necessity that helps people attain social status by offering membership, but without a fee. It will marry you and bury you and if it asks anything in return, it is always your privilege to refuse. The church, to some people, is a necessity. It is a necessity to meet their needs and cater to their whims and fulfill their demands. It has little to do with faith and even less to do with God. It offers nothing meaningful in the way of worship or the warmth of fellowship. An archaic, embittered institution, the church is not important, but it is a necessity.

That is one view of the necessity of the church. It is cynical and sarcastic and it can creep into my mind and into the thoughts of all of us who are a part of the church. But there are two other ways to look at the necessity of the church. Listen: I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Did you hear? God is the necessity for the church. We cannot be, cannot do without God. Like a branch cannot exist without the rooted vine from which it comes, we cannot exist without God. A branch is only an extension without life of its own. Without the vine, the branch is an appendage with unrealized potential and no chance for health or growth. Without the vine, it bears no leaf and gives no fruit. It is that image of the vine and branches that tell us our lives, the whole life of the church, are by necessity, intertwined, empowered, and as the old gospel hymn says, "all tied up and tangled up in Jesus."

The other necessity of the church is more subtle, but equally powerful for us. It is, as strong and puzzling as it may sound, that the church is a necessity for God. And again, the truth is conveyed through the same image of the vine and branches and leaves. When it comes to pruning trees and bushes, I am a confessed hacker. Ask my wife and she will tell you. She is a careful gardener, spending hours weeding and hoeing, cutting and nurturing the plans and blossoms in her flower bed and vegetable garden. But my theory is based on the simple assumption, "Why waste time trimming a little here or there, when one good whack will remove huge chunks?" Why snip bits when one swift blow will do the job more quickly? If a little is good, more must be better. Clearly, my technique gets the job done, but it is sometimes hard to see exactly what the bush is supposed to look like. The trunk is there. The roots are left undisturbed. But the mangled branches and missing leaves are a problem. When looking at the bush it is hard to tell what it is supposed to be. We need to see the branches. We need to see the leaves.

God needs the church. God needs the many branches and leaves. God needs our faces, the grasp of our hands, the movement of our feet, the presence of this congregation. God needs us to do God’s work. God needs us to be the visible expression of Christ in this world: to walk where he would walk, to touch those he would touch, to speak the words Christ would speak in this time, to be so filled with Christ that people, when in our presence, would know they are in the presence of God. God needs the church because we need the church.

But let’s be completely honest. As too many of us have already seen and heard, most people do not take the church that seriously. True, many people want something from the church, but they also walk away from it with glibness and without any commitment. Habits of the Heart is a study of the American character. It is intensive and intriguing. One of its many proving studies is about religion in America. The authors conclude that most people are feverishly searching for personal support and intimacy in congregations. And this one sentence is worth hearing: "These needs for personal intimacy in American religious life suggest why the local church, like other voluntary communities, indeed like the contemporary family, is so fragile, requires so much energy to keep it going, and has so frail a hold on commitment when such needs are not met."

Did you catch that? People expect to receive much, but expect to give little in commitment. They come asking and they go quickly when they are disappointed. They fact is clear – people take themselves very seriously. But they do not take the church seriously at all. I am not talking about those who do not acknowledge the church. I am talking about a continual presence and problem inside the church, all churches, this church.

The idea that the church is only an interesting appendage to life, one that can be taken or left, used and cast aside, is a powerful one. It can overcome and overwhelm even the staunchest of members, even the most devoted leaders, the most committed of ministers. It can depress and discourage. And it can lure us all to give up the serious responsibility and calling that we, the church, are created and formed and needed by God.

For the church’s good and for each of our well being – for God – we must reclaim some very basic principles and fundamental feelings about the church. We must, with every fiber of our being and with all intensity of spirit and fullness of love, hear again that God needs us. God needs us to say this is where we need to be, this is where we must be. God needs us to say very simply: we need the church. God needs us to say: we know it is imperfect and often struggling, and sometimes mistaken and that its ministers stumble in their work and yet, in spite of it all – no, really, because of it all – as God needs me, as God needs the church, we, too, need the church. We need its honest humanness and its hope for the divine. We need the church to possess the words of strength when we are weak. "I need the church," said one of our members in a recent letter, "to be a place that is different than what I must face every day in my work. I need the church to let me feel compassion and challenge and contradiction. How easily I can believe I have it all. How easily I can believe that I have arrived. How quickly I can feel that I have nothing. I need the church to tell me there is always more: more to the story, more to another person, more to the world, more to God, more to me. I need the church to make me accountable and to make me face the truth of confession and the reality of forgiveness. I need the church to remind me in my forgetting and to hold me without demand when I am spent. I need the church to give me the courage to look into my own darkness and then know there is darkness in every heart, no better, and no worse than mine."

I would be content to rest and relax and grow even more comfortable and self-satisfied, but I need – I don’t know about you, I can only hope and pray – the church to help me see what is happening around me. I need the church to force me to stand up and take a stand, to say whose side I am on, and for what I will live and for what I would be willing to die. I need the church because without qualification, and with all that I am, the church needs me. I need the church because it is the dwelling place of the Spirit, and the place where I meet Christ, and the people who invite me, over and over, to think about God. I need the church because God holds the church and me with amazing and unyielding love.

I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. People in the church who are led to ordained ministry, and people who sit in the pew for all of their lives; people who have come to find a moment of peace and quiet, people who wonder about their place in life and in here, people who are tired of serving on committees and people who are hoping someone will notice them today; let all of us pray that the church, that you, will love the church and that your love will root and blossom and bear fruit. Let us pray that God’s need for us all will be awakened and that each one of us, who needs God, will forever be filled by God and by us.

Amen.