November 2, 2008                                                                          Micah 3:5-12
Duane Shank                                                                                     Matthew 23:1-12

The Wikipedia model of church

All over this country today, pastors are giving their final pre-election message to their congregations.  Some will flaunt the law by endorsing a candidate to their congregations, some will hint at it by emphasizing certain issues — right or left, and some will more appropriately talk about the importance of citizenship in a democracy and the broad range of biblical values that should guide Christians in voting.

I do not intend to do any of those — I’ve been living this election nonstop for the past year and I’m very tired of it.

Another alternative, presented by these texts, would be to go on a diatribe against people in positions of religious and political power who corruptly and unjustly use that power. Micah rails against rulers, priests, and prophets who cry "Peace" when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.” Those “who abhor justice and pervert all equity,” against rulers who give judgment for a bribe, priests who teach for a price, and prophets who give oracles for money.

And Jesus picks up where Micah ends, taking on the religious leaders of his day. He decries those who do not practice what they preach, who make following the will of God a heavy burden they do not lay on others, flaunt their religiosity in public, desire the best seats in synagogue and banquet table, and want to be greeted with titles of respect. He paints a picture of an arrogant piety that does not practice what it preaches.

It would be very easy to go from there to condemn the hypocrisy of today’s political and religious leaders. There is certainly plenty of it, and we certainly do our share of criticizing.

But Jesus doesn’t stop with that, doesn’t just encourage us to self-righteously look at others. As he so often does, he turns the spotlight on each one of us and gives us guidelines for our behavior as a community of his followers. We are to be a community of equals, where all are respected and no one rules over others.

Don’t seek titles and positions. He specifies three that were common in his day — rabbi, father, instructor. In each case, he says these titles that make one person seem better and more worthy of respect than others are not to be used. 

Rather, echoing what he says elsewhere when his disciples were arguing about their relative greatness, he says “The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Humble yourselves and serve. In other words, rather than simply criticizing others, examine ourselves and change our behavior where necessary. In his community of followers, greatness is found in serving, not in seeking to be exalted over others.

And Jesus not only taught, he modeled what he taught. His answer to the rich young man who addressed him as “good teacher,” was to say “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Mark 10:17-18)  He refers to himself as coming “not to be served, but to serve.” (Matthew 20:28) His attitude toward other people — a grieving widow, a hungry crowd, people who were crippled, blind, or sick — is frequently described as being “moved with compassion.” He humbled himself to wash the disciple’s feet at the Last Supper, and in his prayer in the garden that he be spared the suffering to come, he nonetheless prayed “Not what I want, but what you want.” (Mark 14:36).

How do we follow, model, this teaching and example in our life as a community?

One of the books I read on vacation this summer was The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, by Tony Jones. Tony is the national coordinator of what is called the emergent village — a facilitating, networking hub for the growing number of what are called emergent churches — those seeking new ways of being church. One of his illustrations caught my eye then, and in thinking about this text, returned to mind.

Many of us probably know and use Wikipedia — the user generated, monitored and edited online encyclopedia. Tony wrote about what he called “the Wikipedia model of church,” and listed five aspects he saw as similar. I found them helpful in thinking about what Jesus was saying, and about this community.

1. Open access — Wikipedia allows anyone to edit an entry — there is open access to content and to changing that content, it is “a deliberate subversion of the academic and governmental structures that have traditionally controlled intellectual content.”

“Emergent churches are questioning, subverting, and even disposing of the leadership structures common in churches.”

2.  Trust — “Wikipedia is built on the expectation that collaboration among users will improve articles over time — that people collectively will create a database of content more accurate than one person or a select team of persons.”

“Many emergent churches work on the same assumption that when people get together and “edit” one another’s beliefs, all are better for it. … The content is not learned in seminary and then disseminated over a career of sermons and Sunday School classes but developed continually and shared among people who trust one another.”

3.  Mutual accountability — “Wikipedia isn’t a willy-nilly affair. Multiple structures have been built into the system just for it to work.”

“Similarly, emergent churches do not forsake structure.”  There are people with responsibilities for various things that keep the church functioning. “But these roles are seen as paving the way for others to contribute … not to mitigate their contributions by predetermining what the church will do, what congregants will believe, or anything else.”

4.  Agility —  “Wikipedia has an extraordinary ability to respond to the events of the day. Within minutes of his execution, the entry for Saddam Hussein reflected that fact.”

“Emergent churches, in part because of their size and relatively egalitarian leadership structures, demonstrate similar agility. Often large bureaucratic, conventional churches have taken too long to respond to crises in the world.”
“Rethinking the church as an essentially activist organization means fundamental changes in the way that church is run. For the church to be responsive to the rapidly changing world, it must be light and quick on its feet. The local church will be relatively small and relatively autonomous. Then the assembled people can discern God’s Spirit on a matter … make decisions, and act on them …”

5.  Messiness —   “Wikipedia isn’t without its warts. … [its] dominance on the Internet has not come without mistakes — even embarrassments — and adjustments. But the open-source world is built on the assumption that the users will break the tool; in then breaking, the weak points become known and can be repaired.”

“Like Wikipedia, emergent churches harbor no great fear of failure. In fact, failures are a natural consequence of innovation and adventure. If you play it safe, you can be assured of few failures; if you’re trying new things all the time, failures are assured.”
“Emergents, by their nature, embrace the messiness of human life. And the church, as a reflection of the human life in relationship to God, is in no way immune to this messiness.”

All five of those are characteristics of this community at our best, and emulate what Jesus is telling us. We have open access without hierarchal leadership, a trust that in our shared worship leadership we collectively edit and refine each other’s beliefs, we practice mutual responsibility and accountability, we can be agile in responding to crisis such as the recent fire in our neighborhood.  And, to be sure, we are not without our warts, our embarrassments and our messiness. 

But all together, the major thing that attracted me to this community, and still does, is that fundamental belief that each of us is important to our life together, that each of us is called in different ways to lead by serving, that collectively we are better than each one of us could be individually. Some lead worship services and music, some spend large amounts of time keeping up this building, some in representing us in various neighborhood organizations, some in planning and facilitating meetings and retreats, and so on. We hold no person higher than any other because of title, education, money, or status — each one contributes. And when the messiness and failures happen, we can collectively repair them.

It was suggested that I should end with an altar call for each of us to reflect on what we are doing in this community, and challenge us to think of other ways each of us might do more. I won’t explicitly do that. 

But I will suggest that we reflect on Jesus’ words and life, what he taught and modeled to his followers as the way to live and serve. And let us continue to serve each other, to build community, to contribute to the common good. By so doing, we will all be exalted.