Ouch! Talk about some “in your face” preaching! These words of Jesus come from the last book in the Bible: Revelation. Chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation are the visions of Jesus delivered to the 7 churches of the world by a prophet named John. In Chapter 2, Jesus says to the church in Ephesus: “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.” Interestingly enough, the church at Ephesus was one of Paul’s most significant Jesus communities, and his letter to this church is in the New Testament as “Ephesians.” It’s clear that Paul treasured this church and that it had important standing in the secular world as a powerful voice for the Jesus movement. In that sense, it probably wasn’t much unlike our little Jesus community at Vine Street. Both churches have a legacy of strong faith and service to the needy in their communities. Both churches have solid institutional structures and strong lay leadership. They are both pillars in their communities and respected for their devotion to the way of Jesus. But, alas, both the church at Ephesus and the church at Vine Street are lacking in the one most important quality of a Jesus community: the unconditional, all-forgiving, never-ending love of Jesus Christ. These churches, like so many others, begin to look more like a good civic club rather than a school of the love of Jesus. Jesus knew well this danger. Jesus never started an institutional church movement. He never built a church building. He never made decisions by committee and he never ever called a board meeting. He could have. But he didn’t. Jesus knows what happens when a church loses that one most important quality that distinguishes it from all the other “do-good” clubs and organizations in secular society ~ the love! You might be wondering what I’m doing reading the Book of Revelation. Every other Thursday at the Eberhard Village assisted living center, I help lead a group of wise and faithful ladies in Bible study. This Thursday we started studying the Book of Revelation. Ironically, perhaps, they call themselves the “Circle of Love.” And it’s a good name! For certainly, they love each other with the same divine agape love that Jesus loves them with. But the truth is, ladies, Jesus wants more than that. And from all of us! Jesus came into the world and spread his love across all the earth so that somebody (anybody?) would decide to live like him. Jesus’s plan rests on the hope that some small community of devoted and faithful followers would actually decide to throw the world’s ways aside … leave judgment for God and others, and make their default response to every single child of God on the planet ~ unconditional, all-forgiving, and never-ending love. That’s why, in the 2nd chapter of the Book of Revelation, Jesus praises the church at Ephesus for being patient, for enduring, for calling out heresy, and for claiming the truth of Jesus. He does the exact same for this little church at Vine Street. But it’s also why he has something against us.

The story in the 5th Chapter of John about the lame man who has sat by the healing waters of Bethesda for years (38 years!) waiting to be healed, offers us a ready-made metaphor for the American church in the 21st Century. whole time about having no help to get into the healing waters or always getting bullied away from the help that is available right in front of it. The only thing the church won’t do after all these years waiting to experience the renewal and revival that awaits it in the healing waters is to do the one thing that it refuses to do: CHANGE!                                                                                               Try something different. Stop being the victim! Or … as Jesus so bluntly puts it to the lame man: “Pick up your mat and walk!” Read the story for yourself and see how the lame man can be such an accurate metaphor for many churches today. John 5:1-10 The Message (MSG) Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people—blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?” The sick man said, “Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.” Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.” The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off. That day happened to be the Sabbath. The Jews stopped the healed man and said, “It’s the Sabbath. You can’t carry your bedroll around. It’s against the rules.” Have you noticed that Jesus has been asking our church if it wants to be made well? It’s an important question, because many churches today (most?) might answer in the affirmative but surely do not want to do anything different than what they’ve been doing for the last 38 years! Those churches still think that one day we’re all going to be transported back to the 1960’s and people will once again begin flooding into our buildings.                                                                             Folks … those days are gone and they ain’t comin’ back! What happens to churches that don’t change is probably the same thing that happened to the lame man by the pool – they become beggars. And frankly, becoming a beggar is not the end of the world. It can keep a church busy … and focused … and praying, for many years! Maybe even 38 more years! Like this lame man, the begging church has run out of options with friends and family. The man (the church) is forced to look outside itself just to get by. And so, it begs. PLEASE come to our church! PLEASE bring your children! PLEASE drop a pittance in the offering plate! Just tell us what you’d like us to do, and we will make it happen. We are willing to do anything that would appeal to you, if we can still be ourselves, and still be OUR church. And so, the time comes when someone asks the church … how’s that working for you? And usually, like a man who would sit by the waters for 38 years, the answer is … good enough for now. But the future may not be looking too good. Then, at some point, Jesus comes along and asks the church that one critical question: “Do you want to get well?”                                                                                              And most churches respond … “That depends … can we get well without changing?” Here at Vine Street, we did something different. We did just as Jesus said: 1) we got up; 2) we picked up our bedroll: and 3) we started walking. And ever since then, it’s been quite a spirit-led journey with Jesus into the 21st Century church. Keep on walkin’ – no turnin’ back, no turnin’ back,The church continues to sit and wait, whining the