Why Aren’t They Here?
Jeremiah 7: 1-7
Chris McCurdy

  1. Last week Matt preached on the preconceptions that people have about the church community and commented briefly on why they might feel this way.

    1. In doing this he used the passage from Jeremiah where Rachel cries out for her lost children.

    2. Although I feel that this is a very appropriate analogy to the current circumstance of Main Line Denominations, I feel it is only half the story.

  2. Listen Now for the Word of the Lord as it is brought to us from the book of Jeremiah chapter 7 verses one through seven. (read passage)

    1. In this passage Jeremiah is instructed by God to speak to the people of Judah in the Gate of the Temple and to proclaim to them that they should not heed the comforting words of the priests but instead should amend their ways and then the Lord will dwell with them in the temple.

    2. Walter Brueggemann writes in his commentary on Jeremiah, “The temple and its royal liturgy are exposed as tools of social control, which in a time of crisis will not keep their grand promises… the poet delegitimates the temple claims of absoluteness.”

    3. Matt pointed toward these reasons as to why the people are not coming…

      1. Religious institution with a political agenda

      2. Judgmental and Negative

      3. Oppresses Females

      4. Oppresses Homosexuals

      5. Church claims that all other religions are wrong

      6. People who take the Bible literally

      7. I will work with this list but I have heard many others as well…I will add one that I have heard the most of… I already get what the church is offering in other places.

    4. My friends I say today that we are the temple… we have powerful liturgies of absolutes from the modern world which the post-modern world has rejected.

    5. Matt spoke of these reasons why people aren’t coming to church and these are our liturgies… our liturgies are not sinful and apart from God in them but when we shape them into mechanisms of social control, then the Lord does not dwell with us in this place.

    6. Friends, we claim to worship too radical a God to think that we may exert control with our worship.

      1. Religious institution with a political agenda

        1. Political Sovereignty? (Scott versus I)

      2. Judgmental and Negative

        1. Our faith does offer a moral code but how much does it also speak of our unworthiness to judge others? Let the sinless throw the first stone!

      3. Oppresses Females

        1. The simple truth is that men have dominated the scene and kept women out… the church did not begin the social reform, but have been called to it. We have made significant progress but progress is not enough!

      4. Oppresses Homosexuals

        1. The church stands guilty of historically persecuting homosexuals and we have made little progress here… I ask you, how (either way to believe on the issue of homosexual ordination) is persecution and judgment any part of Christ’s Church? Hurricane Katrina… Tsunami… countless pronouncements of judgments in the name of the Lord.

      5. Church claims that all other religions are wrong

        1. Control… it all centers on control… we need to be right! Others need to be wrong. If we somehow prove ourselves to be the true answer, we sleep better at night. No better reason than that.

      6. People who take the Bible literally

        1. it isn’t the literal reading of the Bible that drives people away it’s what we do with it. We interpret our literalness and make it a tool to control what we don’t understand.

      7. “I already get what the church is offering in other places.”

        1. Because of these measures of control, Christ’s Church has become another social organization that offers community. Community is the center of the institution that preaches the Word of God! This is not only where we come to say hello and genuinely care about your neighbor, its true you can get that anywhere. What you can’t get anywhere is a community coming together in worship of the Living God and being spoken to and called by the Lord who IS the resurrection and the Life!

    7. Brothers and Sisters… did we not listen? Social Control was condemned by Christ Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount! (Read Matthew 5:33-48)

    8. The terrible truth is that the people do not trust us because we do not deserve their trust. But we pipe in, “I didn’t do that, how can I be held accountable for what the televangelist in California says?”

      1. (Read 1st Corinthians 12:12-13) (Long Pause)

      2. (Read Romans 8:31-35) or ourselves… Amen.