Is There Hope for the Church?

The great American baseball player and wit, Yogi Berra, once said, “Predicting is hard, especially about the future.” Growing up one of my favorite movie series was the Back to the Future. The movies were made in the mid-80s and they envisioned a distant future, 2015. In the movie’s view of 1985, there were to be flying cars. I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed there are no flying cars yet! I do find it fun to go back to the past and look at how people in the past thought the future would be. I read a prediction from many years ago that said that in the future clothing would be made of asbestos. After all, clothing made from asbestos would be light, easy to clean, and resistant to heat. It is a good thing that one did not come true!

Predictions come and go, but one persistent prediction is the demise of the church. So, we begin by asking a basic question, “is there a future for the church?”

Our text comes to us from the book of Ezekiel. Now Ezekiel is one of the oddest books in the Bible. We have to admit that the books of the Bible are from a very different time and place from us. The books are thousands of years old. The authors are from the middle east. They use a different language than ours. So, we expect to have some difficulty applying these ancient words to our lives. If the Bible is full of books that are different from our context, then the most different of them is Ezekiel—with the possible exception of the Revelation. Ezekiel is full of odd imagery. For example, in one of the images, Ezekiel lays on one side for over 300 days to describe the years the people lived unfaithfully to God.

The vision described in Ezekiel 37 is perhaps the most famous of his writings. In it, Ezekiel is transported by the Lord to a valley full of dry bones. As Ezekiel is written around the time of the war between Judah and Babylon, the valley very well could have been a battlefield. In fact, later when the bones are resurrected, they constitute an army. What Ezekiel is looking at is likely the remains of a terrible battle. What was once an army, is now just a bunch of bones, dry bones. It had to horrify Ezekiel, as to remain unburied was terrifying to a Jewish man.

God asked a question, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel’s response, “You know.” Now it is unclear what that means. Most interpreters suggest that it means something like, “Lord, you know that these dried bones have no life in them. They cannot live.” God said to preach to the bones. Ezekiel obeyed. Then the remarkable happened. The bones began to move. God began to reassemble the bodies, and suddenly there was a living army standing before Ezekiel.

God’s point in this vision was to show that though things were bleak there was hope. The dry bones represented Israel. They had no hope and no future. Defeat at the hand of Babylon meant the end of their future, so they thought. God, however, thought differently. God was going to bring them out of exile. Through God they had hope.

How about you? Do you have hope? If I chose to, I could find an article every day about how badly things were going for the Church. Sociologists have identified a new group of Americans; they call them the “nones.” By that, they mean people of no faith. For many years, when surveys were taken, people would express their faith. Some would say, Christian. Others would say Buddhist, among other faiths. What is new is that the number of people saying they have no faith is on the rise… and not by a little bit. The “nones” are growing much more quickly than most other faith preferences.

I could find articles about how things are going for mainline traditions. Articles about the shrinkage of the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, point a very bleak picture.

In England, the second oldest cathedral in the country, Rochester, did something disheartening. They placed a putt-putt course in the foyer. The hope was that while playing adventure golf, visitors would realize the need to build bridges among people in the world. I wish I were kidding. In looking at what the priest did, it looks as if he was trying a gimmick to get people to come to the church. The gimmick was to do something he could not: get people to come to church. In short, his hope had come down to a gimmick.

It is easy to find doom and gloom, but it is hard to find hope. Yet, I believe there is hope for the church. I believe the same God who promised to bring Israel out of exile, is at work in the Church.

You can see God at work when Christian people do the amazing. During the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, a local congregation had purchased a ventilator for their infected priest. He turned it down. He gave the ventilator to a person younger than him so that the young person would survive. The priest did not survive. He laid down his life so that another person can live.

You can see the work of God in more ordinary expressions. We and other congregations are trying to figure out how to be the Church when we cannot meet face to face. We are learning new technology. We are learning new ways to share our faith. It is not easy, but what we learn will help us when this crisis comes to an end. We will be stronger because of what we learn. The Church will not wither during this time, we will overcome. There is always hope for the Church.

If you need evidence to believe in a future for the Church, look at the Church in the rest of the world. It was just 50 years ago that most prognosticators believed the entire continent of Africa would be Muslim by the year 2000. And yet, the African Church is baptizing thousands of new believers every day.

In Asia, the church is growing rapidly. Even under terrible persecution, the Church continues to grow. The Chinese government has used the coronavirus as an excuse to bulldoze sanctuaries, but what they cannot bulldoze is faith.

In Latin America, the Church grows in spite of frequent terrible economic circumstances.

On every continent, the Church is poised for a future much better than our worst fears.

There is more than just evidence. There is the promise of God. The promises of God are more valuable than the evidence we can observe. God is faithful. God keeps His word. Once when Jesus asked His disciples who they thought Him to be, Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus said God had revealed this to Peter and that on this, the Church would be built, and the gates of hell would never prevail against it. We are the Church, and the God of the universe is working. There is no power, no disease, nothing we fear that can overcome the promise of God.

God is the God of Hope. He gives hope to the hopeless. When Sarah and Abraham could not have a child—as Paul said they were “as good as dead”—God gave them a son, Isaac. When a woman named Hanna could not have a child, she went to the tabernacle to pray. She prayed so hard the priest thought she was drunk! God turned her hopeless situation into a joyful situation. She gave birth to a son, Samuel, who led the people of Israel. God providing hope when there seems to be no hope is God’s way.

The Church is God’s instrument in the world. When there is suffering, God uses the Church to bring healing. When there is sorrow, God uses the Church to bring life. Where there is destruction, God uses the Church to bring new life. If God values the Church so much, do not ever believe that He will let it go to ruin.

Predictions about the death of the Church are not new. It is said that the infamous French philosopher Voltaire predicted the death of the Church within 100 years of his death. Oddly enough, within 50 years of his death, his home was being used for the distribution of Bibles and Christian literature.

So, if you are feeling hopeless, if you are worried about what will happen to the Church because of the Coronavirus, do not be afraid.

God is at work. God calls things from death to life. If God can bring Israel out of exile, then God can bring us out of whatever we face. Hold on to hope!