“On the taking of the Parish Census”
January 18, 1991
Numbers 1: 1-4
There are people in the pews this morning who are a little bit frustrated. They have wondered why we take ten minutes from our hour to fill out a census. Why bother to ask, “Am I a member What is the need? What special talents, interest or gifts do I have there are even people have gone beyond frustration and I’ve doubtlessly sent to themselves here. We are facing a war in a few short days and the church is concerned with some irrelevant organizational exercise.
As one who struggles often with anti-institutional feelings as one who frequently questions, the wisdom of church organizations. I invite you to look at the bold sweeping scripture. Much of the Bible deals, explicitly or implicitly with organizations. The gospels are full with the way as Jesus, trains and coaches, the 12 the epistles are really a confirmation of early church, organizational life and the Old Testament and it’s most early books. Tell us how Moses failures and successes, informing the Hebrew drive into a unified people.
The story of Moses is an interesting one. Soon, after some remarkable religious experiences, the burning bush, the confrontation with pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea. Moses realize he has to organize the Hebrew people. If Moses had not acted that way, he did, organizing, taking headcounts. Dividing people up and putting them into extended family groups the exodus from Egypt and the wanderings in the desert would have looked more like a mob scene at O’Hare airport during the New Year’s crunch. But, instead because of Moses’s attention to organization, it looks more like a movement of people towards the promised land. The choice for Moses supposed to lead a mob or to build a community and that involved having a census.
Frequently, I am approached by people who say to me I am religious I believe in God, but I don’t want anything to do with organized religion. I often want to reply. Quotation well what would you prefer organize religion or to come together as a community to pray for peace, and we could do it at home or we could all utter our own prayers and one time which would cause an awful babel . But we at this church our community; therefore, we say our prayer together in communion, and we are no longer strangers, a mob, a crowd. Instead, we are people, a community, a body, and this census helps us to know who we are.
The next thing a census does is that it allows us to be found. One great problem of large churches like Saint Phillips is that it permits us to be anonymous.
You can fade into the woodwork and no one will bother you. It’s a large enough that no one will know if you pledge or serve God in any capacity. They’re at least 50% of the people in this way according to last census.
Good people let me speak as your pastor. Avoid that feeling of moving toward an unlimited at all costs is the work of the devil. The single most devastating act of a Christian is to lose sight of being accountable in ministry. The work of God takes place with people who are accountable, found, responsible because they are known. A sense is merely a vehicle for accomplishing this fact.
I guess the most well-known census comes at the beginning of St. Luke’s gospel with these words: in those days a decree went out from Cesar Augustus, that the world should be enrolled, and all went out to be enrolled each to his own city. And Joseph went up from Galilee to GD to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be enrolled with Mary his betroth who is with child.
There are those would point out that the enrollment or census was for the sake of taxes. And most census would seem to be for political or economic purposes. Hardly reason to celebrate on a Sunday morning. It’s true, a census can be used for many bad reasons. But as the Catholics often say, and I never tired of repeating abusis non tollit usum Meaning abuse or misuse does not negate right use. So let’s give it a try; let’s take some time and allow this tool for community building to be used. Let’s find out about ourselves so we can be better organized.
The American Express people were more right than they could ever imagine when they coined the phrase, membership has its privileges. One of the privileges of being a membership in the body of Christ is being known, being counted on, being accountable; in the tool, for this is our census, just as it was in Moses’s time. I have hunch that all of us deep down inside want this privilege of membership.
Several months ago, Peggy, my wife brought home to read a wonderful book about Chinese American called the Joy luck club. It’s a collection of stories about people whose parents or grandparents were born in China. One of the stories called the Hoon lady, is the recollection of a woman when she was four years old as she and her family celebrated the moon festival.
On this night, the legend goes you may tell the moon lady your secret, desire or wish, and it will be granted. The reason this is so that on this night, the moon lady, who lives on the moon, meets her husband who lives on the sun. On all of the nights, they pass each other and never meet or communicate, but on this night, they are reunited in honor of this Everyone secret longing can also be fulfilled.
The woman telling the story remembers being lost and having a feeling of loneliness and fear inside herself; and she also recalls what size asked of the moon lady so many years ago, she said I wish to be found
Isn’t that it? Doesn’t that express the longing in all of us? We wish to be found, from when we are found we’re in a community. The problem is if you wish to be fine you also have to be willing to be found out. The census is a method of being found out, of being accountable as member One to another. And let me just say in closing that membership, the privilege of membership is a powerful force to overcome loneliness and release spiritual ways that will reach her on the globe.
This is what we were all about. And so I invite you to exercise the privilege of membership by standing up now, joining hands, and repeating after me a prayer that is a special gesture of peace. May I ask you all to rise and take one other’s hand repeat following after me lying by line the prayer of Saint Francis.
Lord make me an instrument of your peace. Where there’s hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith, where there is despair, hope where there is darkness, light, and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console. To be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.