Closing the Church
A Cautionary Tale
300. That’s how many churches will close their doors in Scotland next year.
It’s a number that is hard to grasp, at least for those of us who frequent a weekly worship service. It’s not that we don’t close a few churches in the States here and there. But this number seemed to be an indicator of something different going on beyond just declining church attendance.
In fact, I don’t think there was any one reason you could point to other than a general shift in how communities placed value on institutional religion. And if a choice was presented to go to church or go on a hike, people were choosing the secular option most of the time.
But it made me wonder what is being lost as each door closes. And what I have come to realize is that this is a cautionary tale we need to hear. A cautionary tale not of the institution of religion but of the practice of faith.
What do I mean by that?
When we stop practicing our faith, we risk losing the values of our faith.
Values that Paul is outlining in our text from Galatians.
And this week, we get his big picture introduction to this teaching. Next week, we will get specifics about our individual practice of these values. And the following week we will delve into our shared community practice of faith.
But this week, Paul’s teaching in the lectionary is placed alongside the story of the demoniac in the Gospel of Luke. I love this kind of side-by-side story telling. A highlight of a lived experience of faith that helps us understand a particular value of faith.
In Luke, we have the man seized by demons, by all accounts he is someone who has lost the practice of his faith (not by choice but by circumstance). And then we have the larger community who were in the process of losing their practice of faith by their own choosing.
And the outcomes (the man’s and the community’s) varied greatly when they were given the choice to actively re-engage the values of the faith they claimed to follow.
To understand this, let’s start with the teaching of Paul. It’s a classic. And, this is important to know, Galatians is thought by many scholars to be the oldest written text in the New Testament, written around 50 CE. Older in fact than the Gospels which are dated between 70 and 90 CE. Why is this important?
Think about it. A good general estimate for Jesus’ crucifixion is 30 CE. That means Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia was written only 20 years after Jesus’ death.[1] It is the closest text we have to the lived teachings of Jesus. The closest account to what he believed and what he hoped for humanity.
Paul writes…
26 for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. 27 As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
This is the closest written teaching we have of Jesus. And in this one verse, Paul is outlining very direct values for followers of Christ.
Simply put, Paul is breaking down the divisions that we have built to protect ourselves from what we fear. Or from whom we fear as the case may be. Paul names a few of them in this text…Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. But the dichotomy goes much deeper than any one or any group that we place as “other.”
Rich and poor. Black and white. Immigrant and citizen. Gay and straight. Right and left. We play with these divisions all the time in our daily life and right now, they are becoming increasingly dangerous. Paul knew that then. We know that now.
One of my favorite professors from seminary, Brigette Kahl, says about this type of division that…
“It separates human from human by barbed-wire demarcation lines of self-interest, hatred, or just indifference into deserving or undeserving, righteous or sinner, us or them.”[2]
In other words, it is a hierarchy of safety based upon our fear and desire for power.
But Paul believes that a different set of values is not only possible but is absolutely essential if we are to follow him into a unified community of faith based upon the values Christ taught. Where we are no longer one against another but where we become a courageous, loving, hopeful community that welcomes the stranger and supports the weak. That invites the outcast and feeds the hungry. That tears down walls and open doors.
For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
And that means something. Anything less is what Kahl names as our, “selfish impulse that craves superiority and privilege on the back of the other.”
Bishop Rob Wright from the Diocese of Atlanta said in his sermon from June 1 that…
”we want the appearance of freedom and faithfulness without the responsibility [of faithfulness]….And we auction off parts of ourselves and others to achieve what is convenient and consistent with tradition. We commodify ourselves and others because it is financially prudent.”[3]
This is what is happening in the Gospel of Luke. The community wanted to appear faithful but they didn’t want the responsibility of faithfulness. When the man was healed, they were scared. They didn’t want the reality of what it meant to welcome this man whom they had feared. Because it was going to call them out of their secure walls of propriety.
And when you read this story you start to wonder where else the demons may have been residing in this town. Because it seems to me that the community’s demons were working overtime to keep their hearts closed from the needs of the people around them. They chose to turn away from the values of their faith. They even asked Jesus to leave so that they could in essence close the church doors.
Now, on the other hand, the man once he was healed said yes to faithful responsibility. He said yes to making the values of Christ’s Oneness a reality. And to do so, Jesus charged him with staying right in the midst of the people who denied him. To stay there and work for good.
Imagine that.
Live out your values of love and hope and faith with the people who hate you. That’s some serious responsibility. And the man, when given the choice, says yes.. And in doing so he opens wide the doors of the church.
For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Episcopal priest James Liggett brings this home for us. Listen to his words…
“We don’t see the ‘evil powers of this world’ as critters from hell, servants of the devil, that magically mess with us. There isn’t a racism demon, or a hunger-causing demon, or an oppression-causing demon, or a money demon. These evil powers we renounce are modern categories, they are human things, things of this world. They are institutions, systems, learned behaviors, traditions and values, or simply habits, that end up corrupting and destroying the creatures of God. These we must identify, renounce, and resist if we are to fulfill our calling as Christians.”[4]
Our demons are the appearance of faithfulness without the responsibility of faith. They are the values we say we believe but fail to live.
In response, Paul calls us to practice. To come back time and again to the love and welcome that Christ longed for. To keep the doors of your heart open so that we do not lose the values of our faith.
For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
[1] https://www.bartehrman.com/when-did-jesus-die/
[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-galatians-323-29-6
[4] https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/categories-pentecost-2-c-june-22-2025/