John 10:1-10
I Peter 2:20-25
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June 17,2001
These last few weeks have been a wonderful experience for me. I wish the curiosity factor of trying out thenew kid on the block would never cease, it's good for attendance. One day a minister was basking in the glory of a sermon he hadpreached which had gone extremely well. On the way home, in the car, he said to his wife, " I wonder how many great preachersthere are in this country" After a pause, the wife answered, " I don't know, but I know there is one less than youthink."
Wouldn't it be wonderful if doing right and living correctly was easy? The hard reality appears to be thatone of the most difficult things we do in living our lives is do what is right.
When we ponder that question we must ask ourselves, why are we Christians? It seems to me to be a perfectlynatural question since there are many people of society who strive to do right, and many succeed, yet they are not Christians intheir beliefs or practices. So, the question is relevant, why ARE we Christians?
Are we Christians because we love the stories of Jesus, his birth, his ministries of teaching and healing,his dedication and his death? Are we Christians because we have heard that believers will be saved and go to heaven? Are weChristians simply because we are afraid not to be? None of those reasons are sufficient.
When I was in Toronto and the weekly sermon was broadcast live, I used to get letters of complaint frompeople saying they were disappointed because there was not enough emphasis in my sermons about soul saving. If, by that, theymeant, I did not proclaim in sermons that people are miserable sinners confined to a torturous hell unless they accept Jesus astheir personal savior, they were correct. I don't preach that emphasis because I do not believe it was the emphasis of Jesus'ministry.
Please note what I have said. I do not believe that is the message of Jesus. To be sure, it is the message ofmany who have written ABOUT Jesus, but I do not find scriptural evidence for that being Jesus' own emphasis. It was in fact, thiskind of spiritual legalism about which Jesus was very pointed. His harshest criticism was reserved for the religious who had takenthe simple spiritual relationship with God and created a legalistic system that could be controlled by a bureaucracy. Jesusfrowned on that emphasis.
In the epistle of Peter, we see this issue being addressed once again. Peter's three epistles are written forthe slaves of the society of which he was a part. In Roman law, a slave was of no value. He or she had no rights; thus, justicewas not an issue - there simply wasn't any. Into this situation comes Christianity as presented by Peter who said to this society,every one was precious in the eyes of God. That did not win him any favors with the slave owners.
Living suddenly was cast in a different context. Jesus was shown as the revealer of the concept of God castin a spiritual dimension. Jesus was not the proclaimer of new religion; He was thepersonification of the one true religion, which had been changed by selfish and greedy leaders. And dear friends, that is aquality that must be guarded in each and every age, including ours or maybe even especially ours.
Listen to Peter and in doing so; picture yourself as a slave, with no freedom or worth. Read 1 Peter 2: 20-25AND I Peter 2: 12. Listen to it again in the gospel of John 10:1-10. Now, I ask you,if you were such a slave, would not the words of Jesus expressed by Peter and John be good news to your ears? The exciting news ofJesus is that he came to proclaim life. I can't think of any stronger words to illustrate that fact than the words of Johnattributed to Jesus, "the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy" and that could be religious persuasions justas well as other tyrannies. "I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly." Wow! That's themessage: where do I sign up? That's a faith I can embrace and live.
The more I read and study the scriptures, the more I believe the religion of Jesus can summed up in theancient Hebrew scriptures called the Shema. It is recited to this day in Jewish temples and synagogues. It is found in the 6thchapter of the book of Deuteronomy; "Hear 0 Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your God withall your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."
You see doing right is not observing a code of conduct or reciting some phrases or even performing certainpractices in order to receive the favor of God. Doing right is loving the Lord God with our hearts and our souls and our strength.If we truly love God, the God revealed to us so perfectly in Jesus, we will want to do right. That is much stronger than the sensethat we have to do right. This, I believe, is Christianity at its best.
Unfortunately, our world is alive with interpretations of the mission and message of Jesus, which, at leastto me, are not Biblical; ways, which I feel, deter us in living the way of Jesus. It'snot new. In 1956 in his autobiography, Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote,
"As for Christianity's all too frequent decadence into moralisticlegalism, it's proud assumptions of ecclesiastical sovereignty, the arrogance of its clerical hierarchies, its absorption in thesearch of political power, it has exhibited at its very worst, the very evils against which, in the name of the religion of hisday, Jesus most vigorously protested." ( Fosdick Harry Emerson, The Living Of These Days" pg 268)
Frequently, I hear that Christianity is a crutch for the weak and is not relevant to the strong, thetalented, the well off or the educated. Nothing could be further from the truth in my mind. In his "letters and Papers FromPrison" the late and great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote of the reality of people of strength. He said,"Who is this man of strength? He is any strong person, male or female, who is disciplined, ambitious, decent, notoverburdened by guilt or self-doubts, responsible and reasonably generous toward others."
The person of strength stands against the person of weakness, the one at the end of his or her rope, plaguedby guilt, fear, self-doubt and failure. Given that definition, we here, at First Congregational Church, are basically acongregation of strong people. Sadly, many Churches say to strong people, you're not really strong, you are weak and miserable.You need to turn your heart to Jesus and be saved from your miserable condition. It is true, that in general, the church does abetter job with the poor, week and downtrodden than it does with the strong and confident.
Strong people do indeed need to turn their heart to Jesus but not because they are weak and miserable butbecause they are gifted and what they need to deal with is a challenge for the gifts they have which are gifts from God.
Strong, wealthy, educated people DO have sins, but they are not the sins of the weak and the poor. The sinsof the strong are self-righteousness, complacency, pretensions of self-sufficiency and omnipotence and failure to empathize withone's weaker brothers and sisters. The sins of the well to do and strong are characterized by the person who meets the minister atthe punch at a wedding celebration and says, "I don't come to worship too often Rev. but I am happy, contented, well fed andreasonably decent, Isn't that what religion is all about?"
Well friend, that is NOT what religion is all about. Religion is about more than self-fulfillment,self-gratification and self-sufficiency. Our Lord said if we want to find ourselves, we must lose ourselves in something greaterthan ourselves. In giving ourselves to others we become the true selves that we were created to be. Thus, you see, the old"eye for an eye" thought is out. Retribution is wasted effort. Judgement isGod's domain.
So what do you give to strong people who seem to have almost everything? It is, I believe, the duty of theChurch to give such people a perspective. We are to give challenges that allow strong people to see that their strength-theirminds, their abilities, their money, their positions are GIFTS from God. Strong people have the freedom to use these gifts forsomething greater than their own selfish desires. Conversion for the strong, is not some groveling out of misery, it is 'metanoia',a turning around, a change of the heart, NOT a denial of strengths but the realization that one's gifts have a divine source and adivine purpose.
I believe that the writer of Peter was correct. We need a shepherd. We, like sheep, stray from the verypurpose for which we were created and that, which makes us most fully human. When we return to the shepherd, we are gatheredtogether and see the purposes of right living. Belief in God and striving to live the manner of life of Jesus gives life directionand meaning. But, be aware of the fact that if we turn our lives to Christ, there will be a cost to our right living. The costwill be loyalty, service and response to God with that which God has blessed us.
That does not mean that we ever get to the place where we can relax and say, I've arrived. The Church is nota haven for saints, it is a repair dock, a port for sinners who because of Jesus are able to believe their past is forgiven andnow they are free to grow. William Willimon, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, a prolific writer, in demand speaker andlecturer at our National Association of Congregational Christian Churches Annual Meeting next year, 2002 in Spokane, Washington,puts it this way.
"The theological doctrine of the incarnation (in body) says that just as God is revealed in the life,death, and resurrection of a first-century man called Jesus, so God can be revealed in other men and women today. You cannot findthe God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob -or for that matter the God of Mary, Peter and Paul - by withdrawing into your subjectivity orfleeing from the world. You can't because God has chosen to be in the world in themidst of people.
The Church is an expression of our firm belief in the incarnation. Ifyou don't expect to find God in the usher who greets you at the door on Sunday morning, in the reading of an ancient anddisordered book called the Bible, in the quivering solo of that aging soprano who sings in the choir, in the sermons of thatwell-meaning but poorly endowed preacher, in the smile of that kindly old man or the squirms of the restless toddlers who sit oneither side of you on the pew, then there is no point in bothering with the Church.
The scandal of the Christian faith, the real stumbling block, is that it points to a Jew from Nazareth (canany good come out of Nazareth?) and says, This is what the son of God looks like. The scandal of the Church is that it points to arag-tag conglomeration of partly week and partly strong, sometimes faithful and sometimes foolish people and says, This is whatthe Kingdom of God looks like.' The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Where two or three are gathered, there God is present.When someone asked Jesus what heaven looked like, he told them that delightful parable of the great banquet in which, when all thenice and proper people turned down the master's invitation, the master then invited all the ragamuffins and rogues, prostitutesand tax collectors to eat at his table. If you can't believe that the kingdom of heaven looks like that banquet table, then you'llnever believe that the Church looks like that struggling group of sinners over at old First Church who eat around the communiontable." (Willimon, Wm. The Gospel For The Person Who Has Everything" JudsonPress 1978, pgs 84f)
Peter says, "if when you do right and suffer for it, you take it patiently, you have Gods approval. Forto this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example that you should follow in his steps. Hecommitted no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did notthreaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly."
Follow Christ, try to do what is right, but don't beat yourself up when you fail. You too have been invitedto the banquet by the great shepherd who alone is able to keep you from straying.
My dear people, you are strong and gifted people and God asks two things of you. God asks for your thanks forall that has been done through Jesus Christ our Lord and God asks you to see your gifts as gifts from God and then to use them inservice to and for God.
God loves you and has given to you. Now the responsibility is yours. Respond in gratitude; it's the cost ofdoing right.