1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
Today we have more
passages that follow up on what it is to be people on “the Way”, to follow
Jesus as The Way and to be close to God and our understanding of God through
that path. Today we are told that we
know God in knowing Jesus. We know the
WAY by seeing how Jesus travelled his life, and being willing to do the
same. We know it by living it. Bonhoeffer
said, “Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously
and actively doing God's will.”(The Cost of Discipleship)
We know this is not easy. We know this because we see how many people
no longer come to church. I think Church is too hard, frankly, for many folk. If we are genuine about our faith, about
living that out, we won’t see most of
our culture in church because faith and living, following God’s path, are commitments
that take time, dedication, intentionality and a genuine desire to know and be
in relationship with God. Yes, the
rewards are great. Life fully lived in
all its abundance, life fully embraced, life eternal, relationships with God
and God’s people. The rewards surpass
everything. But unless you have
experienced and lived those rewards, fewer people believe in them, understand
them, or are willing to do the work of faith and action in order to achieve
them.
We are part of a
culture of instant gratification. And
there is little room in that kind of fast paced, “I want everything and I want
it now” activity for time with God, for intentional focusing on faith, for
living out that faith with any kind of commitment. Much of our culture lives a very shallow
existence, where taking time to ponder, to talk to God and more to LISTEN to
God just simply don’t fit in. Usually
what jars people out of complacency is some kind of tragedy, some kind of
suffering. There are reasons why there
are so many death bed conversions. The
fact of suffering, the experience of deep pain can finally jolt people out of a
surface level existence and into the recognition that they need to connect to
something bigger than themselves, that life has no meaning without a deeper
vision and connection which a life of faith can give.
A few years ago I was
able to go and hear the Christian rock band, Mercy Me. The lead singer, Bart Millard, shared with us about his
childhood experience of being the son of an extremely abusive father. Bart said, “Calling him a monster would be an
understatement”. But his father was
diagnosed with cancer when Bart was a sophomore in high school. And that led his father to a deep and
complete conversion. Bart said that by
the time his father died three years later, he not only respected his father
but saw him as the man he would most like to be like. His father, through his conversion, became
the best man Bart had ever known. That’s
what faith can do. It can change us,
turn us around completely, make us new in the truest sense of the word. But I don’t think most people in our culture
these days WANT to be new or changed until something happens that forces them to
realize that they simply cannot continue to live the shallow way that we are
encouraged to live by our culture and media.
A fellow pastor and I
had a conversation some years ago in which she said that she believes it is
actually good news that people are no longer coming to church simply because it
is “the thing to do”. It is good news
that the people who remain in our churches are here because they genuinely get
the need and value of faith and being connected with others in that faith. It means the church, when it stops being
about “saving its own life” out of fear for the losses in numbers that are
being experienced, can now actually BE the church God calls us to be rather than
country club organizations and institutions.
And she’s right. We can be freed
to genuinely follow the WAY, living as Christ would have us live when we are
not just simply another part of main stream culture. We no longer have to just fit in with what
society would tell us to do but can really live lives on the Way.
I started thinking
about all the things that this congregation does. It is an amazing and impressive list for a
small, aging congregation. We being with
prayer. We have two adult Christian
education opportunities each week as well that study and pray together. We’ve been offering two different types of
worship services each week plus Taize during advent and lent. We begin with prayer and worship and are
grounded in that relationship to God.
And then we continue in “the Way” of following Jesus with all of the
service that we do, in the name of Jesus, for other people. Between the many ways we support hunger issues
and other deep needs of people – Winter Nights, our community meal here, the
one we support in Pittsburg, supporting Contra Costa Interfaith Housing as well
as Monument Crisis Center and Heifer project, going on mission days, our PFLAG
meetings, providing gifts over Christmas – to our outreach and education of
children, families and adults of all ages through things like Godly Play and
our family program, our men’s group, our women’s support group, our quilting
group, our faith and film nights, our fellowship opportunities such as
progressive dinner, church picnic, Oktober Fest. Our deacons as well as those who aren’t on
deacons serve the congregation with food, transportation and visits. There is so much that we “do” to be on the
way. And all of it is a way of following
Christ and striving to be close to God.
The people that we
see portrayed in our TV sit-coms and media don’t have the time and energy to
give like this. They can’t be bothered
with caring for God’s people and it would throw them out of a comfort zone in
which clothing, and dances and make up and money and “fun fun fun” are the
primary values. But that kind of shallow
existence doesn’t lead to life, won’t lead to life. And for those of us who have chosen a
different way, we know this, we experience this, we live an existence that is
richer and fuller because of it. We live
an existence in which we see God by seeing Jesus, and by living as Jesus calls
us to live.
And the thing is,
what we do makes a difference. At my
pastor’s group one week, one of our pastor members was saying, “How do we
convince people to come to church?” And
the answer? It is mostly our actions, it
is the things we do outside of these
walls that are different and set us apart that get people’s attention. Everything we do matters. Everything we do makes a difference. Are we kind?
Do we show even our enemies love?
Are we giving? These things
matter. And while it may become
frustrating at times feeling like we haven’t brought people in those doors and
sometimes it can be hard to see how we have impacted those around us, we
do. The lives we lead, following on The
Way of Christ make a difference.
In the Movie, “Two
Weeks Notice” Sandra Bullock plays a character who has actively followed on
“the way” as she understands it. She has
stood up for the oppressed, been a voice for the voiceless, fought against injustice
at every level. But there comes a moment
at which she hits a place of despair.
She is done. Her father is upset
by her decision to no longer live a life of action. And he confronts her saying, “we didn’t teach
you to sit on the sidelines.” She argues
that what she does makes no difference.
To which he responds, “Then you change your tactics. As long as people can change, the world can
change.” She says, “But what if people
can’t change?”
Can people
change? First of all, yes, we know they
can. The father in the movie I just
quoted proceeded by declaring, “Let me put it this way. I am eating a piece of cheesecake made
entirely of soy. I hate it. But because of my health issues, I am doing
it.” Yes, people do change. But the second thing is that again, that is
not our job. Our job is to follow in the
Way. We have to leave the results of
that up to God. And God, as we know, is
pretty good at changing people.
There was an article
on Facebook a while ago about the top things that pastors fear. And the number one thing on that list was
that we fear we are irrelevant, that we make no difference. My guess, though, is that every person of
faith wonders this at some point. Does
what I do matter? Does it make a
difference? Do the efforts I put into
feeding and caring and housing and listening and studying and praying – do
these efforts matter?
They do.
They matter to the
people whose lives you touch by serving them for that moment. And they matter to you because they change
you and bring you closer to God. Because
of all of that, they most importantly matter to God. They matter to God because God delights in
people following Jesus on “the Way”. And
they matter to God because God delights in your moving closer to wholeness, which
you do by being closer to God in following Christ’s way. And they matter to God because God calls you
to be the people of Christ by following in this way.
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