Community Church Sermons

Fifth Sunday of Easter – April 28, 2002

"Discovering A God-Centered Faith”

1 Peter 2:2-10

 

I remember a Sunday morning years ago, when I was serving a little church up in Massachusetts, and the snow was falling faster than you could shovel it. Six, eight, ten inches of snow overnight, and then another foot or so in the morning. It was pretty bad.

 

Being hearty New Englanders, of course, we didn’t call off church. Besides, a large number of members lived in the neighborhood right around the church, so we had sort of an unwritten  policy that, when it snowed, those who wanted to walk to church would find a worship service waiting for them. So at the given hour, I put on my boots and my coat and trudged through the snow to the church a few doors down from where we lived. I unlocked the doors, got the furnace fired up, turned on the lights, lit the candles, took a pile of bulletins and stood by the door waiting for people to arrive. Five minutes before the scheduled hour, and I was still alone. Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes. One minute. Time ran out.

 

So I went back into the sanctuary, extinguished the candles, turned off the lights, turned down the furnace, locked the doors, and started trudging through the snow drifts back home.

 

And just then, I spotted them. They were coming down Mt. Hope Street, barely visible through the white out conditions. The Jones family. Howard and Ellen and Scott and Chris. They were all bundled up and covered with snow, having walked a good three or four miles from their house on the other side of town. When they saw me, they waved, and I waved back..

 

Now frankly, I was standing there in the snow wishing I had gotten out of that church a few minutes earlier. This was not a day for church. It was a day to be rocking in front of a fireplace. A day for sipping hot chocolate. A day for just staying home and keeping warm. But there they were – the Jones’. And they had come for church.

 

So we greeted each other, and they expressed how sorry they were to be a few minutes late, and how glad they were that they’d caught me. I sort of smiled one of those insincere smiles and told them I was glad too. Then, gritting my teeth, I again went through the process of unlocking the doors, firing up the furnace, turning on the lights, lighting the candles, and passing out the bulletins. And into the sanctuary we went – the five of us – me and the Jones’.

 

Well, it didn’t make an awful lot of sense to sing the hymns since there were so few of us, and besides, there was no organist. So we skipped those. And the prayer I prayed was pretty short and leaned heavily on Jesus’ promise that where two or more gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. I made an announcement or two about some activities coming up for the kids, and read the Scripture. Then it was time for the sermon. And I was between a rock and a hard place on that one. I had prepared a regular full-blown sermon in anticipation of the weather forecast not turning out right. It was an important message that related to a lot of things going on in the lives of a lot of the people of our church. It had some humor that required the congregation to not only “get it” but to laugh, too. And it was made for delivery from the pulpit to a full congregation, not for speaking from a lectern placed right in front of the Jones’ sitting in the front pew. It just seemed like such a BIG sermon to waste on such a SMALL group. So I said to the Jones’…

 

“I’m going to cut down this sermon a bit so that we can get out of here before we get snowed in.” And I gave them what you might say was the Cliffs Notes version of that sermon. Just the main points. Took about three minutes. Then we said a prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer. I pronounced a benediction, and by ten minutes after the hour, we were done. We all hugged each other, and the Jones’ got all dressed up again in their coats and scarves and boots, and headed out the door to start their three or four mile walk back home. I put out the candles, extinguished the lights, turned down the furnace, and was just about to leave when the front door opened again. It was Mrs. Jones, a lovely Christian woman who was always very loving and kind. And in a very loving and kind way, Mrs. Jones said:

 

“I didn’t want to say this in front of my family, Marty, but we didn’t walk all that way through the snow for half a service, and half a sermon.”

 

It was a gentle rebuke – well-deserved – and one that led me to examine what my motives might have been in scaling things back that day because of such small numbers of people. I resolved to never do that again, and to always honor the commitments of people who come to church under such conditions – except here in East Tennessee when we actually call off church because even the preacher from New England can’t stay on the road.

 

But then, a few years ago, I began to see an even deeper dimension of the issue. An Episcopal priest by the name of Barbara Brown Taylor was writing about a similar situation on a Sunday morning when the snow began to fall. However, her circumstance was different than mine in that no one showed up for church that day. Not a soul. Just Barbara and her Associate. They sat there in the sanctuary for a long time, thinking about what to do. Somewhere along the line, one of them remembered the Scripture passage from First Peter that is our text today. It’s about all of us being priests whose job it is to offer pleasing spiritual sacrifices to God. Note the last two words. Not to ourselves. Not to others. But to GOD.

 

And so, in the quiet of the sanctuary – all by themselves - Barbara Brown Taylor and her Associate conducted a full worship service aimed at the only other One present. God Almighty. They read the liturgy, sang the hymns, prayed the prayers, read the Scripture, preached the word, administered Communion – all for no one other than One they could not see, but knew was present. And when it was over, Barbara was awestruck by the power of that service which was truly worship of God!

 

Let me ask you, “Why do you come to worship? For whom… do you come to worship today?”

 

In our text from First Peter, you and I are invited to come to a depth of faith that is different than anything we’ve known before. In fact, it is described in terms of our becoming newborn babies all over again so that our lives can be re-grown in a better way than before. And the author of First Peter uses the metaphor of an infant nursing at its mother’s breast. He tells us to long for the pure, spiritual milk – not infant formula, not pasteurized and homogenized milk from the store – but pure, spiritual milk that will help us grow into salvation.

 

And then this pure, spiritual milk that is more nutritious than anything we can imagine is described in verse 4 where it says: “Come to HIM, the living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, LET YOURSELVES BE BUILT INTO A SPIRITUAL HOUSE, TO BE A SPIRITUAL PRIESTHOOD, TO OFFER SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES ACCEPTABLE TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST.”

 

What a phenomenal challenge is placed before us! The pure, spiritual milk that will cause us to grow is found in centering our lives on Christ, and like Him, letting ourselves become like priests who offer their sacrifices to God. Emphasis on the last two words – to God!

 

Do you remember when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, agonizing over his impending death? If it was left up to the disciples, they would choose another way. If it was left up to him, Jesus would choose another way. But Jesus did something truly amazing. He left it up to God.

 

“Nevertheless, not my will, but Thy will be done.”

 

Do you recall the time one Sabbath when Jesus met the man blind from birth? If it was left up to the conventional religious wisdom of the disciples, Jesus should do nothing because this man was just paying for the sins of either himself or his parents. Lots of people believe that’s why tragedy strikes, you know. If it was left up to the religious leaders of the day, Jesus should leave well enough alone because it is the Sabbath, after all, and no work – including healing – is to be done. But Jesus does not march to the beat of either conventional wisdom, or the religious law. No, Jesus is only concerned about God, and what will please God. And so he heals the man of his blindness, incurring the wrath of all the others.

 

Oh, on occasion after occasion, Jesus defies the expectations of others in order to fulfill the expectations of God. He lives his life like a priest in the temple, offering gifts to God that are holy and pleasing. And yet his temple is not a building. It is his life. And every day, he uses that life to make pleasing sacrifices to God – loving people no one in their right mind would love -  forgiving people who had committed the most egregious sins – enduring great hardship for the benefit of another – standing alone against the crowd, advocating for the rejected person – calling for mercy and not retaliation – opposing violence as a solution for violence – embracing those people society pushes away – pledging allegiance to God and God alone, even if it means breaking human law, and state mandates, and societal conventions.

 

Jesus marched to the beat of a different drummer. He offered the gifts of his life as specific offerings to God! Like a priest all alone in a temple on a snowy Sabbath morning, Jesus played to God as his audience!

 

And you and I are called to this same priesthood.

 

“Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God…”

 

Emphasis on the last two words… TO GOD!

 

You see, this God-centered orientation is crucial if we are to change and grow ourselves, and if we are to make any real difference in others’ lives and in the world.

 

I love the story of Elisabeth Elliot whose God-centered faith led her to undertake an amazing ministry of love. Some of you may remember that in January of 1956, Betty’s husband Jim and four other Wycliffe Bible translators were speared to death in the Equadorian jungle by a very remote and reputedly savage tribe known as the Auca Indians. Jim and the others had established friendly contact with the tribe, and their arrival that January in a plane filled with medical supplies and other resources was to be the beginning of a new outreach intended to help improve the life and health of the Auca. Sadly, however, something went wrong. All five missionaries were brutally murdered. When word came to Betty and the others back at their base camp, it seemed like the end of the world. There she was, a new mother with a just-born baby girl named Valerie. And now Jim was gone. How could she face the future?

 

I suppose that Betty could have responded in a number of ways. She could have played to her own broken heart, and walked away from God and her work, never looking back. I suppose she could have responded the way others wanted her to – return to the States and raise her daughter in a safe and wholesome environment. I suppose Betty could have centered her life on hating the Auca for what they had done, and spending the rest of her life trying to exact revenge. But Elisabeth Elliot did none of these things.

 

Three years later, with Valerie just three years of age, Betty returned to the jungle. Along with Rachel Saint, the sister of another of the men killed, they became the first outsiders to enter Auca territory and live to tell about it. By the grace of God, they were able to settle among the Auca, earning their trust, enabling their lives, improving their health, loving them with Christian love. The work of these two women is hailed as one of the most important missionary works of the past century.

 

And why did it happen? Because Elisabeth Elliot did not play out her life to the audience of her own pain, or the audience of her acquaintances, or the audience of conventional wisdom. She played out her life to an audience of One. Like a priest in a temple on a snowy Sunday morning, she offered the living of her life to what God wanted!

 

This is what it means to live as a Christian. We do what we do - and live as we live – as an offering to God. We Christians do not forgive those who sin against us because we feel like it, or because they have earned it, or because it is the most expedient thing to do. No, we forgive those who sin against us as a gift we are giving to GOD! We Christians do not pour out our lives at the Good Samaritan Center, or the child Advocacy Center, or somewhere in the ministry of our church because it makes us feel good, or because nobody else will do it if we don’t, or because someone else needs us to do it. No, we pour out our lives as a gift we are giving to GOD!

 

And I’ll tell you what – when you do things for any of those other reasons, all you need is someone to not appreciate you, or something to become uncomfortable, or something to not go your way, or someone who lets you down, and you’ll STOP! You’ll walk away from what you’re doing in a heartbeat, and wash your hands of it.

 

But when you offer what you do as a gift to GOD, it’s amazing how much you’ll put up with, how far you’ll go, how much you’ll love, how hard you’ll work because you know the gift you’re giving pleases the One you’re doing it for, and that He will make use of your gift in the building of His Kingdom, and that He will reward you for what you do in due time.

 

Do you have such a God-centered, God-driven faith?

 

Ever since Jesus came and lived among us, there have been people who have responded to His call – people who have lived their lives as though they were priests making daily sacrifices of love to God. These are the Mother Theresa’s and Betty Elliot’s of the world, the people who truly make the world a better place. These are the people who make the Gospel truly Good News. These are the people who demonstrate for all to see the power and joy of what Christianity can truly be.

 

These are the people among whom God invites you to be numbered.

 

Come and live your life…to God!