So great a cloud of witnesses

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 5: 1-7 and Hebrews 11: 19 – 12: 2, NT page 226 Sermon Title: So great a cloud of witnesses Preached on 8/14/16 It’s important to have a church website these days. I want to claim that a person is infinitely more likely to try a new church if they’ve been personally invited by a neighbor or a friend, but many people today who have moved or are moving to a new area will look around for where they might like to go to church by first visiting church websites. For mainly that reason we update our church website from time to time. About three years ago we completely changed it, and we’re thinking about updating it again and in the course of updating our website I got some free advice from Katie Baker who is a website designer and one of the women behind “Off the Duck”, which is a good resource if you want to know what’s going on in the Maury County social scene. Katie told me that the pastor should have as little to do with the church’s website as possible because pastors never want to put on the website the stuff that people actually want to know. What the pastor wants to put on the website is “what we believe”: a statement of faith, a creed, a mission statement, but Katie Baker told me, and I’ve asked around a little bit and 100% of people agree with her that what someone really wants to know from a church website in preparation for attending a church for the first time is, “if I’m going to go, what should I wear?” What should I wear? That makes sense to me, because I hate to be the guy who shows up in shorts and a t-shirt when every man has on slacks and a jacket, just as much as I hate being the guy who shows up in a suit and tie when every other man has on shorts and a t-shirt. A good expression that Rev. Russ Adcox is fond of saying – he’s the pastor out at Maury Hills Church of Christ – is “don’t be a small town boy with a big city haircut,” and I say don’t too – don’t be a small town boy with a big city haircut, because you won’t fit in. That’s what I want to talk about this morning. Fitting in. Every teacher believes that the purpose of school is education but every student knows that the purpose of school is social – making friends, building relationships, fitting in – so mom takes young Joe Evans to the mall to buy shoes and he picks out these bright orange Nike’s that the tennis star Andrea Agassi wears and that cost $100 a pair and mom says, “But Joe, you don’t even play tennis,” as though tennis were the purpose of $100 tennis shoes. As though the lawn that we treat with chemicals and pay a company to maintain had something to do with picnics or walking around in bare feet – no – the goal of the lawn is the same as the shoes: fitting in. Do I have the right shoes, the right clothes, will the neighbors talk about me if I don’t cut the grass (and yes they will) – these questions point to the big question that we all ask far too much, “Will I fit in?” and this is a question that we ask at school, at church, in our neighborhoods, and we go on believing the words to that song Sophia the 1st sings: that “At the perfect slumber party, everybody’s got to fit in,” and if you don’t know Sophia the 1st you need only know that her wisdom broadcast on the Disney Channel is a wisdom that surpasses all understanding. That’s probably because her head is so big. It’s true. If you’ve seen the show than you know they draw the princesses on this show with big heads and tiny bodies. These saucer size eyes and micro feet setting the bar for feminine body type at the level impossible to attain before these young girls watching even know it and we as parents let our daughters watch the show because every other parent lets their daughters watch the show and we want to fit in and we want our daughters to fit in. We all want to fit in, but is that always a good idea? I think of this issue all the time. As children grow they want to play travel soccer or travel baseball or travel gymnastics – the coach says it’s OK, the rest of the team is all OK – but is being gone all weekend so a 12-year-old can play soccer only going to church when there’s nothing else going on sending the right message to our children? We all want to fit in, but is that always good idea? And more to the focus of our 2nd Scripture Lesson – we all want to fit in, but have Christians ever really fit in? Our 2nd Scripture Lesson is the Hall of Fame of faith – the great cloud of witnesses who watch us from heaven cheering us on as we run the race that is set before us. There’s Moses – whose parents would not conform to the model all their neighbors had surrendered to. The rule of Pharaoh said that all male babies must die, but rather than fit in, (and risking their lives in the process) they raised Moses in secret. Then there’s the great mass of Hebrew people who marched around the city of Jericho until the walls fell down. Surely popular belief said that walls don’t fall down just because people march around them blowing horns, but rather than adopt popular belief – rather than fit in according to what everyone else was thinking – they marched and the walls fell down. Then there were others who were mocked, others flogged or stoned, some were even sawn in two. They were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats destitute, tormented – and not a single one of them ever fit in. Not a single one of them ever fit in because, as the author of Hebrew’s writes: “the world was not worthy of them.” Now there’s a powerful statement, which leads to the question – is the world worthy of you? Is the world worthy of me? What each name on the list from our 2nd Scripture Lesson has in common is that none of them fit in – that is, none of them fit in on the earth, because they weren’t trying to fit in on the earth – they were trying to fit in to the Kingdom of Heaven. Certainly they were tempted to worry most about what they’re neighbors thought, what their children’s friend’s parents thought, what their mother thought about her baby boy or baby girl – but what became most important to those of the great cloud of witnesses was – what would Jesus think? But as for me - I spend time wondering what everyone thinks of me - not just what Jesus thinks. It’s true. The food comes out at a restaurant (and this happened just last Thursday) I ordered a BLT and it came out with no tomato. A BLT with no tomato. There was my BL with no T and still I had to muster all this courage to ask the waitress for my tomato because I’m so scared to cause a stink. What if the waitress thinks I’m a jerk? What if the friends I’m eating with think I’m too demanding? I don’t want to cause a stink – I just want to fit in. You feel that. Imagine you’re a man hanging out with a group of guys and one makes a demeaning joke about women – and who laughs? I’ll tell you who laughs – two kinds of people laugh at demeaning and racist jokes – those who are themselves sexists or racist and those who just want to fit in, and while I know that these two kinds of people are different, anyone looking in from the outside can’t tell them apart. How many here have had a job where the culture of the place is to do as little as possible – and the temptation is for you to adopt the same pattern – no one wants to be the one who makes everyone else look bad, but do you really want to be everyone else? Were you created to be everyone else? Did Christ die on the cross for you so that you could just be everyone else? No. So here’s a good question – how badly do you want to fit in? Do you want to fit in so badly that you would you would rather fit in here and now at the risk of not fitting in to the Kingdom that is coming? Do you want to fit in so badly that you would rather be known as a citizen of the 21st Century on planet earth than a citizen of the Kingdom of heaven? Do you want to fit in so badly that you would drag your feet by accepting language that demeans and discriminates, accepting behavior that perpetuates broken systems, would you rather drag your feet holding on to the parts of the past that need to be left in the past or would you rather run the race that we have to run straight into the future that our Lord Jesus Christ has brought us? I am proud to have known some of the members of this great cloud of witnesses – those who live on earth but who aren’t at home here because their home is in the Kingdom of Heaven – but I’ve known so many others who are obsessed with being residents of the 21st Century, so they own the products of this current age, their look is up to date and their behavior is based on what they see on television and what is accepted as normal but I tell you - we can’t look like the world around us anymore, because this isn’t our home. We can’t live like those who are all around us because we are called to something different. We can’t accept what everyone calls normal – because our normal is defined by God and not by the whims of a broken culture. And we can’t dare despair for all around us is the cheering of that great cloud of witnesses encouraging us as we model to the world something different. Amen.