As He is, so are We in this World

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 22: 25-31 and 1 John 4: 7-21 Sermon Title: As he is, so are we in the world Preached on April 29, 2018 I was invited by a neighbor to go to a Braves game last week. He’s a Met’s fan, but that was OK. I can’t say that I’m much of a Braves fan anymore any way. Dansby Swanson is the only player I can name. But there’s more to a baseball game than the game, anybody can tell you that. And now that the area around the new SunTrust Ballpark is so nice, there’s plenty to do and plenty to spend money on, even if you’re not a big baseball fan. So, we bought a drink and a $20.00 hamburger. Sat down in our seats, and even though I didn’t know the names of the players on the team, even though I’d never been in this nice new stadium before – I immediately felt comfortable, because the rhythm of the baseball game is still the same. Organ music plays before the game starts during batting practice, just like always. The first pitch was thrown. We stood for the National Anthem. And when I heard the drum beats – it took me a second, but I remembered how to tomahawk chop and felt instantly at home, even in a new place. In a church like ours, we call that kind of rhythm a liturgy. At certain times we stand up, sit down, bow our heads, give our offering. At no point do we do much of anything like the tomahawk chop, but my point here is that in this church, as it’s true of so many places, there is a certain order to things, and in this place, the order matters. However, I’ve heard it said more than once of our worship service, “I like the music and the sermon, but I don’t really get all the other stuff.” That’s important to say. It’s important to be honest, because walking into a Presbyterian Worship service can feel like walking into hockey game or something. You don’t want to ask someone what “icing” is, but when you do you find out that no one really knows, so let me tell you that the order we go by matters. Every Sunday, first we are called to worship God. We don’t gather here to be comforted or corrected, to learn or be entertained – while hopefully all those things happen, what is of foremost importance is gathering here to worship God – that God calls us to worship, so we emphasize that in the Call to Worship at the beginning. Right after that we sing, and then, we Confess our Sins, because coming into the presence of perfection, makes all mortals aware of their imperfection. It was that way with Moses, Jeremiah, all the others and so it’s true of us, but after we confess our sins we hear again God’s words of forgiveness. “Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ – he was born for us, he lived for us, Christ died for us. He rose in power for us, Christ prays for us.” Consider all that and be reminded that God is much more interested in forgiving us than we ever could have imagined. Scripture makes it even more clear. We don’t read 1st John much, but it’s words are so beautiful and so clear: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way; God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Did you hear all that? Thinking of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Puritan Prayer Book say the same thing: I am always going into the far country, And always returning home as a prodigal, Always saying, Father, forgive me, And thou art always bringing forth the best robe. That’s some Good News, isn’t it? But let’s go back to our Sunday Worship Liturgy. You know what happens after we receive the forgiveness of God? We sing our thanks in the Gloria, and then we are invited to Pass the Peace of Christ. If ever there was a misunderstood bit of worship liturgy, this was it. Pastor invites the congregation to Pass the Peace of Christ and I run off to make sure the Beadle has his prayer ready. One of the Deacons makes sure there’s water in the Baptismal Font, and everyone else makes lunch plans for after the service. Those are all important things, but we’re missing the point. 1st John says it this way: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” We have a role to play; a role we are obligated to play. Now, as a rule, I don’t like it when someone tells me what I ought to do, but 1st John is right. If I’ve been loved and forgiven by God, how can I accept such grace without letting it flow right out of me and onto my neighbor? If I have such a keen grasp of just how imperfect I am, how can I reject another because of his imperfection? And if no one has seen God, how then can we Christians make God known? With our love. That’s the Passing of the Peace is about. The peace we receive – we pass it one. Mrs. Stephen’s taught us church kids to sing it in this church not so long ago and Anne Massen uses her song books still today. It’s song number 55 in those little books they use: We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand. And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land, And they’ll know we are Christians By our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Isn’t that wonderful? But these are bold words. And while they are back in our hymnal now, they haven’t been in a Presbyterian Hymnal for long a while, two editions or so. So, back in Tennessee at the church I served, the church secretary asked Mr. Lacy Coleman to carry all the hymnals to her desk so that she could paste the words to that hymn inside the front cover. Mr. Coleman had been the church custodian for 40 years, and he knew the congregation well. As he handed the church secretary the hymnals he looked at the words to the hymn she was pasting, and he said, “So they’ll know they are Christians by their love, huh? Well, you’re sure not going to know these folks are Christian by how they talk or how they act.” That’s not a good sign, is it? But it is an indictment of us all. Certainly, preachers have tried to encourage their congregations to do better. Christians have been encouraging each other to get out there to be a light to the world, but it’s hard. Years ago, I was a part of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Marietta High School. Billy Graham was coming to Atlanta and was preaching the message of “true love waits.” We were handed these “true love waits” cards, and were sent into the school, armed with this message, and I went right up to this table of girls I hardly knew, handed out the cards, one of the girls pointed to her pregnant belly and said, “I guess it’s kind of too late for me.” I threw the rest of the cards away after that, feeling like I had been sent out as a sheep to the slaughter, to say nothing of how I made that poor girl feel. It’s hard to know how we are supposed to be in the world, but back to our liturgy. At the end of the worship service we follow the acolyte out into the world as she carries the light of Christ who leads us out there, and that’s different from saying – we go out into the dark world to take the light with us. A group of young missionaries was at the airport with t-shirts that said, “Taking the light of Christ to Haiti.” That’s one idea, but here’s the thing, what makes us think he’s not there already? The song I love so much says it different: And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land. And 1st John says it like this: “As he is, so are we in the world.” That’s what the Bible says. That’s what the liturgy reinforces, but sometimes I am afraid, we Christians, we think of God as being more in here than out there. I led chapel for the preschoolers last Wednesday. I asked them about the baptismal font. If they knew what it was, and one little boy said, “Jesus was born in there.” It’s true that we gather to worship God in here. We sing God’s praises here. We follow the liturgy in here. We read from Scripture, but Jesus wasn’t born in here, nor is God confined to this place – and it’s important that we get used to thinking that way. The ancients were a little better about this than we are. The picture on the cover of your bulletin is a 13th Century map of the world. We’ve sung before: “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” and if you look closely, to the East and the West you can see his hands. To the South, his feet, and at the top, his face. Somebody looked at this map and said, “Where’s the Big Chicken?” It’s not on there. According to the New Testament professor who showed it to many of us a few months ago, this map reflects the medieval world view, that Christ is a part of this world – that God and God’s creation are hardly separate, and just as we go out into the world following the Acolyte’s flame, so Christ, already at work in the world, already a part of the world, will meet us out there and we Christians have to get better about not be confined to the four walls of our sanctuaries. I know that things have changed. Sporting events used to begin, not only with the pledge of allegiance but also with a prayer. Even school used to start with prayer, and some Christians have raised up in protest: “bring prayer back to schools,” but I heard someone say, “as long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school.” I like to go eat at Gabriel’s Restaurant, and we were there a few days ago, saw Wanda Reese walk in with her niece. I watched as Wanda took her niece’s hand, and they bowed their heads to bless the meal. “You can pray just as well at a restaurant as you can at home,” Wanda told me last Thursday, and she’s right. “As he is, so are we in this world.” That’s what Scripture says, but we have to live that way, for to quote the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 8: “We are not as sheep led to the slaughter, but we are more than conquerors.” The Psalms say it too: “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it,” but too often we Christians live like maybe he hasn’t. We walk around with our heads low and our faith hid beneath our coat as though our faith were something to be ashamed of. Sometimes we treat our sanctuaries like bomb shelters – the place we go for protection – while treating the world like a trash can, as though the God who created this earth no longer cared about it. I’m not talking about “evangelism” this morning. At least not the way we’ve been thinking of it, because the only person who wants you to go knocking on doors less than you do, is the person whose door you’re about to knock on. Instead, what I’m talking about is the love that we know about, the love of God that we witness and hear about, it is running loose in our world. And he is calling us to join him. “As he is, so are we in this world.” I heard a story about a church in Syria this week. Paul Phillips and I got to have lunch with a man who supports churches all over the world, and he told us about this church in Syria. They have a preschool, that serves families in the neighborhood, and late one night the city was falling into chaos, troops moving through, planes in the air, the pastor rushed to the church to see it surrounded by armed Muslim men. One approached the pastor, and he said, “Go home pastor, we will protect the church. Our children were students here. Go home, we will stay to protect the church.” God is at work in our world, changing and transforming lives. And as God has transformed our lives, we are now invited to join God at work. As you go out into the world today, remember the liturgy, and may it make you comfortable in an ever-changing world, reminding you of the thing that will never change: “As he is, so are we in this world.” Amen.