Tag: Jesus Christ

Grateful to Be Done with Religion

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year B, UncategorizedLeave a comment

done

Hebrews 10:11-25 NRSV

I am done. I give up. I have nothing left. I just can’t do this anymore. It’s over. No matter how hard I try, nor how much I put into it, I can never get it right.

And I know that I am not the only one. In fact, do you know what the fastest growing “religious” group in America is called?  They are called “the Dones.” At one time, they tried religion. But now they are done.

But here’s the good news—here’s what may be the best reason to be grateful this Thanksgiving: The wonderful truth about the Christian faith is that it is not a religion. No matter what anyone may tell you, the church is not a religious organization.

While I was pastoring a church right out of seminary back in 1993, a deacon in our church asked me where I saw myself in twenty-five years. Although I didn’t mention Arkansas, I told him that I believed that I would still be pastoring a church somewhere.

He laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?”   I asked.

“I see you more as the type who might be teaching in some college somewhere. I don’t think you are going to be a pastor.”

“Why do you say that?”

He said, “For one thing, pastors are generally religious people. And you, my friend, are not very religious!”

What this deacon failed to realize was that the church is not a religious organization. And the last thing a Christian pastor should be is religious.

Let me share with you what I think is a good definition of religion.  It comes from the late Episcopal Priest Robert Capon: “Religion is the attempt by human beings to establish a right relationship between themselves and something beyond themselves which they think to be of life-giving significance.”

Now, for some people religion has absolutely nothing to do with God.

For example, some say that I run religiously. I have heard my wife tell me that I read Runner’s World magazine like the Bible. I read it religiously to reach beyond myself, to run faster, achieve good health so I can enjoy the good life!

We’ve observed the religious habits of others. “He studies the stock-market religiously.” “She sanctimoniously follows a low-carb diet.” “He works 60 hours a week, religiously.” “He plays golf, religiously.”

We work out, eat right, study, go to work, follow a regimen, all with the same goal: to achieve life! So, it’s possible to be a religious fanatic and have absolutely nothing to do with God.

However, for some, religion is all about God. There are those who feel that we must be religious to get right with God. The main reason they go to church is to work on their relationship with God. They believe if they say the right prayers, believe in the right creed, behave the right way, avoid the right sins, then they can be right with God and God will bless them. If they can conduct their lives in a certain way, they can place themselves in a right relationship with God and achieve abundant and eternal life.

The bad news is that we human beings are always flunking religion.  No matter how hard we work at religion we can never get it right.

We can read all about running and how to run fast, but we will probably get injured.

We can study the Wall-Street Journal religiously and still make a bad investment.

We can religiously follow a diet and still gain weight.

We can place all of our time and energy into our careers, going to work early and leaving work late, and still be unappreciated and miserable.

And when we finally arrive at the place where we think you we have it right with God. When we finally believe we’ve got it right in the religion department, guess what? It only leads to pride and arrogance. A church member once told me, “I am the most humble person in our church!”

Sure you are.

In his wonderful book Unafraid: Moving Beyond a Fear-Based Faith, Benjamin Corey writes about a strange encounter with someone who was religious.

Upon meeting the gentleman, he wondered whether he could ask me a few questions to determine what kind of Christian I was. For some reason, I agreed—and ended up quickly regretting my decision, because the two questions out of his mouth were: “Do you spank your kids? And “Do you think gays are going to hell?”

I was like, “Wait…what kind of survey is this?” I should have known that this True Christian Surveywasn’t going anywhere, but in that moment I was foolish enough to answer his questions.

When I answered “no” on both counts, and answered another question to indicate that I did not believe in the rapture, the gentlemen told me that the reason why I was an adoptive father instead of a biological father was because God was refusing to bless me with children.

The good news of our scripture lesson this morning is that God came into the world through the person of Jesus Christ to put an end to such nonsense, to put an end to religion.

Hebrews notes that the priests stood before God in the temple. Well, of course they stood. There was no time to sit. There is no chair in the holy of holies.

And I know if a priest is going to be setting things right between God and my sin, he’ll never have a chance to sit down! The poor priest will constantly be running back and forth between my sin and God’s salvation.

No matter how great and sincere my sacrifice is when I go to the temple, my shortcoming as a fragmented human being are not going to disappear. The poor priest is never going to get a day off. He’s never going to be able to sit down. That’s why we read: “And every priest stands day after day at his service and offers again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.”

Now contrast the posture of the priest to Jesus. Notice what Jesus is doing? Jesus is sitting down. “When Christ offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.”

The veil in the temple, separating us from God was torn in two at his death. And through this great gift of God’s self, God revealed to the world that we should be done with religion.  Jesus is sitting down.

Consequently, there is no point of us getting on some treadmill of right thoughts, right beliefs, right speech, right actions, because that right relationship we so desperately seek has already been made right by God.

We have to only trust that God has indeed done what was needed to be done through Christ.

This is why our church teaches “no creed but Christ.” Being a member of this church is not about believing in this set of principles or that set of ideals, in that biblical interpretation or in this style of worship. It is about trusting and following Jesus.

That is why we call it the gospel. That is why we call it good news. If we called it religion, it would be bad news. Religion would mean that there was still some secret to be unlocked, some ritual to be gotten right, some law to obey, some theology to grasp, or some little sin to be purged.

This Thanksgiving, I thank God that through Jesus Christ this thing called sin between us and God has been made right. Thank God that the church is not a religious organization!  If it hadn’t, as irreligious as I am, there is no doubt in my mind that I would be in some other line of work by now!

The good news is, unlike the priests who are standing, running around, working hard, trying to get it right, Jesus is sitting down. His work is done. Religion is finished. We accept salvation trusting that Jesus has already done the work for us. Our relationship with God has been made right through him.

So, instead of spending holy moments working on our relationship with God, we can spend some sacred time working on our relationships with others, loving others as we love ourselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong. We don’t need religion, but we still need church. However, we don’t need church to get right with God. We need church to discover ways we can get right with our neighbor. Because what this world needs is not more people who say they love God, but more people who love their neighbor with the unconditional, unreserved love of Jesus. We are free. We are free from fear. And we are free to love.

I know that there are some who still believe that what we do here in the church is religious. They have never stepped out to follow Christ, to share the love of Christ with others, because they are waiting until they somehow get it right themselves. They are busy trotting back and forth to the altars of right beliefs, right thinking and right praying.

But this morning I am inviting all to come and realize that God has already made it right through Jesus Christ. I invite all to take a good look at Jesus this morning.

There he is. He’s sitting down.[i]

Thanks be to God.

Invitation to the Table

Each one is now invited to be served the bread and the wine of this table representing the broken body, and outpoured life of God.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to earn a rightful this table. There are no right words, right actions, or right beliefs. The good news is that when we could not make things right with God, God, through the sacrifice of Christ, revealed to the world that things have been made right. May we reflect on the sacrifice of God as we remain seated and sing together.

 

 

[i]Inspired from a sermon written by William Willimon.

Keeping It Real at Christmas

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Advent and Christmas, Sermons Year ALeave a comment

keeping-it-realMatthew 2:10-18

There were several wonderful things about our service on Christmas Eve, the night that we celebrated the coming of God into this world through the gift of Jesus Christ:

The number of people that chose to worship here on that night—of course!

Our soloist, Allison Bonner—most certainly!

Sharing Holy Communion with our loved ones—definitely!

The singing of familiar carols and the lighting of our candles—absolutely!

However, whether we realized it or not, I believe the very best thing about our worship on Christmas Eve was the large number of babies and small children present, and especially all of the noise and fuss that they were making.

On the night that we gathered to worship the gift of a new-born baby, born for our salvation, we were reminded of the sheer, untamed, undecorated reality of that gift as babies were crying, children were restless and some adults grew anxious.

As we very sentimentally turned off the lights, lit out candles and sang the sweet verses of Silent Night, the light in the Church Street Narthex continued to burn brightly while a stressed mother bounced her fussy infant in her arms, pacing back and forth.

And while there were anxious parents and grandparents here in this place, there was even more anxiousness, worry and even fear beyond these walls.

As we were listening to the angelic voice of Allison Bonner sing O Holy Night, Joe and Cass Santapolo were with their daughter, Caroline and her sick son Jackson in the children’s hospital at Duke University awaiting surgery.

While we were sharing the bread and the cup, Cora Aycock had just arrived in the emergency room at Vidant with her son James who had a bacterial infection.

While we were listening to the story of Christmas and singing carols, countless other children were suffering—some from all kinds of sickness, from ear infections and stomach viruses to seizures and cancer—some from abuse, others from hunger.

This is Christmas unfiltered. This is real Christmas. This is Christmas reality.

But every year we try to cover it up. We wrap it with colorful paper and tie a bow around it. We string it with artificial lights and decorate it. We try to romanticize it, sentimentalize it. But no matter how hard try, no matter how much energy we expend or how much money we spend, we cannot conceal the real harshness of it, the harsh realness of it.

But every year, for whatever reason, we try. Maybe it is because the story fills us with so much hope and so much peace, we can’t help but to glamourize the scene of that first Noel.

In our minds, the scene is majestic. It is glorious. Angels flying in the night sky singing a heavenly chorus. A brilliant star rising in the East.  A baby worshipped by Shepherds and Kings and even animals.

In our Nativity scene, there is no crying, no fussing, no colic, no ear infections, no stomach viruses, no disease, no restlessness, no dirty diapers, no spit up, no anxiety, no fear.  Our Nativity is a serene, sweet, sanitized scene. It never rains in our Bethlehem.

And then we tend to romanticize the rest of the story.

A glorious baptismal scene with John the Baptist and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove. Jesus calling faithful disciples who drop everything to follow him. Even the cross has become sentimental—a perfect, pretty piece of jewelry to adorn the neck. It looks nice upright or sideways. In our minds, the whole story is a beautiful, perfect fairytale.

But the truth is that was not the reality of Christmas. Christmas reality was not beautiful.  Christmas reality was far from perfect.

Christmas reality, says the prophet Isaiah is “Like, a root out of dry ground,” Jesus was born among animals in a cattle stall and placed in a feeding troth with the stench of wet straw and animal waste in the air.

Yes, Kings, Magi or Wise Men came to worship the baby, but we forget that King Herod was using those eastern visitors to locate the baby so he could run a sword through him. And we forget the holocaust in Ramah, the innocent babies slaughtered, the desperate cries of anguish and despair from parents because there children were “no more.” We forget the escape to Egypt like homeless refugees.

This is Christmas. This is the Christmas reality.

And the rest of the story?

We forget that John Baptist argued with Jesus trying to prevent his baptism. We forget Jesus was tempted by Satan not only in the desert for forty days but his entire life by disciples who never seemed to understand him. We forget he made just a few precious friends, but a mob of enemies. And in the end, those enemies got him.  And his best friends betrayed, denied and abandoned him. And we forget that it was in the most god-forsaken of ways, God, the creator of all that is, was tortured to death.[i]

This is the reality of it. And this is the good news of it!  This is why the story fills us with such hope and peace. The reality, the good news of Christmas is that there is nothing glamorous, glitzy sentimental, or romantic about it. God came into the real world, encountered real evil in the most real of ways, experienced real suffering and pain and died a very real death.

Dr. Ernie White was one of my professors who was stricken with cancer while I was a student at Southern Seminary. I’ll never forget something he shared with us in class one day.  He said, “Although I cannot explain it, somehow, the sicker I am, the more pain I experience, the more hopeful I become, because in the moments of my most immense suffering, God has been and is the most real to me.”

Because of Christmas, through the coming of God in Christ into a very real and broken world, we know that God knows something about real human suffering and real human misery. God knows what it feels like to feel forsaken by God. God is therefore able to relate to us in the most intimate of ways in those moments when life is the most real, the most broken.

This is what made our Christmas Eve service so wonderful, so miraculous. As we lit the Christ candle with fussy children in the background, we were reminded that God is truly Emmanuel. God is intimately and empathetically with us in our broken reality. God was not looking down on our worship from glorious streets of gold, but God was right here in these worn, wooden pews beside us.

Beside the one who broke her leg… Beside the one who lost his job… Beside the one whose marriage is ending… Beside the one undergoing treatments for cancer…  Beside the ones whose children are sick… Beside the ones whose children have died.

On this First Sunday after Christmas we bless these sweet children, we promise to surround them with a community of love; however, we also realize that truly loving them means that we cannot always protect them from the broken reality that is this world. However, with faith in Christmas, with faith in the God who knows the reality of this broken world, we know that God will always truly and authentically be Emmanuel, God with them.

Therefore, when we bless James Alexander Aycock and David Grimes Lewis this morning, when we touch them saying to them, “The peace of Christ be with you always,” we are not merely whistling in the dark. We are not simply being sentimental and in no way are we being artificial. But we are being as authentic, as genuine and as true as we can possibly be.

As people with the faith in Christmas, we are keeping it real—as real as that untamed night in an undecorated stable in Bethlehem.

And baby James, who has a tube in one of his kidneys, awaiting surgery on that kidney in a couple of weeks, deserves nothing less.

And baby Grimes, who has been on antibiotics and a nubulizer this week, who has just started teething, who promises, like all babies, that the one thing we can all expect in this world is the unexpected, demands that we keep it real this day!

Let us pray together: O God, we thank you for coming into the real world as a real little baby, thank you for encountering real evil, for experiencing real suffering and pain, for dying a very real death. And we praise you, dear Lord, for resurrecting it all and for giving us a peace that is beyond understanding and a hope that is abundant and eternal. Amen.

 

PRAYERS AND OTHER ELEMENTS OF WORSHIP  FOR THE DEDICATION OF CHILDREN, PARENTS AND CONGREGATION

INVOCATION

Emmanuel, God with us, show us where you may be found today. In each human birth, in the joys of parenthood and in tragedy and loss—in loving homes and in broken homes.

Emmanuel, we rejoice that you are with us—in everything, through everything.

Lord Christ, be born in us today.

Word of God, become flesh in us that we might live your gospel in hope.

Light of the world, shine on us and in us and through us for our sakes and for the sake of your world.

Loving God, help us to see your grace, hear your voice, and follow in your way through Jesus Christ our Savior who taught us to pray…

PASTORAL PRAYER

O God, as we continue to celebrate the good news of Christmas, as we continue to light candles and sing carols, even as we gather around a beautiful tree aglow with lights and Chrismons, we acknowledge the real pain and the real sadness of this broken world.

While we rejoice in hope, we know of others who cry in despair.

While we experience peace, others know strife and injustice.

While we are surrounded by love, others are enveloped by hatred.

While we are filled with joy, others are overcome with grief and fear.

Thank you for being Emmanuel, God with us. Thank you for coming into this world as it is, fragmented, fragile and forlorn. Thank you for knowing what it feels like to be human in the real world—to be tempted, lonely, betrayed, afraid, to die, and to even feel forsaken by God.

And thank you for always working in our world to transform it all, to redeem it all, to resurrect it all, to work all things together for the good.

Come now and work on us, work in us, and work through us, to help us share this good news with all people, especially to the children with which we have been entrusted. Help us to prepare them for the world ahead of them by showing them faith in Christ and teaching them to follow the way of the gospel.

Forgive us when we fall in love with Christmas but neglect to share it with others. But continue to be Emmanuel as we continue to strive to be the church that you are calling us to be in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

 

INVITATION TO COMMUNION[ii]

This is the table of the Lord.

Come, not because you are strong, but because you are weak.

Come, not because you deserve to come or you have done something to earn the right to come, but because you need mercy and you need grace.

Come because you love the Lord a little, but you like to love him more.

Come, because the Lord loves you and understands what it is like to be you. Come because the Lord has become flesh to dwell among us.

Let this bread and this cup be for you the token and pledge of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.

 

OFFERTORY SENTENCE (Adapted from Worship Reources #518 Chalice Worship, p.392.)

The amazing gift of God who emptied God’s self, poured God’s self out into the real world to become one of us prompts us to make a grateful response. In Christ we have known a love that will not let us go. Through an offering, let us share this love in our community and to the ends of the earth.

OFFERTORY PRAYER

Gracious God, we now give these offerings that they might herald the good news of Christmas. Accept them as expressions of our response to the gift of your Son and the salvation he brought us.

 

DEDICATION OF CHILDREN[iii]

Hear these words from Deuteronomy 6:4-7

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.* 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.

Charge to Parents

You parents are now to recall your own faith journeys and give yourselves in covenant to lead your children toward full discipleship in Christ.

With gratitude to God;

Josh and Cora, do you receive James Alexander; Billy and Jessica, do you receive David Grimes, as a precious gift of God, and seek God’s grace and this community’s support in nurturing and caring for your child?

Do you covenant to remain faithful in love to your child, whatever the future may bring?

Do you promise before God and this community so to fashion your lives that your child may come to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior?

If so, please say, “I do.”

Charge to the Church

The church, as a family of God, gladly joins you in holy covenant for the care and the nurture of these children.

Congregation, will you please stand.

Do you promise as a community of faith:

To surround these families with your love for the strengthening of their life together;

To be for these parents and children a family in Christ whose love for them cannot be broken;

To accept these children into your loving care for shared responsibility in their growth toward fullness in the life of Christ.

To keep it real with these children, by telling they the good news of Christ, to help them learn the ways of Christ and to lead them in service to God and neighbor?

If so, please indicate so, by saying “We do.”

James Alexander Aycock, I am not merely whistling in the dark when I say to you, “May the peace of Christ always be with you.”

David Grimes Lewis, I am not glibly gushing when I say to you, “May the peace of Christ always be with you.”

Prayer of Dedication

Great and gracious God,

We celebrate these young lives that you have given us, and ask your  blessing upon them.

Lay upon them your hands of love, that they may always know how precious they are to you—and to us.

Lay upon them your hands of grace, so that when they fall for falter, they will know that you are there to help pick them up again.

Lay upon them your hands of hope, that they will grow up to dream bold dreams, and lay upon them your hands of courage so that they might bring those dreams to life.

Lay upon them your hands of Light, so that your light might shine through them.

Lay upon them your hands of joy, so that their lives might be filled with laughter.

Bless these children, O God, for we dedicate them to you. And in so doing, we renew our own dedication to you so that your lives might be a word of blessing upon the lives of our children. As family and friends, as their family of faith, help us to be good stewards of the lives with which we have been entrusted. In the name of Jesus Christ, who welcomed the children, we pray. Amen.[iv]

COMMISSIONING AND BENEDICTION

Go now into the real world and keep it real.

Go into the real world and share your faith in a real God who became a real little baby, who encountered real evil, experienced real suffering and pain, and died a very real death.

As you have blessed James and Grimes this day, go and in a very real way, share the peace of Christ with all people.

And may the real love of God, the real grace of Jesus Christ and the real communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all.

[i] Inspired from a sermon by Frederick Buechner entitled “Two Stories,” from Secrets in the Dark  (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 86-87.

[ii] Adapted from Colbert S. Cartwright, O.I. Cricken Harrison, eds. Chalice Worship (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1997), 21, 22.

[iii] Adapted from Chalice Worship, 21, 22.

[iv] Haymes, Peggy. Be Thou Present: Prayers, Litanies, and Hymns for Christian Worship (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys Pubishing, 1994), 69.

Free to Be Free

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Sermons Year CLeave a comment

4th of July

(Sermon delivered to First Christian Church, Farmville, NC, on June 30, 2013)

Galatians 5:1, 12-25  and Luke 9:51-62 NRSV

For freedom Christ has set us free—and all God’s people here in America on this Sunday before the July 4th proudly and fervently say: “Amen!”

But what exactly does that mean?

I know the type of freedom that most Americans cherish, as I am one of them. We call it the freedom of opportunity.  Which is usually translated in our consumerist society:  the freedom to attain, to acquire, to amass and to accumulate as much as we possibly can.

We are free to go after the American dream. Buy a big house in the suburbs or in a small town, purchase two cars and a dog and raise our children by providing them with the latest smart phones and the trendiest clothes.

And we are free to pursue happiness. To be the people we want to be and to go to the places we want to go. We are free to fulfill our every desire and to meet our every need. We are free to get as much as we can out of this life and this world.

And we American Christians love to evoke Jesus to help us. We look to Jesus as our ticket to attaining the American dream.

In other words, Jesus, for many Americans, becomes just another commodity that we can get, so we can get some more.

I have seen Christian billboards, bumper stickers and t-shirts take the once popular slogan of the American Dairy Association “Got Milk?” and change it to “Got Jesus?”

Do you seek happiness? Want to fulfill your desires, meet your needs? Need help paying the mortgage? Need to build a stronger family? Then, just get you some Jesus!

Yes, God bless America that we are free to worship and get Jesus so Jesus can help us get some more!

The Samaritans had received word from the disciples that Jesus was on the way to visit their village. Can you imagine hearing such an announcement? Jesus is coming to town! Jesus is coming to Farmville! Jesus is coming to help us achieve the American dream, help us with the mortgage, help us strengthen our families, help us go to the places that we want to go and to be the people that we want to be!  Can you imagine the grand reception, the huge welcome that would await Jesus?  No doubt there would be parades, cook-outs and a lot of fireworks to celebrate his arrival.

Let’s read how they celebrated such a grand event early in the first century. In verse 53 we read, “but they did not receive him”…what? Why on earth not?  Because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

His face was set toward Jerusalem. Toward the cross. Toward sacrifice. Toward self-denial. Toward self-giving. Toward pain and toward suffering.  And the Samaritans, of course, were not interested.

So, Jesus goes into another village. Surprisingly someone cries out, “Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go!”

Jesus, assuming the zealot really did not know what he was saying, asks, “Are you sure you really want to do that? Do your really mean that? Do you really want to go with me? Don’t you understand that foxes have holes and birds have nests but the son of man has no where to lay his head.”

So much for Jesus helping us with the American dream of that big home in the suburbs!

To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Let me first bury and mourn my father.” Jesus respond, “Let the dead bury the dead, as for you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”

So much for Jesus helping us to meet our needs.

Another said, “I will follow you, but let me first go back and tell my family good-bye.” To which Jesus responds: “Those who look back are not fit for the Kingdom of God.”

So much for Jesus coming to help us build a stronger family!

In other words, Jesus says:

If you want to follow me as my disciples in this world, then you must let go of the things to which the world assigns so much value. You must abandon those things with which the world seduces you into believing they can be the fulfillment of your most profound desires.

Jesus also puts it this way… to truly live, we must first die to self.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp for helping Jews escape to Switzerland insightfully wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

And the Samaritans wanted none of that. No wonder that night in their village there were no fireworks.

That was not the message they wanted to hear. If Jesus’ face is set toward Jerusalem, then Jesus better get himself to Jerusalem, and we will stay right here.

I attended a church growth conference a few years ago where the speaker talked about the importance of making sure that church members “feel satisfied.”  In other words, if you want the church to grow, the job of your pastor is to make certain that you are happy.

You know, the speaker is absolutely right. Just ask the Samaritans. If Jesus came to the Samaritans with his face set toward the pursuit of happiness, I am sure the pews would have been packed. The problem is that this is not the purpose of the church.

Jesus does not call us to go to church to get happy. Jesus calls to be the church, to be the body of Christ in a broken and fragmented world, with its face set towards Jerusalem.

And Jesus is not just some commodity that we can get so we can get some more…more happiness, more contentment, more fulfillment.  Jesus does not want us to get him, Jesus wants to get us. As William Willimon puts it, Jesus does not want us to get him to meet our needs. Jesus wants to get us and rearrange our needs. He does not want us to get him to fulfill our every desire. He wants to get us and transform our every desire.

Jesus is not interested in helping us to be the people we want to be and to go to the places we want to go. Jesus wants us to be His people and go to the places that he wants to go. And his face is set toward Jerusalem.

As one of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen has said, sometimes Jesus calls us to places we would rather not go.  Sometimes Christ calls us into “unknown, undesirable and painful places.”

The truth is, that when we come here on Sunday morning, instead of finding ourselves surrounded by a bunch of happy people satisfied and content, we probably should find ourselves in the midst of a people who are more than a little anxious, apprehensive, and nervous for we never know where this Christ is going to lead us next.

This weekend as we Americans celebrate our nation’s birthday, may each of us thank God for our country and the freedom our country affords us.  However, as a church that is not seeking to get Jesus, but continually be in the process of allowing Jesus to get us, to rearrange our needs, transform our desires, lead us toward Jerusalem, toward the cross, toward suffering, self-denial, self-giving, may we be mindful that with our freedom comes a radical call to truly free ourselves of some things that many Americans hold very dear.  May we mindful that we are free to be truly free.

While it is true that we are free acquire and accumulate, to accrue and to amass, to meet our every need and to fulfill our every desire, it is also true that we are free, to abandon and relinquish, to let go and to leave behind.  We are free to be free from all of the material trappings and selfish desires that prevent us from following Christ wherever he leads.  We are free, not to get Jesus to meet our needs and fulfill our desires, but we are free to allow Christ to get us to rearrange our needs and transform our desires.  We are free to not only get to give.

Bonhoeffer did not have to help Jews escape Nazi Germany and flee to Switzerland.  After all he was safe and sound in New York in the early 1940’s. He was free to stay in America and preach the gospel from the safety of a free church pulpit or to teach New Testament in the peace and freedom of a university.  Bonhoeffer could have lived the American dream. But the gospel he preached and the freedom that he was granted compelled Bonhoeffer to return to Germany and stand against Nazi aggression.

Before he was executed by the Germans, he wrote the following words.  They are words that the American Church needs to hear again and hear loudly… “Cheap grace is the preaching of….forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession…  Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living and incarnate.

“Costly grace is…the gospel which must be sought again and again. The gift which must be asked for, the door at which one must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs us our lives. It is grace because it gives us the only true life.”

For freedom Christ has set us free—and all God’s people here in America on this Sunday before the July 4th proudly and fervently say: “Amen!”

Let us pray.

O God as we recommit ourselves this day to follow the Christ, give us your grace to let go, give up, and relinquish every desire, trait, and tendency that weighs us down or hinders our faithful work for you in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Commissioning and Benediction

We came here this morning to get a little bit of Jesus. To get him to help us meet our needs and fulfill our desires. Instead, Jesus came here and got us. Through Jesus, God the creator of all that is has spoken, saying, “I have some very important work to do in this world, and I am here to get you to help me.

Go now and do the work in this world to which you have been called.  You may have to leave friends and family behind.  You may have to give up some things that you hold very dear.  Even life itself.  But in so doing, you will gain the only true life. And may the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

Changing the Invitation to Church

On By Rev. Dr. Jarrett BanksIn Just a ThoughtLeave a comment

Be the church

From The Least of These or the Exalted of Us

These days, people just don’t seem to want to go to church anymore. But maybe that is a good thing. Because maybe church is not some place to go. Maybe church is something we are supposed to be. So instead of inviting others to go to church for us, perhaps we should be inviting them to come and be the church for others. The invitation should be: “Join us to be the embodiment of Jesus Christ in this fragmented world with a burning passion for the poor and the outcast. Come and join us to be the Body of Christ as we humbly and selflessly seek to care more about ‘the least of these,’ and less about ‘the exalted of us’.”