Sermon: "Moving Toward Christ with Your Neighbor"

5th in the "Who Is My Neighbor?" series.
Delivered May 25, 2008 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Theme: We are in our last week of this series Moving Towards Christ with your neighbor. It's a time to sum it up and take a look at what the whole lifestyle looks like--and if you are like me, you might not get the answer that you were looking for (Hint: It's a much bigger deal than just having our church host a program.)

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Video clip, a variety of people quoted:
"I'm not interested."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I believe in God."
"I have a personal faith."
"I think Jesus was a peaceful man"
"I think what he said was completely blown out of proportion."
"There are so many religions, how do you know yours is right?"
"I went to a church when I was younger."
"There are so many religions how do you know if yours is right?"
"I have known you almost my whole life. How come you never said anything about this?"
"I grew up Catholic."
"No thank you."
"I spent way too much time at church when I was a kid. I have had enough of that."
"I don't understand how I am supposed to talk to God."
"Look what the church has done to us."
"It's about love, where is the evidence?"
"All the Christians I know are hypocrites."
"Where was God when I needed him?"
"How do you hear God's voice?"
"Go to hell".
"Divorce folk actually inform a lot of what I do in my life."
"I don't need God."
"I just want to feel like there is a purpose for love."
"I don't have time."
"There is a God, but he's not a kind God."
"Nobody would love me. Why would God take my husband?"
"Why would God let someone I love die?"
"Why do bad things happen?"
"I am very sick."
"Organized religion is for fools."
"I have my own spirituality."
"Honestly do you really feel that way?"
"Pray for me."
"I feel so lost."
"I don't read the Bible; it's outdated."
"If you say so."
"I will keep thinking about it."
"Nothing ever happens."
"It's over."

Hard questions? The advice that is up on the screen comes from Matthew 10. It's actually a paraphrase of some of the things that Jesus said to his disciples when he sent them out to do his ministry among the villages and towns in Israel.

We have been doing a series on "Who is My Neighbor?" The issue of reaching out to the people where we live, work and play. The first week we focused in on the fact that it's a choice that we live lives that are going at such at rate that we actually have to make a choice to connect meaningfully with the people who surround us in order to meet their need to serve them and to proclaim Christ to them.

The second week we talked about the fact that this lifestyle grows out of something that Christ first does for us. In other words, there is really only one good samaritan and that's Jesus, as he works in us. We are the ones dead on the side of the road. Jesus comes and he brings life and a solution and healing to our condition and then we join him in having that ministry in other people's lives, but it's first and foremost God's ministry.

The third week we focused on the fact that it's also by God's power that we do this. We are not long distance swimmers that are going to do some heroic act for God, but we are more like surfers; people who have these skills, have this strength, have this ability, but its to get in to position so that God then can pick up us and use us in his purposes.

And then we talked last week; George talked about the fact that the Holy Spirit makes special appointments for us and those appointments are divine opportunities and that's our neighborhood. Just like the Good Samaritan was the neighbor because he had that opportunity. The Holy Spirit leads us in to special opportunities. So even if you are only here for a few years as a student or in a short-term job commitment, this is the place where God wants to use you right now. This is your neighborhood.

And now, we are in our last week of this series Moving Towards Christ with your neighbor. It's a time to sum it up and take a look at what the whole lifestyle looks like a little bit and if you are like me you might not get an answer that you were looking for. Let's pray.

God, we thank you for your scripture. We thank you for this time to be able to worship and this time to be able to think together about what your word tells us and instructs us to do. So open our eyes and open our hearts, open our faith. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

I am going to say the obvious right now. Most of us here are Americans. Pretty obvious statement. And what that means is that we have been shaped by our culture; that means we are masters of the program. We build programs to accomplish everything. We are the country that invented the assembly line. There are more "How To" books in English than probably all of the other languages of the world put together. We love "How To" books. We love 1, 2, 3 answers to things. We like things to be predictable, controllable with sure-fire results. I want a book that tells me four steps on how to have an incredible quiet time; even though it's a relationship with God, even though all kinds of other things are happening in my life, I want four rules, four steps and they better be easy ones that makes sure that I have a terrific quiet time every time that God is pleased with his relationship with me and I am having a good time. That is what I want. Four easy steps.

I do premarital counseling and in the premarital counseling materials there are ten steps to conflict resolution. Now I like these steps. I am an American you know, but the whole assumption you know that you are going to get in to a fight and you are going to pull out your clipboard you know, okay let's first set a time to talk about this and check it out. Next, lets define the problem you know. Now these things help, but it's a little artificial. It doesn't fit all the time with real life. Now this structuring, this programatic nature is actually cultural strength. When you can break something down into small easy steps you can make a strong program and you can get good results and is something that is easy to teach other people. So we don't have to apologize about that, but we've got to recognize that it is not the answer to everything. Far from it. You know I think we really want answers like that, these 1, 2, 3, answers I really think we want that in the area of reaching out to our neighbor. That is what we are looking for. Five steps to better witness. Moving Towards Christ as easy as 1, 2, 3. That is what we are looking for.

Now we have been using this image of a surfer over the last few weeks; how this is one way of thinking about what it means to be available to God. Well, I want to point out up on the screen here America's answer to this whole surfing deal. It's the wave pool. In other words, it's all under control. Take a look at that. It's clean water. You control the wave height and speed. You can control the water temperature, because we do not want to surf in cold water. You can have it indoors if needed. You can have it in the mall. You can surf in the winter. You can control the air temperature. It's fast. You don't have to go out and wait for a wave to come in. You just get in line; there is only a few people in line there. You wait for the other person. You pay your money. You wait and then you get your chance. It's predictable. It's safe and then you can switch it off at night and get back to life as usual.

That's our way. That's our way about surfing and that's I think what we kind of long for in this area of how we relate to our neighbor and our neighborhood. We want a special event that's going to do it in three hours and somebody else is going to lead it. We want a great program to invite people in to. We want a "How To" book that's going to ensure that everything is easy, that we don't have to wait, that we will have all the answers to the tough kind of questions we heard on that video, that its going to be predictable and that we are going to be sure that if we do it right, satisfaction is guaranteed. It's going to work because we did it 1, 2, 3. And then we can switch it off at night and get back to life as usual.

But we know that it is probably not that way. You know, on this level we don't want a wave of God's action in our lives. What we want is a wave pool that we can control. But underneath it all we know that life can't be lived that way. We can't have a program for everything. Everything can't be lived out 1, 2, 3. Real life is more like this picture here; the open water. This is more like what real life is all about. It's unpredictable. Every wave is not a great wave. Sometimes we have to take whatever wave comes. Sometimes we have to wait a long time for the wave that we are looking for. It's not always comfortable. There are rainy days. There is sunburn. There are jellyfish and even sharks in the real world. That is what the real world is like. That's the real world where we live, work and play; the open water. And so the programs and easy answers might give us a little bit of help in living this out, but life is going to be much bigger than any small answer or any one program. We need an approach to our neighborhood for the long haul. It's not what we do for an intensive three hours. It's what we do for the next 20 years or next 40 years that's important in living out our lives as we reach out to our neighbors and move towards Christ with them.

And so we are going to get a bigger picture of this and we are going to get it from the Apostle Peter. In the book of 1st Peter he is writing to Christians who are living in the middle of an entire society that doesn't understand them. They are a minority; a very small minority, a new religion. They are considered atheist by the culture around them, because they don't recognize the emperor as a God. There are some people in that society that hate them and the hate is getting higher and higher in the society. It is getting more and more unpredictable on what it is going to mean for them to live as Christians in their own society. They are getting asked tough questions; questions like we heard a few moments ago. Reactions that are not very flattering. They are in the middle of a society that wants to be called Pagan. It's a label they chose for themselves. So into that society Peter speaks a word and it's not a word for ten minutes or even ten days; it's a word for all of life. So let's take a look at it, 1st Peter, Chapter 2 and we are going to Verse 9 to 11:

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God,once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us."

Now go to Chapter 3, Verses 15 and 16:

"But in your heart set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscious, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander."

Going back to Chapter 2, Verses 9 and 10: Verses 9 and 10 talk about our identity. Who we understand ourselves to be is going to determine the way we relate to society around us. What is out identity in Jesus Christ? It is explained many different ways. This is just one way and it's in the book of 1st Peter. It says here some amazing things about us. We are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. These are incredible things. We are a holy nation. We are a royal priesthood. Those words are being used about us. But no matter how glorious these words are, one of the fundamental things about our identity has to be humility, because these incredible words about who we are are surrounded by some other words and I want to point out those other words to you. You are a chosen people; that means before that you weren't chosen. It says declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness in to his wonderful life. That means that we were in the darkness. We were part of the problem. Once you were not a people it says, but now you are the people of God. Once we were not a people. Once we were a people that could not offer to God a sacrifice pleasing to him. We could not offer our own lives as a sacrifice to God. It would not be pleasing to God. It was not acceptable. The breech was too deep. God had to do something to even make our lives acceptable, to even make our sacrifices acceptable. Once we had not received mercy, but needed it.

We were standing under the judgment of God like everybody else and then we have now received mercy. So the most fundamental thing about our identify, before we talk about any other specifics, is humility. We are part of the problem. We are just like the rest of the world that we are reaching out to. One of the biggest scandals in the outreach of the church particularly within American society has been the sense that we are somehow better. There is nothing in this text that tells us that. We have received mercy and its in receiving that mercy that we then offer it out again, because it was free to us; it had nothing to do with us, so it has nothing to do with them. God's mercy can touch even them. That's the most fundamental thing going on here, is that we have received something because of our desperate need and our own guilt.

But it does talk about us and our new identity. I can't cover all of them. I am only going to cover one and that has to do with the fact that we are a royal priesthood. You've got to put everything out of your mind now that has to do with the fact that you come from a particular family, that you are an American, that you are an engineer, you've got a particular job. Put it all aside for a moment and think about the fact that you are a priest. God has made you a priest. It is part of your identity. So what does that mean? The word priest in Hebrew, Greek and Latin have different kinds of meanings and all of the meanings kind of float around in our earliest understanding as a Christian church of what a priest is.

The Jewish word for priest stands behind the name Cohen. Anybody you meet whose name is Cohen, that name goes all the way back to a word that sounds very similar Cohen, which means priest. And the meaning of that word had to do with the fact that someone who has an oracle from God or a message from God. Now the Greek word for that, for priest had to do more with about being filled with the power of the divine and being consecrated to divine purposes, related to our word holy, being set apart. And then the Latin word, had to do with building bridges. The Latin word for priest is a word for a bridge builder; somebody building a bridge between God and humanity. And so the picture that we get from the Old Testament and the New Testament and the way these words are used is someone who is filled by the Holy Spirit, to give a word of revelation about God, to build a bridge between humanity and God, speaking to humanity about God and speaking to God about humanity, to be a mediator. And this is a lifestyle. It's not an office that we fulfill in a particular few moments in our lives. It's part of our identity and it is a part of our lifestyle.

So what does it mean to live as a priest? One of the most fundamental understandings of what it means to be a priest is to be someone who offers prayer to God. The priest is someone who serves at the alter, to raise an alter of prayer before God. An alter is a place of communication. An alter is a place of fellowship. An alter is a place of sacrifice. An alter is a place of receiving power. All of these priestly functions that we are called to in prayer believing that God is compassionate and powerful, we call upon God to act in this world according to his will. In other words, we pray along with Jesus, your kingdom come your will be done on earth. That is our priestly function; to pray that in all of its manifestations, all of its variations. So we learn about what the will of God is in the world. Then we look at the lives around us and the situation around us and then we call upon God to act and do what only God can do.

Now it's easy to think about the highest act of a Christian as being one of sacrifice and there is good reason for that. We see Jesus sacrificing himself on the cross for us and so when we sacrifice ourselves, when we sacrifice money or whether we sacrifice our lives or whether we go overseas and sacrifice our lives by living in another situation, we view this rightly so as being in the image of Christ and a high and holy thing, but its not the only high and holy thing. It's also in the image of Christ. It's also a holy moment, a great moment when we are so in touch with the Holy Spirit, so submitted to the will of God, so ready to be used that we call upon God to do something in this world, something beyond all human ability and God is pleased to listen. That too is the image of Christ. Christ when he did his miracles. Christ when he said to Peter, "Peter, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you and when you return strengthen the brethren." Jesus had prayed it through to the point that it wasn't an if anymore; he knew that God would answer. That is part of our calling. To call upon God and God be pleased for his own glory to do it. What an amazing, amazing privilege.

So we are first called to prayer. The second part of a priestly life is integrity. The second few verses, verses 11 and 12 of chapter 2 talk about our actions. "Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires." That is the first part of integrity. We are to be different than this culture around us, not by wearing funny hats and obeying crazy rules. That is one way of being different, but that is not the way that is pointed to in the New Testament. What's pointed to here is living differently and the way we begin that is by not living in some ways, abstaining from sinful desires. It means that we learn how to treat people with respect and not with the first impulse that comes up in our lives, to treat people with gentleness, to have a lifestyle that doesn't use other people, whether its people immediately around us or whether its people halfway around the world, that we are trying to live a lifestyle that doesn't abuse and use people. It means that we live lives that honor our wives and our husbands with faithfulness. It means living a life where we know what self-control means. Self control in drinking, in our sexual lives; self control in balancing our lives, balancing work and play, that we don't just go with the flow of our culture, but we learn from God what the important realities are.

So the first thing is how we live differently by not doing some things. The other thing is how we do some positive things that are different. It talks here in Verse 12 that they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. The idea of good deeds here is not just the good responses of living morally, of not going into the sinful desires. But it's the lifestyle of someone who is selflessly acting on behalf of others. It's the good works that the Jewish people always associated with right religion. Good deeds, righteous acts. It's when we go out of our way in order to serve. Remember we began this whole series with the Good Samaritan who went out of his way. That is a good deed. It's calling to be generous with our time; generous with our attention to people; generous with our money. It's all part of our calling. It's not the religious stuff that we primarily do on Sunday mornings. It's things that everybody can recognize as being good. It's the way we invest ourselves in to the community around us. It's the way we invest ourselves in to the lives of other people for their good.

Now, we are not going to be perfect at this. And so part of our witnesses, part of our life is being transparent, that we are people who aspire to this and often live it, but don't always live it. And so there is that reality too that we still, even though we are a people of God and are a chosen people, we still have struggles with the darkness. We still need mercy fresh for things we have done just today and that's part of this integrity.

Prayer. Integrity. The third thing is having a story to tell. Priests tell us about God. That is part of your identity. You are called by God to tell people about God. You are called by God to declare his praises. That is part of who you are. Chapter 3, Verses 15 and 16 talk about that. "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do it with gentleness and respect." There is a lot of things that come out here. First of all, it is based upon a reality that you have a hope and you are to speak about that hope. So that means we need to share in a clear way and in a sensitive way, but also in a personal way. It grows out of our actual experience with God. Sure, we can get some help from 1, 2, 3's. It might be a great help to us in learning how to handle this, but there has got to be that reality, that personal side to it. The other thing that is pointed out here is that it's a dialogue. In other words, we are supposed to answer a question, which means we have given someone a moment to ask a question.

I talked a few minutes ago about one of the problems in our outreach has been this sense of superiority. Another problem that grows out of that sense of superiority is that we feel like what we are looking for is 10 minutes or 15 minutes to have a pulpit to preach at people. I don't get 10 or 15 minutes of a pulpit in personal conversations. None of us do. It's not the way it is supposed to happen. There is supposed to be a reality there and you are supposed to be praying for opportunities and then God picks you up and grants you these sovereign holy moments and then we need to be ready, ready to share. We are to share with gentleness and respect. No matter how hostile these people are, God loves them. No matter how messed up they might be, God can heal them. No matter how together they seem, God is still needed in their lives. There is a reality underneath that that's broken.

And so, God will give us these special moments and when we get these holy moments we are to use them well. We are to be prepared it says to speak. Always be prepared. This is a responsibility just like praying; it's a responsibility like living right. We have a responsibility to be ready to speak. So this is the lifestyle of a priest, prayer, integrityhaving a story to tell. It's a long-term picture. It's a 20-year picture; a 40-year picture of what it means to live as a Christian. It's not a three-hour; it's not a package thing. It's for use in the real water of real life. It's not the controlled wave pool of a short program, a one-day event or a "How To" book. It's a lifestyle designed for the open, uncontrolled waters of all of our relationships.

And so as we live as a priest in the real world, amazing things can happen. As we pray faithfully, live faithfully, share faithfully where we live, work and play, we position ourselves for God to move through us. It would be so much easier in the wave pool of a simple program or a one time event, but then we would never witness something really God sized. See that is one of the big differences. The wave pool is predictable and you can get your results, but they will only be the size results you can produce. You can only have a pump a certain size, a pool a certain size, and it will never be more than that. But out in the open water it is different. When we live as Peter calls us to here, we can be ready for something that only God can do; the God sized wave. That's what we are looking for. That's the reality of being out in the real world. Being ready for the God sized moment when God does something exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or even imagine. That will never happen in the wave pool of our program. It will only happen in real life, as God sweeps us up in to what he is already doing. This is the wave I am praying for and it is what I would invite you to pray for. Now we are going to have to practice a bit to be ready to ride a wave like that. You see, that is one of the things about praying. As we pray for God to send a wave of his Holy Spirit in to Baltimore, in to our country to deal with the pressing problems there, as part of the answer God makes us ready to ride the wave. Moving towards Christ with our neighbor; God sized answers. I want us to be ready.

Let's pray. God we recognize that we are part of the problem and that we have received mercy. We have received a role, an office as priest, a lifestyle. We are our people and so now Lord work in us by your Holy Spirit so that we might continue to live faithfully as priests in this world and Lord we pray for the wave of the work of your spirit so that Lord we will be caught up in something bigger than us, bigger than our programs, bigger than our plans. Those are good things, but what you intend to do is bigger than all of that, so help us be ready, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2008, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org