sermon-may-2-2010-mp3  (Click to hear an audio version of the sermon.)

 

Although I’ve mostly been talking about the Gospel readings this Easter, you may have noticed an interesting contrast going on between the first readings – from the Book of Acts – and the Book of Revelation.  The stories from Acts, which, during Easter, replace readings from the Old Testament, are real-life, down-to-earth stories about the beginnings of the church as it grew from a handful of loyal disciples living in fear in Jerusalem, to an evangelistic movement spreading through the cities of Asia Minor. In contrast, the readings from Revelation are visions – visions of heaven…visions of a time when, as today’s reading says, “Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” This is a vision of the celebration of the glory that takes place in heaven among generations and generations of the faithful who have been redeemed by God.

 

One of the things that we notice in Easter is how life in the church is a mixture of heaven and earth, and how we live in both worlds.  As one writer puts it, “we live between two shores. We dwell on earth, but our home is in heaven.” We find this paradox of living in both of these worlds at the same time in a lot of the clergy jokes that we love to tell. Here’s one I heard recently that caught my attention because just this past week we have begun to have some discussions about a capital campaign in 2011:

            A man called the church office one day and said, “Can I please speak to the head hog at the trough?” The secretary, highly offended, said, “If you mean the minister, then you may refer to him as ‘Father’ or ‘The Reverend Mr. So and So.’ But you may NOT refer to him as ‘the head hog at the trough’!”

            The man said, “Well, I was planning on giving $10,000 to the church’s capital campaign, but…..”

            “Hold on,” the secretary quickly replied, “the big fat pig just walked in.”

 

The community of early Christians thought of themselves as citizens of another country: heaven.  In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” As I have been saying the past few weeks, the early Christians lived their lives having experienced the power of the resurrection.  They knew that the risen Jesus was with them and would not abandon them. This awareness of the power of the risen Christ among them enabled early Christians to live a totally different life from the culture around them and they didn’t feel that they had to give in or fit in to their wider world. And it was this different kind of life…this quality of life….that was their most effective tool for evangelism.

 

So what was this mysterious “X” factor that made early Christians so different? It was, of course, the way that they witnessed to the resurrection of Jesus by living out in their lives the same kind of self-giving, sacrificial love that they saw in Jesus when he was with them.  We’ve all heard this so many times, haven’t we? “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” which is a paraphrase of the last sentence in our gospel for today.

 

We’ve heard it so many times that we tend to forget how powerful and influential this “Jesus love” can be.  Bruce Larson, the well known author and former assistant pastor at the Crystal Cathedral, tells a story of a young woman who joined his congregation in America, having moved from Angola in West Africa. Her name was Maria, and, Larsen says, “she was always laughing.” Her faith sparkled. Love leapt from her to others.

 

One day she went to a meeting on evangelism that the presbytery was sponsoring. All kinds of pamphlets, mission strategies, campaigns, and statistics were distributed to the participants. Lots of furrowed brows put lots of brain power into figuring out the best way to get the uncharted churched.

 

At one point, towards the end of the day, someone turned to Maria and asked her what they did in her church in Angola to evangelize the unchurched. Knowing how rapidly Christianity had grown in her country, they were curious to know more of the African “methodology.” Maria, slightly intimidated by the spotlight, stood up and after a moment’s thought, said, “We don’t give pamphlets to people or have missions. We just send one or two Christian families to live in a village. And when people see what Christians are like, then they want to be Christians themselves.”

 

Last Sunday, our “Good Shepherd Sunday,” I spoke about how important it is for us, not only to feel that we are known and loved by God and by others, but, also, how important it is for us to hear and know the voice of the shepherd, Jesus Christ. Today, all of our readings take us a step further and invite us to consider what it means not only to hear and know the voice of the Shepherd, but to follow  the Shepherd’s voice….follow, in the sense that, when we say we believe in Jesus this means we intend to try and live out in our lives the love that Jesus left us as a gift. 

 

The challenge for each of us is that trying to intentionally follow Jesus in this way is difficult. Christian love is not just about cozy feelings, or being nice to people, or even respecting the rights and needs of other people. It’s about responding to an invitation to follow Jesus by loving others in a sacrificial way…..in a way that goes far beyond feelings, duties or obligations.  This love, which we have come to refer to as “agape” love, is not motivated by feelings or the desire to be liked. It’s a gift -love that comes from outside ourselves. It’s not earned or deserved.

 

When we love as Jesus loved, then our love becomes a sign to others. When people look at us then they can tell that something special, something unique is going on. We can tell all the clergy and church jokes we want, but, at the end of the day, when we love like this, people will see in us the face of God and they won’t forget it.

 

Charles Colson tells a story that speaks about the challenge of living out this kind of love.  He was once being interviewed on Public TV and the interviewer, somewhat skeptically, was pressing him about his faith. “How can you be so sure about your faith?” she challenged him. Colson answered by telling a story of his time behind bars after Watergate, when several Christian men stunned him with a quality of love he had never known before.

 

One day one of these men – Al Quie – called him and said, “Chuck, because of your family problems, I’m going to ask the President if you can go home, while I serve the rest of your prison term.” Colson gasped in disbelief. At the time, Al Quie was the sixth ranking Republican in the House, one of the most respected public figures in Washington.  Yet he was willing to give this up out of his love for Colson.  For Colson, this  was a powerful witness that Jesus was real….that a believer would lay down his life for another.

 

Colson says, that, as he retold this story for the cameras, the interviewer broke down and waved her hand saying, “Stop, stop.” Tears mixed with mascara were streaming down her face, and she excused herself. Returning to continue the filming, the same things happened again. Later, the interviewer confessed that Al Quie’s willingness to sacrifice had touched her deeply, and she vowed to return to the church that she had left years earlier.

 

The reason for the existence of the Christian Church is very simple.  The Church is a new community of love. It’s a community where you and I are given the opportunity to receive this new commandment of love that Jesus gave us and try to put it onto practice. None of us are experts or naturals at this kind of love. That’s why we have to keep coming back to church. We may come here thinking we can learn how to love ourselves and others by ourselves. Jesus reminds us that we can’t. We may come here each week mindful of how good and law abiding we’ve been. Jesus reminds us that God’s love has nothing to do with rules and regulations.  We may come here each week thinking that what binds us to the other members of this community is our lifestyle, our education, our income, our shared interests. Jesus reminds us that God seeks out those who seem unworthy of our love.

 

A recent article in USA Today claims that young people are leaving the church in record numbers.  How should we respond? Without great influence from the Church the world would never have had universities, schools or colleges. It would never have had hospitals, or better prisons, or the end of slavery, dueling, segregation, apartheid, and kinder laws.  Maybe, one day, this love will also put an end to war, disease, famine and all forms of oppression. Maybe, one day, if Christians can embrace this new commandment of love in their lives, our dreams of heaven won’t just be the butt of jokes. We’ll see it, touch it and taste it because it will be real, and those young people who seem so indifferent to the church will be beating the doors down to get in. Amen.