Sermons

“The Courage to Be Church”

Matthew 22:34-40; I Thessalonians 2:1-8 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – October 29, 2017

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we might be filled with your Spirit of love and have the courage to speak of many things. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

If you know anything about the nature of our denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), you know that we really love communion. We celebrate it every single Sunday, and we make sure that everyone knows they are welcome to participate. You are likely also aware that we baptize by immersion, or “dunking” as we less reverently call it, in what we call “believer’s baptism,” which means people choose it for themselves, rather than having it done to them as infants. But there’s another founding value of our church that sometimes gets forgotten, in word and nature if not practice. Disciples are also proponents of “the priesthood of all believers”. The phrase “the priesthood of all believers” means that all of us, each of us is called into ministry by virtue of our baptism into Christ. Ordination, though practiced and honored, is not a requirement to minister to others.

Sadly, Disciples being human, this understanding has often, in practice, manifested as a clear insistence that lay people are the ones in charge, as opposed to the ordained, paid clergy. I call this sad not because I think clergy should be “in charge” but because the important question isn’t about who is in charge. The priesthood of all believers isn’t about power; it’s about service. Just as Jesus told us that he did not come to be served, but to serve, the priesthood of all believers means that we’re all invited into ministry, not simply that the preacher isn’t the boss of everyone else. At some level, whether in worship leadership, or teaching, or outreach ministries or something else, all of us are called to find our way of serving as ministers of the gospel.

I say all this to explain how it is that I’m going to take these words that Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica about his ministry there and apply them to the church at large. Because, for Disciples, these words aren’t just for ministers. They are for all of us. And when combined with the short teaching of Jesus we read from Matthew, they give us good clues about how to be church.

Let’s look briefly at the passage from Matthew again before we get too far in. The way Matthew sets it up, it seems the Pharisees are trying to set Jesus up with a trick question. This is likely not a fair representation, since many prophets and teachers before Jesus had answered this same question in basically the same way. As tests of his orthodoxy go, this one was pretty tame and he passed with flying colors. The greatest commandment? “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Oh, and there’s another one that goes with it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And there you have it: the law and the prophets.

You’d think that if everything the church is supposed to do and to be can be boiled down to 28 words, it wouldn’t be that hard for us to figure out. Yet somehow, that has turned out not to be the case. Our law is love. Our vision is love. Our relationship to God is love. Our connection to one another is love. Who doesn’t love love? And yet, we manage to mess this up with disappointing regularity. Why?

Well, if we look to the passage we read from Thessalonians, we get a clue. Paul talks about how, when he came to share the gospel with them, it didn’t “spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery”. He wasn’t there to “please mortals” or for the purposes of “flattery”. He wasn’t there to get rich or gain praise. In other words, Paul didn’t arrive in Thessalonica to tell people what they wanted to hear. He was there to talk with them about something of utmost importance, what he calls here “the gospel of God.”

Paul had come to talk about love, but the thing I notice most about his declaration of his purpose is how much courage it required. It’s so much easier to tell people what they want to hear. It’s so much more pleasant when we can just murmur comforting platitudes and not get into the gritty details of what real love demands we explore. That last line we read offers another clue: “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” Paul is experiencing the incarnate nature of the gospel here. To truly share the good news of Christ with one another, we must share our lives with one another, because that is where the gospel comes alive. If we’re truly living out the love of God, we are loving our neighbors as ourselves, and that means opening our lives to one another, even when it requires courage.

I’ve been seeing a number of articles lately about a growing awareness of a silent health crisis in this country. The disease in question? Loneliness. Doctors are starting to realize that loneliness can take as many years off our lives as smoking. And that, of course, is just the effect on the general population. We have seen, to painful effect, how loneliness can, in some cases, escalate into extreme social isolation, which then is expressed in tragically violent ways. It’s a good thing we’re all called to ministry, because our world needs a lot of ministering to!

Perhaps we could say that of course the church is doing what it can to combat loneliness. We get together on a regular basis for fellowship, after all, and keep an eye on those who can’t get out much. And yet, the community of a church family is only an antidote to loneliness if we’re really being church. And by “really being church” I mean that when we get together, we’re actually courageous enough to love each other openly and honestly, and not just saying what we think everyone else wants to hear. If we can’t be our true selves when we’re here, being physically present in church isn’t going to help us stave off loneliness. If we can’t talk courageously about the things that really matter, without worrying about pleasing other people, we’re not going to be sharing in the good news of being part of the body of Christ.

This same principle applies to how we minister to the world. If we can’t speak with courage to the problems the world is struggling with, with honesty and humility, we have no capacity to bring good news. If we try to paper over people’s struggles, to tell them it will get better without showing them how or at least explaining how we manage to live in hope despite our circumstances, we aren’t really preaching the gospel. If we’re not willing to share, not just the gospel, but also our own selves, as Paul says, we’re not going to make much of an impact.

Talking about the issues of the world won’t make much difference if we’re not willing to discuss how those issues impact us. Reading the Bible will be only merely interesting if we’re not ready to share how it lands in our own hearts and lives. Being church – that is, living out “the law and the prophets” by loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves can only be transformative if we come to the process with the courage to be truthful and open. If we’re going to talk about loneliness, we need to be ready to be vulnerable. If we’re going to talk about loss, we need to be ready to shed tears. If we’re going to talk about ambition or violence or greed or shame and have those conversations be fruitful, we have to be ready to be honest about who we are. As I said to the kids, church is supposed to be a place where we can practice not being scared. We can’t increase our capacity for courage if we don’t practice. And we can’t practice if we don’t have honest conversations about the things that scare us.

It’s not that there aren’t reasons to be afraid. Love is risky. To risk loving something or someone means we’re opening ourselves to the possibility of rejection, or worse, loss. It might be easier to just live our lives on the surface, never attaching deeply to anything or anyone, doing our best to ignore the deep loneliness such a life accrues. But in the end, a life lived in the shallows is hardly life at all. The risks of love are worth it. When we come together as church, this becomes easier to believe.

We have an opportunity, next Sunday, to experience the transformative power of bold, honest love. When we have our annual All Saints Memorial Service, it gives us a chance to speak those words of loss that we usually repress because we’re sure no one wants to hear them. It gives us a reason to speak the names of those who live in our hearts, in ways that are healing and holy. There may be someone in your life – maybe you know them well, maybe you don’t – who is longing for such an opportunity. Someone who is wasting away trying to pretend they’re okay for a world that doesn’t have time for grief. Someone who needs a chance to be honest about their sorrow. Could you be bold enough to invite them to our service next Sunday? What would it mean to discover that there’s a place where we can honest about the costs of love, the risks of love, the loss and heartache that love can lead to? Your invitation could be a true ministry to someone who is hurting. And maybe you need that other person to come, so that you also can summon up the courage to be here with your whole, true self, grieving and broken as you may be.

As the church, we have one mandate: Love. But it’s never as simple as that. Love requires truth. And because loves requires truth, love requires courage. There is a lot to be afraid of, but if we can get together often enough and practice being brave honestly enough, we can grow bolder and our love for God can be reflected in our love for our neighbors and ourselves. This is truly the ministry of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Alleluia and Amen.