Sermon from January 13, 2008
I'm glad you are here. You could be so many other places, but you are here. A fair number of people say, “I don’t go to church. I can worship God anywhere, and where better than out in nature, which God created?” But not you! You are here.
A hard-bitten Air Force officer once said about theology: “‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal.” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 131) He could just as easily have added: “And that’s why I don’t go to church.” And he would have spoken for millions of people.
But not you! You are here. Why are you here?
Trying to answer that question matters for a couple of reasons. First, some people pose that question to us as a challenge. “Why do you go to church?” they ask, implying that we do it only out of habit or because parents or peers pressure us to go, or that we don’t realize how marginal church is to the real issues of life.
Asking the question in challenging ways is not fair. It’s like asking in a challenging way why you love your mother or why you love your country. We don’t often think about the reasons we have to love mom or dad or country. We just do!
Nevertheless, people sometimes challenge us with that question, and I hope it will help us to think about some answers in this friendly environment. It will help us do what Scripture calls on us to do in 1 Peter 3:15: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. So, what we think about today is both preparation and prevention.
I have a second reason for asking why you are here. Do you remember Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s lines?
Earth’s cramm’d with heaven;
and every common bush aflame with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes;
the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.
It’s easy to come here and all we see are: the misspellings on the screen, how hard it was to find a parking space, how hard it is to see past this tall person sitting in front of you, how sleepy you are, and on and on. Nothing could be more ordinary and predictable. And if that’s all we see, we are just sitting round, plucking blackberries; we are missing the burning bush that is the presence of God in the midst of His chosen people.
The apostle’s prayer in Ephesians 1:18 goes to the heart of our need: I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you – now here it comes – the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. That’s the Church. The Spirit of God has to banish our blindness, if we are to see the burning bush that is the presence of God in the midst of His chosen people.
So, what we think about today is an exercise in faith. I will talk, and you will think, and together we will trust the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to open the eyes of our hearts.
You are here. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad I’m here. So, let’s dip below the obvious and discover why we are here. I want to identify three reasons. We will look at their biblical credentials, and we will notice how well they answer to deep needs in our human nature.
One Head
Let’s begin in Ephesians 1:9-10. And he (God) made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, and this mystery is to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment – here comes the mystery of God’s will – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
Don’t hurry past this mystery! If you will remember those times when you can’t seem to get a handle on everything that life throws at you, maybe it will help you to feel the gravity and enormity of all things in heaven and on earth. God’s purpose is to bring all that together. We pride ourselves on “having it all together.” But this mysterious will aims at a unity that is worthy of God.
And He aims to bring it all together under one head, even Christ. The head of anything implies some kind of unity among the followers. The head coach becomes the rallying point for assistant coaches and players. The headmaster becomes the rallying point for faculty and administration. Christ will become the rallying point of all things in heaven and on earth.
God has a universal unity in mind toward which He is moving the whole creation. What does this have to do with the Church? The apostle had a specific answer to that question. Stay with me! In his day many Christians felt keenly the separation between Jew and Gentile.
With God’s mysterious will to unite all things in Christ in mind, the apostle saw the Church as the instrument for healing that separation. Look at the middle of Ephesians 2:15: His purpose (Christ’s purpose) was to create in himself one new man, the Church, out of the two – out of Jew and Gentile – thus making peace. Verse 16 continues: And in this one body to reconcile them both to God through the cross.
The key word is reconcile. Estranged people come together in peace and hope. The Church becomes the community where this reconciliation becomes visible. The Church becomes the laboratory where the mysterious will of God to unite all things under one head, even Christ takes on flesh and blood right down in the jungle of life.
Union requires communion. Communion requires a community. If someone asks why we go to church, it is appropriate to say: “God is someday going to bring together everything in heaven and earth under Christ. The Church is a miniature and imperfect anticipation of that.”
And if someone says, “You Christian churches aren’t very unified, are you?” it’s okay to say back, “You’re right. We have a lot to live up to and a long way to go, but we know the direction we have to travel. Why don’t you join us and help us do better?”
One Dwelling
Let’s look at a second reason, also in Ephesians, why we are here. In Ephesians 2:22-23 the apostle compares the Church to a temple. Here’s what he wrote: In him (Christ) the whole building, the Church, is joined together – there’s that image again of many parts forming one whole under Christ – and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. Now comes the punch line. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
The Church is the way that God has His home in this world. The Church is the way that all people of the earth have access to God. In 1 Corinthians 12:12-13 the apostle uses a different image to convey the same truth. The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body – that’s the Church, and there’s that theme of unity again – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
When someone meets you, they don’t see your soul, they see your body. It provides them with a way of access into your soul. Also, you make use of your body to communicate your mysterious self to your friend. No one has ever seen God. God uses this body, the Church, to communicate His mysterious self to the human family. The Church is the body that provides the human family a way of access to God.
By the way, you may hear anyone at any time say, “I’m going to church.” That’s how we talk, and there is nothing wrong with it. But it hides not only much of the glory of God but also the glory of the Church. It would be awkward and even leave a bad impression to say too often, “I’m going to join with other followers of Jesus Christ so that God’s dwelling place among the human family can for a few shining moments become visible for all to see.” It would be awkward, but it would come closer to capturing the glory of God than the unimaginative and utilitarian, “I’m going to church.”
But if someone asks why we go to church, it is appropriate to say: “I’m going to join with other followers of Jesus Christ so that God’s dwelling place among the human family can for a few shining moments become visible for all to see.”
One Praise
Let’s look at a third reason why we are here. The doxology that opens Ephesians expresses this reason. In verse six the apostle said that God adopted us as His sons and daughters to the praise of his glorious grace. He said in verse 12 that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. He capped off this doxology at the end of verse 14 by saying that all God’s works lead to the praise of his glory. Our participation in God’s mysterious will and our calling to be God’s dwelling place on earth takes wing, when we offer praise to him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will – Ephesians 1:11.
Turn to 1 Peter 2:9 where the apostle puts together our vocation as God’s people with our praise of God. 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.By the way, I heard someone ask if God is the supreme egotist in His demand that all creation should praise Him. It is another of those unfair questions that challenge what seems obvious and right. The irony of that particular question by that particular person struck me so hard that I’ve never gotten over it.
The person who asked the question was an actor. I wonder if he had ever thought of himself as an egotist in expecting the audience to laugh or weep and at the final curtain to clap and cheer and throw flowers. As a member of the audience, I would feel cheated, if I could not express my appreciation for what I just saw on stage.
Wouldn’t the real egotist be the person who sought to silence the audience’s praise? His pleasure would be to say his lines and tell the playwright’s story in stony silence, taking pleasure only in the cast’s performance. Even the audience could become an unnecessary appendage to the performance.
By contrast, the joy of giving and the joy of receiving praise for a job well done seem like sanity and good sense, a fitting way for all to participate in a work of art. So, if someone asks why we go to church, it is appropriate to say: “We gather here to express our appreciation for the character and achievements of our God.”
We don’t go to church to meet our needs or to hear good music or a good sermon or to see our friends or to relieve our conscience or to get it over with, except in a secondary way. God summons us, and we gather here to anticipate the coming unity of all things in heaven and earth in Jesus Christ. God summons us, and we gather here to make visible briefly to the human family the meeting place of heaven and earth. God summons us, and we gather here to praise Him from whom all blessings flow.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
But the problem won’t go away, will it? Encounters with the people we actually see each Sunday, the inevitable irritations, even the ordinariness of “church” stand in sharp contrast with the extraordinary New Testament vision of the Church. We can see the blackberries; it’s much harder to see the burning bush. Now, I find myself responding to this sharp contrast in two ways.
First, the contrast makes the New Testament vision even more breath-taking. The contrast is the glory. God didn’t love the elite of the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son to save the world. He loved the world in all its ordinariness, people in all their pettiness and conflicted lives, and He has chosen to make such lives His dwelling place among the human family. Who could have expected that?
That contrast also highlights the need for and the mystery of God’s great purpose to bring together all things under one head, even Christ. That bringing together promises a new harmony among us contentious, ordinary people – in Christ. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know how He will do it. That just means we can’t do it. But He can, and as we learn to live together in some measure of truth and respect and harmony, we anticipate the grand union toward which all creation moves.
So, I say, let the contrast be as sharp as possible. It need not intimidate us or frustrate us to the point that we see the Church as nothing more than a negligible backwater of human life. The contrast is the glory.
I respond to this sharp contrast in a second way. Truth be told, most of us haven’t given five minutes thought in the last decade to these biblical reasons for going to church. We need new habits of thinking. For example, when you wake up on Sunday and wonder if it’s worth getting up and coming here, remind yourself of what you’ve heard today.
How you feel is real but not decisive. Complaining children are real but not decisive. The weather is real but not decisive. Your guilty conscience is real but not decisive. Your difficulty in finding a convenient parking place is real but not decisive. The bad experience you had with someone the week before is real but not decisive. The hard week you just had is real but not decisive. The fate of your favorite team or preferred political candidate is real but not decisive. The downturn in the stock market is real but not decisive. Bad news on television is real but not decisive.
The call of God for the Church to anticipate the union of all things in Christ is decisive. The choice of God to make the Church His dwelling place among the human family is decisive. The praise of God for His great deeds is decisive. So, let’s be here! Heaven and earth are meeting here. You don’t want to miss it.
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, Brandywine Valley Baptist Church. All rights reserved.
