Sermon from November 22, 2009
"A Community of Holy Sinners"
Luke 18:9-14

You know that the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington has filed for bankruptcy. It stems from the huge sums of money it has to pay as settlement for the sexual abuse of boys by priests. I take no pleasure in any of that. It is just the latest chapter in a sad story of how some Christian leaders of all denominations have let people down.

May those who hope in you
     not be disgraced because of me,
     O Lord, the LORD Almighty;
may those who seek you
     not be put to shame because of me,
O God of Israel – Psalm 69:6.

When leaders fail, we feel vulnerable. We are vulnerable. They’ve pulled the rug out from under us. The people ordained to lead us to God have harmed the young and betrayed our trust. Why would anyone want anything to do with the Church?

It is in the context of that question that I want to talk about what kind of church Brandywine Valley Baptist Church is. Today’s sermon is the fourth in a series called: Who We Are. In the first two sermons I told the story of this church’s 40 year existence, and I described this church as a safe haven, a training center, and a base of operations.

The sermons today and last Sunday talk about what kind of church this is by describing its inner life. The sermon last Sunday was about faith. Brandywine Valley Baptist Church is a community of faith. BVBC is also a community of holy sinners. Today’s sermon is about that paradox.

Before you give up on the Church, hear me out. I want to talk about two tensions that cause Christians conflict and sometimes reveal their dark side. One is the tension between Church and American culture. The other is tension between good and evil.

The Tension between Church and American Culture
The tension between Church and American culture has to do with freedom. The dominant idea of freedom in our nation is that it means the freedom of people to do what they want, provided that their actions do not interfere with the freedom of other people to do what they want. It’s not hard to see why we like it. It offers individuals unprecedented personal liberty without fear of government or Church or even family interference. The highest court of moral appeal is the conscience of the individual.

Christians have a different idea of freedom. The will of God takes priority over our right to do what we want. Our inalienable right to liberty is the freedom to submit ourselves to the will of God. Neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence conferred that right; they recognized it. God conferred it, and He commands the human family to exercise that freedom by submitting to His eternal will.

I hope you feel the conflict of those ideas. That conflict deepens for us, because we believe that sin has consequences. Here is scripture that expresses our belief. Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life – Galatians 6:7-8. Because we love our nation, we want to protect it from the destructive consequences of sin.

As a result, we warn against the destructive uses of freedom, e.g., abortion, human embryonic stem cell destruction, greed, and envy; and at times our efforts have come across as trying to force our opinions on everyone else. Then, there are those very public moral failures of clergy. They lead people to say, “Why don’t you get your own house in order, and then, maybe, we’ll listen, when you criticize the morals of others.” We come off as self-righteous, and our message loses credibility.

I have witnessed this tension with American culture playing out for many years, and it has been hard to take. I believe deeply that the idea of freedom that so many people live by is destructive to them and to our nation. As a pastor, I see the wreckage up close and personal in many people who come to me for advice.

On the other hand, I hear people whom I respect speak out in public about these concerns, and I just want to dig a hole and hide. I can’t believe their inability to hear how ineffective and offensive their comments are. I hope you feel the tension between the Church and American culture.

The Tension between Good and Evil
The second tension between good and evil goes even deeper. To call it tension between good and evil makes a good headline, but I need to restate it in specifically Christian language. That will give this tension its jagged edges.

I’ll begin with a statement from the Bible. You’ll find it in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. God says: Be holy, because I am holy – 1 Peter 1:16; Leviticus 11:45. To be as blunt as I can, the tension we feel is between the command to be holy because God is holy and the possibilities of evil that every one of us is capable of doing. I’d like to expand on that tension.

The command to be holy because God is holy means that Christians are to live in a way that shows their family likeness to a holy God. That way of living is expressed in some knee-buckling statements. Let’s look at three of them more closely.

Jesus said: “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. – Matthew 5:44-48.

Then he (Jesus) called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels” – Mark 8:34-38. One more!

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will – Romans 12:1-2.

How serious are you about living like that? It would be easy to hear those calls to holiness and say, “Boy, that’s really good. I don’t know if I can do it; it’s hard. But I’ll think about it and get back to it some day.”  And ten minutes later, you’ve forgotten about it. We’re not serious.  We salute the words as powerful religious statements, but we have no intention of trying to live like that.

Do you seriously intend to live like that? Do you have a deep desire to live in a way that shows your family likeness to a holy God? That’s the kind of church we need to be. Take it to heart. Don’t pay lip service to the command to be holy as God is holy. Don’t condescend to Christ.

If you do take it to heart, you will discover that the way you treat people will improve. You will also discover a painful truth about yourself. You are divided in your loyalty to Christ. The Apostle Paul described it this way: I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. . . . I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing – Romans 7:15, 16, 18, and 19.

If you have an addiction or a bad habit or do a despicable act on impulse, you know exactly what Paul meant. The Church never lives very far from an irruption of this possibility of evil that threatens to undermine and discredit it.

The Way to Joy and Freedom
That’s why we need a Savior, who can forgive us when the evil we are capable of breaks out, and who can help us to live with that awful possibility. Jesus told a parable that points the way for us.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” – Luke 18:9-14.

That story opens a window into the mind of God. The man, who was not at all confident of his righteousness and acknowledged the evil and the possibilities of evil in his own heart and asked for mercy, went away on good terms with God. God values that kind of humility because it tells the truth about yourself.

You are making progress in true spirituality, when you no longer think too highly of your moral achievements. You know they are hard-won, fragile, and leave a lot to be desired. Humility and skepticism about your own righteousness establish a right relationship with God.

They also open up new possibilities with your fellow human beings. Here are some examples. Jesus said: “When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins” – Mark 11:25. Jesus gave that as a non-negotiable command. When you acknowledge your own moral weakness and have experienced God’s forgiveness, you’re much more ready to forgive someone else who wronged you.

And how about this? What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside – 1 Corinthians 5:12-13a. God’s mercy to me takes the venom out of my criticism of the destructive use that people make of their freedom. I know God will deal with them. I won’t be silent about the abuses of freedom, but I won’t be mean. I have a hard time looking down on people, because the possibilities of evil in me keep me looking up.

It also helps us to be receptive to something the prophet Jeremiah said to people in circumstances much worse than ours: Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper – Jeremiah 29:7. Whatever abuses of freedom I think my country encourages, I still want it to prosper, and I want the people around me to prosper.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Below the surface of all I’ve said is a deep conviction that the Church is on the right side of history. I’m not at all confident in my own righteousness, but I am very confident that the God of all the earth is righteous and will do right. I am confident of that because of Jesus Christ. Listen to this: He (God) has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him (Jesus Christ) from the dead – Acts 17:31.

I believe we are right to criticize the idea of freedom that feeds the medical, scientific, financial, and personal abuses that mar our nation’s life. I believe we are misguided to think that in this lifetime we will ever achieve more than a momentary approximation to the justice we hunger for. So, while speaking out against injustice, it is important that we bear witness to the hope that a day is coming when Christ will judge the world with justice. Of all the institutions on earth, only the Church bears that witness. That’s why I say that the Church is on the right side of history.

That brings me back to where this sermon started – to the disheveled beauty of the Church. What I say next is true of the whole Church, but I’m saying it about this one. We are a small colony of heaven. We bear witness to and wait for the day, when the kingdom of God will cover the earth as waters cover the seas; then our hopes will become reality, our flawed righteousness will be purified, and death will die. Nothing in our secular age is quite like this little colony of heaven. Christ is here. We have a hope and a future.

If you haven’t done so already, why don’t you find out what faith in Christ is like by finding out how we experience it here? Here’s one path for doing that. Join us this Thursday morning at 10:00 here in the sanctuary for our Thanksgiving service. We sing, and the congregation preaches the sermon by many short expressions of thanksgiving. Then, come next Sunday and witness baptisms in our new baptistery. You’ll hear personal faith stories and witness baptism by immersion. On the Red Book, any Sunday, put the letter P for pastor with a circle around it, as a way of saying you’d like to come to a dinner or a coffee at my house with a dozen or so people to learn more about BVBC. We’ll be doing that again in January. Don’t miss the Christmas concerts on December 8, 9 or 10, and be here on Christmas Eve. Events like these give you a taste of what it’s like to be in a community of holy sinners. It’s a good place to be.