Sermon from June 18, 2006
We must pay more careful attention ... to the gospel we have heard, so that we do not drift away – Hebrews 2:1. In a world where we are free to do anything we can get away with, drifting away captures perfecly a clear and present danger to our Christian faith. Let me show you how easily we drift away from our devotion to Christ.

Last August, I performed a late afternoon wedding for Mike and Bridget Carroll near Kent Narrows, MD. The wedding took place outside, under a tent, on a 350 acre estate. A ten-minute ride west of the wedding venue brought us to Annie's Steak House just off Route 50, where we had enjoyed a rehearsal dinner the night before. Annie's sits almost dockside at a marina.

On the morning of the wedding, Carole and I traveled back across the Bay Bridge to Annapolis. There we visited her aunt and uncle. Their condominium looked out on Weems Creek, another navigable stream that empties into the Severn River.

From there we drove down to Annapolis Harbor, where you can go around the traffic circle at the bottom of the hill, and then take a right on to Dock Street. You can park there. A sidewalk begins just across the street from the traffic circle and runs along an inlet of water where pleasure boats are moored. As the sidewalk turns to the left, it faces Annapolis Harbor.

The Harbor is ringed by restaurants, hotels, marinas, condominiums, and the U.S. Naval Academy. Boats of all sizes and kinds seem to fill the harbor. When you've had enough watching, you can continue walking past the gate into the Naval Academy and along to Phillip's Crab House, where from a second story view of the harbor, you can savor a classic Maryland crab cake with all the trimmings. They don't call the Chesapeake Bay area "The Land of Pleasant Living" for nothing.

And what shall I say about the Jersey Shore from Long Beach Island to Cape May, and our own shoreline that runs from Lewes Beach to Ocean City, MD? And that leaves out the Elk River and the Poconos and the Appalachian Trail. For people who work 50-60 hours a week, they offter irresistible pleasure.

As Carole and I took in some of the attractions of Anne Arundel and Queen Anne Counties, I could understand how people would like to be there every weekend. Wouldn't it be nice to buy a boat and sail out to the Bay Bridge and down to St. Michael's or up to the Harbor Place in Baltimore or race with schooners to Norfolk in the fall?

"Many men and women (have) ceased to belong to the Church. But rather than belonging to something else, rather than adhering to another community of transcendent allegiance, they now (belong) to nothing," (quoted in Weigel, The Cube and the Cathedral, 54). Most of them just drifted away from Christ under the narcotic effect of the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things – Mark 4:19.

We are called to something better. We are called to worship God and to worship Him in the company of others who share our faith in Christ. The atonement of Jesus Christ has brought into existence a worshipping community, whose habits encourage us not to drift away into the attractions and pleasures of the world.

The Foundation of Worship
Hebrews 10:22-25 shows off that worshipping community beautifully. Verses 19-21 give the foundation of worship, verse 22 gives the act of worship, and verses 23-25 give the environment for worship. Let's begin with verses 19-21. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most High Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God ...

We have a great priest over the house of God. He has opened for us a new and living way into the Most Holy Place by His sacrificial death on the cross. That is the foundation of worship. As the Jewish high priest, alone with sacrificial blood in the Most Holy Place of the temple, was the sole representative of the Jewish nation before God, so Jesus, our great High Priest, alone with His sacrificial blood in the Most Holy Place of heaven, is the sole Representative of the human family before God.

But Jesus is more than our Representative. A representative does for us what we might just as well have done for ourselves. Jesus is also our Substitute. On the cross He did for us what "we could never have done for ourselves, and which does not need to be done over again," (Denny, The Death of Christ, 132). As a result, we, His brothers and sisters, have standing before a holy God. In the language of verse 19: we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus. The constitutional authority for what we do here in Sunday worship is conferred on us by who He is and what He has done.

The Act of Worship
"But these privileges of Christians are to be used. (We) must personally exercise (our) right of access to God," (Westcott, Hebrews, 321). Verse 22 tells us how to do that. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. This is the act of worship.

Let's begin with the second part of the verse. It describes Christians as having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience. Do you ever have a guilty conscience? Do you ever have a problem forgiving yourself for something you have done and continue to do? The death of Christ is the remedy for that.

The verse says the remedy applies to us by having our hearts sprinkled. In other words, God's love in Christ touches your guilty conscience with cleansing power. (See Westcott, 322) A persistent guilty conscience may be a sign that we don't believe that God is as good as He is. How good is God? Romans 5:8 lets us know.

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. If that reality ever penetrates our defenses, it will cleanse us of our guilty conscience. The sacrificial death of our great High Priest will move from theory to reality and our knowledge of God from consent to conviction.

The last part of verse 22 describes Christians has having our bodies washed with pure water. This refers to Christian baptism. Baptism is the sign that our status before God has changed from outsider to member of the family. It is the sign of our unity with each other in the community of the forgiven. Worshipping God without baptism is improper.

So, baptized and with our hearts cleansed by the love of Christ, verse 22 calls on us to exercise our right of access to God. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. Part of the vision for BVBC is that we will be followers of Christ, who engage our God in heartfelt worship.

At this point our reading of Hebrews intersects with the meditation that began this sermon. We must pay more careful attention ... to the gospel we have heard, so that we do not drift away, says Hebrews 2:1. Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, says Hebrews 10:22.

That captures well the choice presented to the Church by our culture of indulgence. Shall we drift away from God, or shall we draw near to our God? It is easy to drift. Just go with the flow, and the flow will take you further from God than you would think possible, sitting here today. The Apostle Paul had a colleague in ministry named Demas. In 2 Timothy 4:10 he said of him: Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me. That could happen to any of us.

So, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. Let's engage our God in heartfelt worship. Let's pray. Let's sing His praises. Let's give thanks to God from whom all blessings flow. Let's commune with Him at the Lord's Supper. Let's hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest His word. Let every breath, all that we are, never cease to worship Him. That is how we here draw near to God together.

The Environment for Worship
Verses 23-25 give us the environment in which worship can be sustained for a lifetime. Let's read and reflect on these verses. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

The first environment is within yourself. Verse 23: Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess. And what is this hope that we profess? It is the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting under new heavens on a new earth, where God's will is done on earth, as it is in heaven. Colossians 3:3-4 puts it this way: your life (the true life of the Church) is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Is this hope a living reality in your soul? If it is, then you have a powerful motive to draw near to God in worship. The vindication for such hope is that he who promised all this is faithful. Let's be as hopeful as God is faithful. You don't want to drift away from this hope.

The second environment is one we share with each other, and it touches on the vision for BVBC. Verse 24: And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. The vision for BVBC is that we will be followers of Christ, who engage our community with compassionate deeds.

The word community is nicely flexible. Where we live is central to our community. But our community is also our place of work, our church, our playgrounds, the places of suffering and sorrow that we have access to. As a church, our community means first and foremost the Brandywine Valley, because God planted us here. But it also includes the Gulf Coast, the Mira Flores Church in Lima, Peru, Vacation Bible School in Stockholm, ME, and digging wells for Muslim communities in Mali. You get the idea.

In this community we are to spur one another on toward love and good deeds. This translation is such a happy choice of words: spur one another on. Being urban blockheads, we've probably never touched a spur; but we have enough imagination to see what happens when a rider digs the spur of his boot into the side of a horse.

If you don't like this figure of speech, the KJV will not be much comfort. It says we are to provoke one another to love and good deeds. Whether spurring or provoking, it doesn't mean we are nasty to each other. I would mean much the same as verse 24, if I said that I want to get under your skin, motivate you, or whet your appetite for love and good deeds. That already happens at BVBC in many ways.

Worship gives a new luster and a new depth to our love and good deeds. It reminds us that we are serving God, not simply indulging our religious whims or pacifying a guilty conscience. Worship puts our compassion in eternal perspective.

The third environment for worship is public worship. Verse 25: Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

As I look forward to the next five years, I want BVBC to be a connecting church. I want us to connect much better with the neighborhoods in which this congregation lives. I also want hundreds of people to become stakeholders in the life and future of this congregation. A major part of that connection is what we are doing right now – meeting together for worship, fellowship, and teaching.

When we lived in Oregon, which has so much natural beauty, I heard people say, "I'll just get out in nature on the weekend. I can worship God there as well or better than I can in some stuffy worship service." I doubt it. My hunch is that spending weekends in the woods or the mountains or the beach is just another way of drifting away for Christ. A hymn we sing got it right: "We die alone, for on its own each ember loses fire: yet joined in one the flame burns on to give warmth and light, and to inspire."

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Now, I'd like to bring this sermon and this series of sermons on the Atonement to a conclusion. Recently, I was introduced to the life and work of Edith Stein. She was a German, Jewish philosopher, who became a Christian in 1921 and died at Hitler's Auschwitz. She is pertinent to this sermon because of a question she raised.

Here it is: "To what sort of community do I owe allegiance? And with what sort of (people) should I be in dialogue?" (First Things, May, 2006, 50) In other words, what community of people will I allow to shape my life? With which community will I work and argue and weep to help that community realize its mission and vision? Unless you hold yourself aloof, you will give your allegiance to some sort of community.

For me that allegiance is to the Church. It is the only global community that is not held together by force but by faith. It is a global community that allows each local culture to embody it in a way that is appropriate to that culture. It is the global community whose vocation is to be the dwelling place where God lives with the human family – a kind of beachhead from which He has begun the liberation of the nations of the world. It is the community whose appeal is not exhausted by its flaws and failures.

Finally, the realities of heaven become the realities of earth in the life of the Church. "The Church is called to be ... the place where the reconciliation of all things is from time to time anticipated," (Colin Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement, 179). The story of the Church, checkered as it is, is the story of how the reconciliation of God and man is being revealed and embodied throughout the human family. We belong to an eternal community of faith, whose architect is God. Don't stand aloof, and don't drift away.