Sermon from October 29, 2006
The mission of Brandywine Valley Baptist Church is to be followers of Christ, known by our love. The mission faces the following challenge. We are battered everyday with words. Television that drones on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the flagrant lies of people we trusted have debased speech.

As a result, most of us have mental filters that try to control this unceasing, unreliable torrent of words. The Christian message is not immune to this mental filtering. That is why the credibility of our message depends on the authenticity of our love. Let me elaborate further about this love.

First, authentic, Christian love seeks the good of the other person, who is our neighbor, for the sake of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that our neighbor is the person who needs us, regardless of who the person is. We are to seek that person's good, regardless of what we may get for our efforts and of what it may cost us.

Second, the love that gives credibility to our message is not indifferent to moral issues, but we don't make a person's moral conduct the condition of loving that person. We aspire to show compassion to people in their sins, and at the same time to hold on to convictions about the kind of life that honors God. Living in this tension of compassion and conviction is not easy, but doing so allows us to engage the needs and sorrows of our world, without being seduced by the values and sins of our world.

Third, authentic, Christian love will acknowledge that we too are weak and also need to receive love. We aspire to embody authentic love, but at the same time we carry within ourselves the seeds of failure. Our inherent flaws require humility about our own virtue and the success of our mission.

What would authentic love look like in action? It's hard to give a simple answer, because there are so many possibilities. So, we had to narrow the possibilities with two courses of action.

1 Peter 3:15 pointed us to one course of action. But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Followers of Jesus Christ, known by their love, will engage the great moral issues of our culture with gracious discernment.

Galatians 6:10 gives us another course of action. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Followers of Jesus Christ, known by their love, will engage their communities with compassionate deeds. We need to talk about this in more detail.

Engaging Our Community with Compassionate Deeds
A famous verse from 1 John 3:18 strikes just the right note: Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Last summer, I read a mystery novel in which there was a description of a certain Christian woman. The description was eight words long, and it did violence to my sensibilities. She was, said the writer, "a middle-aged woman of intimidating rectitude and piety," (P.D. James, Death in Holy Orders, 34).

What did the violence was to present rectitude and piety as intimidating. Those eight words turned the woman into an icon of Christianity gone bad. Hers was the face of Christianity that so many people see: hard, harsh, inflexible, self-satisfied, and, in the writer's perfect word selection, intimidating.

In an honest world we would say that Jesus Christ was a man of rectitude and piety, and we would notice that publicans and sinners, in spite of their lack of rectitude and piety, were drawn to Him, not intimidated by Him.

So, I ask you, what face do we at BVBC turn to the world? Are we men and women "of intimidating rectitude and piety?" Or do we attract others by turning to them a face that says, "Welcome. Come, go with us on the most remarkable human journey!"? What does that welcoming, inviting face look like? How shall I picture it for you?

A Biblical Picture
Luke 10:25 and following offers a timeless, biblical picture of that welcome, inviting face. On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?"

He answered: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

"You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

"But a Samaritan (half-breed ne'er-do-well that he was), as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"

The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."

Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

The expert in the law had asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" Jesus in truth had replied, "Whomever you can serve is your neighbor."

A Contemporary Picture
Last October, I had an experience that offers another picture of that inviting face that says, "Welcome. Come, go with us on the most remarkable human journey!"

My son-in-law, Phillip, and I were part of the first team of BVBC people to install temporary, blue roofs and clean out houses in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Our flight to Gulfport connected through Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

On our way back to Philadelphia we had boarded our plane in Houston for the Saturday night ride home. We were sitting on the port side of the airplane behind the wing. As I looked outside the window, my heart sank. The door to the left engine was open, and there were mechanics looking inside.

Sure enough, the pilot announced that they had detected an oil leak in that engine, and they were trying to determine if it could be repaired. "Thank you for your patience; we'll get back to you as soon as we know something." It wasn't long before the pilot spoke again to tell us that our plane was being taken out of service until the engine could be repaired. We would have to get off the plane and go to another gate, while the airline secured another airplane for our flight home.

It's about a three and a half hour flight from Houston to Philadelphia, and so we had to add another hour on the clock, because we were going from Central Daylight Time to Eastern Daylight Time. Sunday morning was looking earlier and earlier, and I had a full day that Sunday.

We all deplaned and made our way eight or ten gates further along to wait for the announcement that another airplane was available. Phillip and I got to the new gate area and settled in to wait. About 20 minutes later, I reached into my bag for some work I had brought with me, and it wasn't there. I looked everywhere, and my work was nowhere to be found. Then, I remembered; I had put it into the seat pocket in front of me. When we left that airplane, I had left my papers on it.

I ran back to the original gate. The plane was still there, but the Jetway had been pulled back, and the gate area as dark and empty. I started looking for an airline employee. I found one, but she was trying to get passengers on another flight. Then, I saw another employee by himself. I spoke to him and told him my problem.

He was not optimistic, but he took me back to the original gate. Then, it happened. He said, "Let me see what I can do." He disappeared through one of those doors marked, "Authorized Personnel Only." I waited, looking forlornly at the airplane and hoping that no one would come to tow it away.

Suddenly, the Jetway started to move. The rain canopy rolled over against the aircraft. Lights came on inside the cabin. Of course, I had no way of knowing if cabin crews had cleaned out the plane, taking my papers with them. The lights went off. The rain canopy rolled back. The Jetway moved back to its ready and waiting position.

In a few minutes that young man reappeared with all my papers. "Here you are. Have a good day." Continental Airlines should have made him employee of the year.

What is we turned that face to the people, who come across our paths everyday? What if we became servants of the needs of the people God brings across our path? That's what we have in mind, when we say that our vision of authentic love means engaging our communities with compassionate deeds.

Hurricane Katrina Relief Teams, participation with Habitat for Humanity, and missions trips to the four corners of the earth provide marquee events that model that kind of engagement. We will continue them and add to them, but they are meant to spur us all on to compassionate deeds day in and day out, right where we live.

Suppose that we successfully brought the lives of a thousand people to bear on the sorrows and needs of our communities, so that the people of the Brandywine Valley thought of this church as a place to turn to for hope and help!

That is the kind of quiet and pervasive action that will persuade people of the Brandywine Valley to think of this church as a place where people go to find God through Jesus Christ!

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
Phase III doesn't guarantee the future I have talked about any more than the new Wilmington Savings Fund tower in Wilmington guarantees a successful banking future. But in our world new and powerful buildings say to the surrounding community, "We're here to stay, and something very right is going on here. Why don't you check us out?"

I believe Phase III will provide an attractive and more effective platform from which to realize this vision of a compassionate church.

The YMCA and the Jewish Community Center have made major building additions. The Pilot School promises to do the same in the near future. Bringing facilities in line with present needs and future opportunities belongs to responsible organizations.

And so, the Board of Deacons and the Pastoral Staff, with authorization from the congregation, now ask all of us, who call BVBC our church home, to help make Phase III a reality. We ask you to make a pledge next Sunday to give to Phase III and then to give what you pledge over a three year period, 2007-2009.

I wish every one of you shared this vision of BVBC's future. I wish every one of you would give to this project. If you are led to give, I ask you to dig deep and pledge big. I don't want anyone to place himself or her household at risk by pledging too much. Neither do I want anyone to place Phase III at risk by pledging too little.

If you can give a million dollars or more, pledge it. If you can give $100,000 or multiples of $100,000, pledge it. If you can give $10 a week, pledge it. There is a guiding principle for what each household should pledge: Generous giving to Phase III will not be enough. Sacrificial giving will be enough. We have to reallocate some of our wealth and deny ourselves some of the legitimate, good things of life during the next three years in order to make Phase III possible.

So, pray, share the vision, look within, dig deep, and pledge big. The money to build Phase III is within the congregation. Building Phase III requires us to release it. Love bids us all to dig deep and pledge big.

We will handle the pledges next Sunday in a way that provides strict confidentiality about what you pledge. I will not know the amount of money that anyone pledges or gives. That allows me to be a pastor to every person here without regard to what anyone gives or doesn't give.

Asking you to give like this and determining Carole's and my sacrificial gift have taken me far out of my comfort zone. I have had to overcome habits of a lifetime. I have had to do it in a way that didn't violate my conscience. I have had to learn to do it. I have done it as an act of obedience to God and as an act of solidarity with many other men and women, who have spent untold hours in helping us get to this point, and who trusted me to carry my end of the load.

Above all, I did it, because the vision for our church's future caught the imagination of the pastoral staff around me, and it caught mine. We are not about buildings. We are about ministry, and we have a compelling vision and plan for pursuing that ministry. I hope it is catching your imagination as well.

The Nugget: The credibility of our message depends on the authenticity of our love, which engages our community with compassionate deeds.