Sermon from June 20, 1999
The Primary Care Physician's waiting room has nine chairs in it. Sometimes patients fill all nine at a time. Usually, they wait fifteen or twenty minutes past their scheduled appointment time before they can see the doctor. That is another reason why we call them patients. However, the coming and going of patients moves along steadily, and the extra time allows you to observe the other people in the room.

Straight across from you sits a twenty-something woman. Her eyes do not look good. She tries (repeatedly and unsuccessfully) to stifle her cough. You know that she does not feel good. A stocky, young man comes in, walking with a limp. He signs in and looks for a place to sit and a Sports Illustrated to look at. The tall middle-aged man has a nagging discomfort in his chest. The doctor will put him through the few minutes of a stress test on a treadmill to determine if anything seems to be amiss with his heart. A woman in her 70s goes in to tell the doctor about an overactive bladder and her embarrassment and to ask if anything can be done about it.

The people in that waiting room actually have more things right with them than they have ailments, but the ailments compromise their strength. If the EKG shows serious problems, the tall middle-aged man's whole life may be at risk. All of them have taken time out of their day to deal with their ailments. None of them is willing to let nature run its course. The dis-ease of their diseases calls for action now.

The book of Revelation uses medical imagery sparingly. One of the few places where we find it is in the seven letters of Revelation 2-3, in which Christ has one purpose. That purpose runs through all seven letters, and it is this. He is preparing His Church then and now for its indispensable task in fulfilling God's plan for the destiny of the human race.

From the perspective of Revelation the Church's task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ faithfully in the face of opposition, as He bore witness faithfully before those who opposed Him. John said in chapter 1:9 that he had gone into exile on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. This was the third time in nine verses that John had referred to the testimony of Jesus. He did so in verse 2 in these exact words, and he did so a second time in verse 5 when he called Jesus the faithful witness.

Jesus Christ told the truth before Pontius Pilate, even though it cost Him His life. According to Revelation our Lord's experience governs ours. The testimony of Jesus reproduced in the life of His Church even to the point of death is central to John's prophecy. If you hold on to that theme, you will have in hand a key to understanding Revelation and its meaning for our time and all times.

He is still preparing the Church now for this task, because God's plan for the destiny of the human race has not been fulfilled. Unless God has given up on the Church, the Church in our generation still has its indispensable task in fulfilling that plan. Therefore, the Church still needs Christ to prepare it for that task. We will see ourselves mirrored in more than one way in the experiences of the seven churches of Asia Minor.

The Lord prepared them and He is preparing us by making us alert to the obstacles that threaten to keep us from carrying out our task. Each of the seven letters ends by saying, To him who overcomes, I will give ... Clearly, the Church faces an array of obstacles to overcome. Here is a short grocery list of obstacles from the seven letters. They faced poverty and fear, several kinds of false teaching, a false sense of security, weakness, the threat of prison and of death because of their Christian faith.

The Lord of the Church summons the Church in every age to overcome those obstacles. We too must overcome. There are two obstacles more than any other that speak with special relevance to us. I want to deal with one of them today and the other next Sunday. That means that I will not say much about five of the letters. Please remember that I am doing that, because God did not give us Revelation to titillate our curiosity but to change our lives. We need to hear what the Spirit is saying to our church.

I have used medical imagery to help us think about the obstacles that may face us. So, imagine the different congregations of Christ in the waiting room of the Great Physician, each with its own spiritual ailments. Imagine BVBC there. Each church has more things right with it than it has ailments, but the ailments compromise its strengths and may even compromise its very existence. Let's look at the details.

The first letter went to the church at Ephesus. Christ speaks to them as the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands (v. 1). The seven golden lampstands represent the seven churches, and the seven stars represent their guardian angels. The Lord who holds seven stars in his hand as you would hold a brilliant bracelet has enormous authority. We will see all through this letter what that authority might mean for the church in Ephesus.

But first, Christ has words of praise for the church in Ephesus. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary (v. 2-3). Hard work, high standards, perseverance and discernment! That church had received and passed on a great heritage from its founder, the Apostle Paul, and from his protégé, Timothy, and from the Apostle John, who spent the last years of his life with the church at Ephesus. Lord, make us more like the church at Ephesus.

BVBC is a lot like that. Hard work marks you people with distinction, and it carries over into our life together as the church. Our pastoral staff and support staff have a tremendous work ethic. Volunteers in our church work with the same energy as people who are paid for what they do. We have clear moral standards. I do not think that we use them to intimidate people, but they do create an expectation of the kind of people we aspire to be.

What shall I say about our perseverance? I could tell story and story from the past three weeks that demonstrate this. Let me tell you one of my favorites. Ruth and George Yost will celebrate their 57th wedding anniversary this August. That says a lot about perseverance in itself. Ruth loves to teach children's Sunday School. She does not do it as much any more, but she taught grades 1-3, mostly 1st and 2nd graders, for 51 years here and at Immanuel Baptist Church. She ran the race well, as are many, many of you.

She and you ran it and are running it with discerment as well. Among my first impressions of this church was that it held to the central realities of our faith firmly and without apology, and somehow it did not get terribly worked up about important but secondary issues. I think that we continue the ministry with such discernment.

The church at Ephesus had far more right with it than it had wrong with it; but certain ailments threatened to compromise even those great strengths. It seems to me that Christ's words of warning to the Ephesian church speak to a temptation that BVBC is vulnerable to. In verse 4 Christ goes on to point out the great obstacle that the church at Ephesus had to overcome. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. They were pursuing their hard work, high standards, perseverance and discernment with less and less love as the months flew by.

John's next statement highlights the seriousness of their diminishing love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand (the church at Ephesus) from its place. That is part of what verse 1 meant when it portrayed Christ as holding in His right hand the seven stars and walking among the seven lampstands. They are His to dispose of at His good pleasure, and He prizes love very highly. You can see why I have tried to teach you that Christian love, along with worship and detachment, is a governing principle of Christian discipleship. It reflects the heart of the Lord of the Church.

Hard work, high standards, perseverance and discernment characterize BVBC. People like us, including churches like ours, prize performance very highly. Inherent in this strength is a dangerous weakness. Very easily, instead of seeing people in their need or as they can become in Christ, we may come to pirze them only for what they contribute to the cause in sacrifice, time, money and talent. No one really decides to forsake love as the governing reality of a church. Little by little it just slips away in the excitement of getting the job done. It can slip away quickly. We could forsake our first love before Christmas. Our achievements in love are very real, but they have been too recently won and are too fragile to think that our love is immune to our natural orientation of prizing people for what they do. We must not displease the Lord of the Church. Remember with me for a moment the nature of Christian love.

Christian love means intending and, where possible, for the sake of Christ, doing what is best for the other person, regardless of who the person is, regardless of what it may cost, and regardless of what you get for your efforts.

Without a proper imitation of the humility of Christ such love will never reach its deeper possibilities. Even with the humility of Christ, we cannot at first realize and sustain those deeper possibilities, but we need some vision of what our souls would be like if we could realize them. The default setting of the human heart that loved like Christ loved would be a gushing spring and would express itself as follows. "I will open myself up toward each person who requires my attention today, as if that person had been sent to me by Jesus Christ, and I will seek to serve him in any way I can."

Such love lays us radically open to people, to any person, at any time who might require our mercy. The Gospels are full of such love. We may find it round the next corner and from the most unlikely person. In the eyes of some we may be that most unlikely person. It is not possible apart from an imitation of the humility of Christ.

Neither is it possible to realize and sustain this love apart from something else. I hope that I can communicate this clearly. I said a moment ago that people like us, including churches like ours, prize performance very highly. We did not get together and plan to do that. We learned it somewhere else and brought it with us into this congregation. No doubt we learned it from several sources, but the great teachers of this value for BVBC have been the upper level managers of Wilmington corporations. Please understand me! I am not saying this to criticize any Wilmington corporation or its management. That is not my purpose and it is not my business. My purpose is to see in them a working model of something important.

The piece of the model that matters most is their willingness to make large personal sacrifices for the common good of the corporation. The personal sacrifices include of course long working hours, too much time away from family, and exhausting travel. It also includes some degree of suppression of their individuality for the sake of agreed-upon corporate goals. They support the goals, and they speak well of the goals at least in public until there is common agreement to pursue other goals. This mix of hard work and public loyalty creates a powerful corporate culture. Embodied in that culture is the value that prizes performance very highly.

Certainly, your company may have the same culture. I only say that if you ever have the chance to live and work outside Wilmington for a number of years, you may be able to appreciate how dramatically different Wilmington's work culture is. I am saying that its difference is due in great measure to the powerful corporate culture that has been forged over the years by upper level managers who made large personal sacrifices for the common good of the corporation. It would be surprising if the presence of many of those managers in BVBC had not deeply affected us, as they sought to serve Christ here.

Here comes the punchline. In order to sustain BVBC's recently won and still fragile community experience of loving each other, we need to strain forward toward some shared values. First, we need to prize Christian love among us more than we prize each other's performance. I don not think that will affect our performance. That value goes down so deeply in us that it would take a decade of neglect to change it. Prizing Christian love as a greater value than performance will require us to continue with you along the path we have been traveling for only a few years.

Second, in order to prize Christian love this highly, we need increasing numbers of people who will to some degree suppress their individuality for the sake of creating this community of love. Our American culture is organized in such a way as to make that difficult. The frame of mind we bring to church with us has been shaped more by the shopping mall and satellite television than by notions of personal sacrifice. We treasure our individuality and freedom of choice, and we look askance at anything that threatens it. That is why being people in a world where we are free culturally to do anything we can get away with has become the test and temptation of the whole Church in North America. Prizing Christian love this highly will be a costly witness.

Third, leadership in creating this community of love must come first from the pastors of this congregation. I have not been a good leader in this respect. I have acknowledged that before God. I acknowledge it before you. By His grace I will seek to carry out my pastoral ministry differently in significant areas of BVBC's life. Others need to join us. Deacons and trustees, you do not hold a mere position of honor; you are to be leaders in love. Small group leaders occupy an unusually key place of influence in creating such a community, as do teachers.

I deeply believe that the Church is to embody an alternative social order of human life that will not be out of place when Christ comes again, and His righteousness and peace govern the nations of the world as the waters cover the sea. At the heart of that alternative social order is a community of love.

The Church's task is to bear witness to Jesus Christ faithfully in the face of opposition. In a world where we are free culturally to do anything we can get away with, the witness of our lips will be unpersuasive apart from the costly witness of the life of the Church. Creating a community of love here bears such costly witness.