The Three Wishes Of The Christian Life
Sermon
Tears Of Sadness, Tears Of Gladness
Gospel Sermons For Lent/Easter
Following the resurrection of their Lord, the disciples' lives must have been an emotional roller coaster. On the one hand, they had the Easter assurance that Christ was not dead but alive. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" asked the Easter angels. "He has risen" (Luke 24:5). On the other hand, however, the Good News of the resurrection also meant that the earthly Jesus whom the disciples had come to know and love would no longer be with them. "Why do you look for the living among the dead?" said those angels. "He is not here, but has risen." In other words, the Good News of the resurrection may have felt like bad news to those who wanted to hold on to that familiar, fleshy Christ.
Better than any of the other Gospels, the Gospel of Luke explores this double--edged dilemma in its concluding verses. Jesus has been raised - hallelujah! Jesus is no longer with us - what in the world do we do now?
What in the world do we do now? How are we supposed to live our lives now that Jesus has gone to sit at the right hand of God? Today's reading from the Gospel of Luke explores this dilemma, and part of what it suggests is this - wait. "Stay in the city," says Christ to his disciples. "Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49). Admittedly, this command to wait seems strange and startling to people like us who live in a fast food, "I want it now" culture. Do you like to wait? I don't. For example, when I go to the doctor's office for a 3:30 appointment, I want to see the doctor at 3:30. But no, the receptionist says, "The doctor had an emergency and is running late. Why don't you just sit down and wait?" No wonder they call the reception area in the doctor's office the waiting room!
People who study such things tell us that we Americans spend five years of our lives waiting in lines: the line to buy textbooks for your college classes, the line to register your car or apply for a marriage license, the line to order a fast--food lunch, the line to get tickets for the symphony, even the line to greet the preacher after church! On top of that we spend nearly six months of our lives waiting for the traffic light to turn green.1 Most of us spend far too much time waiting as it is. And now we are told that waiting is also part of the life of faith?
But it is! The prophets of Israel looked out into the future and said, "Things may be bad now. But when the Messiah comes it will all be different ... so wait." Hundreds of years later the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary, says the Gospel story. The power of the Most High God overshadowed her. And then she had to wait - nine long months - to give birth to the Hope of the world. Did that newborn child begin right away to act like the Messiah? Probably not! Undoubtedly, there was more waiting to do until the child grew through his early years, through adolescence, and through the so--called "silent years." Finally, when he was in his early thirties, he stood in the River Jordan and was baptized by John as a voice from heaven proclaimed him the dearly loved Son.
He preached about something called the kingdom or the reign of God, but we're still waiting for that kingdom to arrive in all of its fullness and, of course, we pray for it to come each time we say the Lord's Prayer. "Thy kingdom come ..." we pray. And as we pray, we wait. He broke bread with his disciples in a meal we have come to call the Last Supper, and he promised us that whenever we eat the bread and drink from the cup we proclaim our Lord's death until he comes again. For his return, we continue to wait. He promised the presence of the Holy Spirit to his followers and then instructed them to wait. "Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Of course, our waiting can take different forms; emotionally we can wait in a number of different ways. For example, here's a high school student who was just caught cheating on a final exam. He's sitting in the school office waiting to explain himself to the principal. Can you see how his waiting is filled with fear and dread? Here's a young woman waiting by the phone. She and her husband have been trying to conceive a baby and finally they think they've succeeded. She's been to the doctor; they've run the tests. And now she's waiting for the results. Can you see how her waiting is filled with hope and expectation? Here's that young woman's mother. She too has been to the doctor, but her reason is not nearly so hopeful. She's discovered a lump and she's waiting for the test results. Her waiting is filled with anxiety.
Waiting for God is like waiting for news about that hoped--for pregnancy - hardly a time of dread and doom, but a time of expectation and excitement as you anticipate the new birth that God can bring about in you. "Stay in the city," says Christ to his disciples, wait there "until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Of course, Christ wanted that time of waiting to be more than passive waiting. It was meant to be a time of active waiting, a time of witnessing. "You are witnesses to these things," says Christ to his disciples (Luke 24:48). As you may know, the word "witness" has two different meanings. On the one hand, we witness something when we observe it, when we internalize it, when we experience it taking place. On the other hand, we also witness to what we have observed when we share our experience with another. As seminary professor Tom Long has written: "In the first case we become aware of some event; in the second case, we make others aware of that event." Professor Long goes on to say:
An unbreakable bond exists ... between these two meanings. One cannot witness in the second sense unless one has witnessed in the first sense. We give testimony only to that which we have experienced. We can bear witness only when we have been an eyewitness.2
If this is true, then to be a witness to the Christian faith is not just a command to go out and tell others what we believe, it is first and foremost an invitation to learn, to study, to grow. Unless you have an experience of faith, you cannot testify to the faith. Unless you receive, you have nothing to share. Unless you take in, you have nothing to give out.
Perhaps you've heard the old parable about the Holy Land. There are two seas there. One of those seas is fresh and clean and filled with fish. Trees surround the banks of the sea, and their roots reach down into the rich moist soil to draw nourishment from the ground. Birds build their nests near the water's edge, families build their homes there, and the children play along the water's edge. The River Jordan flows into this sea with sparkling water from the hills around Palestine.
The River Jordan flows south to another sea as well. Here the fish don't splash, the birds don't sing, and families almost never make their homes by the water's edge. The water is bitter in this sea, so no one drinks from it, and the air above is so thick you can practically cut it with a knife.
What could the difference be between these two seas? It's not the River Jordan - it empties the same clean, clear water into both of them. Nor is the climate the difference - it's basically the same for both. The difference is this. The Sea of Galilee does not keep the water it receives from the River Jordan. For every drop that flows in, another drop flows out. The receiving and the giving go on in equal measure. But the other sea is different. It keeps every drop of water it receives, giving none of it up. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. The other sea gives nothing. It is dead, and is named, appropriately, the Dead Sea.3
To be a witness to the Christian faith is much the same. The giving and the receiving, the taking in and the giving out, need to go on in equal measure. If you are always on the receiving end, then your life will grow stagnant and stale. And if you are always on the giving end, then your spiritual well will eventually run dry until you have nothing left to give. To be a witness to the Christian faith requires balance - the receiving and the giving need to occur in equal measure: education and mission; spiritual growth and service; Bible study and evangelism.
These, then, are two of the Ws of the Christian life - waiting and witnessing. And the third of them is worship. "While Jesus was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and they were continually in the temple blessing God" (Luke 24:51--52).
Here are two observations about worship and the first of them is this: worship is one of the most natural things that we humans do. Go anywhere in the world - even to the most remote location - and you will find human beings participating in some form of worship or another. Douglas John Hall, the Canadian theologian, offers this observation: "... no tribe of Homo sapiens or its forerunners has ever been located that did not worship some deity." Indeed, says Hall, we might "name our species Homo religiosus (the religious species) just as accurately as Homo sapiens."4 Not only that, but our human ability to worship is one of the things that distinguish us from all other life forms on planet earth. Think about it. No other living thing is capable of worship. Pets like dogs are capable of devotion, of loyalty, of affection, but not of worship. Our Golden Retriever comes close, of course, especially when it's time for dinner and she bows down to the one who feeds her, but even dogs, among the most loving of pets, are not capable of worship. Worship is one of the unique attributes of being human; it is one of the things that set us apart from every other living creature. To worship is one of the most natural things that we humans do.
But worship, at least at this time in American history, is also one of the most unusual things that we do. Some people speak about going to church today as the consummate counter cultural activity, the thing that sets us Christians apart from everybody else. Indeed, in an essay in The Washington Post, Henry Brinton, a Presbyterian pastor, says, "Sabbath keeping seems like a very subversive activity, because it coos 'play' when the world shouts 'work.' "5 Recently, a friend of mine told me about a man all dressed up in a suit and tie who went outside one Sunday morning to get in his car. A neighbor, still in his bathrobe, was picking up the newspaper when he spotted the man in his suit. "Where are you going dressed up like that, to work?" asked the neighbor. How sad that this neighbor had not a clue that the man was actually on his way to worship.6
Here's a test for you to conduct. The next time you drive to church on Sunday morning, survey the neighborhood. Determine how many of your neighbors are going off to church. Undoubtedly, many of them are not. Instead, they are cutting the grass, working in the garden, drinking a second cup of coffee as they read the Sunday newspaper, going for a ride on the nearby bike trail, playing golf, going to the beach, and so on.
A married couple from my former congregation attended an overnight office party at a downtown hotel. On Saturday night some of the participants were planning to get together for brunch the next morning. But my friends said, "We'll have to take a rain check. We're going to head back home early so we can go to church." "You're going to go where?" asked the astonished others. How revealing that attending worship has fallen so far out of favor.
But maybe that's not all that bad, because these days most of us who attend worship come for the right reasons not because of guilt or fear of eternal damnation; not because it will help us to advance our career; and certainly not because attending worship is the socially acceptable thing to do, because, frankly, these days it's just as acceptable to go to Sunday brunch and then go shopping at the mall.
Rather, we come because we want to come. We come because we believe that worship enriches our life. We come to give thanks and praise to the One from whom all blessings flow. We come because we believe that worship puts us in touch with the power of God that sends us out into the world to witness to our faith in both word and deed.
Waiting, witnessing, and worshiping. Can't you see how they are all interrelated and how they all depend upon each other? Without them - all of them - the life of faith is incomplete.
____________
1.
2. Thomas G. Long, The Witness Of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 78.
3. Portions of this parable can be found in Leslie Weatherhead, Steady In An Unsteady World, Stephen A. Odom, ed. (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1986), p. 125.
4. Douglas John Hall, Why Christian? For Those On The Edges Of Faith (Minne--apolis: Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 18--19.
5. Henry G. Brinton, "God Rested, And So Should We" in The Washington Post, August 9, 1999, section B2.
6. This story was shared by Gary W. Charles, pastor of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, Virginia, who is writing a book about the ways contemporary Christians worship, serve, study, and belong.
Better than any of the other Gospels, the Gospel of Luke explores this double--edged dilemma in its concluding verses. Jesus has been raised - hallelujah! Jesus is no longer with us - what in the world do we do now?
What in the world do we do now? How are we supposed to live our lives now that Jesus has gone to sit at the right hand of God? Today's reading from the Gospel of Luke explores this dilemma, and part of what it suggests is this - wait. "Stay in the city," says Christ to his disciples. "Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high" (Luke 24:49). Admittedly, this command to wait seems strange and startling to people like us who live in a fast food, "I want it now" culture. Do you like to wait? I don't. For example, when I go to the doctor's office for a 3:30 appointment, I want to see the doctor at 3:30. But no, the receptionist says, "The doctor had an emergency and is running late. Why don't you just sit down and wait?" No wonder they call the reception area in the doctor's office the waiting room!
People who study such things tell us that we Americans spend five years of our lives waiting in lines: the line to buy textbooks for your college classes, the line to register your car or apply for a marriage license, the line to order a fast--food lunch, the line to get tickets for the symphony, even the line to greet the preacher after church! On top of that we spend nearly six months of our lives waiting for the traffic light to turn green.1 Most of us spend far too much time waiting as it is. And now we are told that waiting is also part of the life of faith?
But it is! The prophets of Israel looked out into the future and said, "Things may be bad now. But when the Messiah comes it will all be different ... so wait." Hundreds of years later the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary, says the Gospel story. The power of the Most High God overshadowed her. And then she had to wait - nine long months - to give birth to the Hope of the world. Did that newborn child begin right away to act like the Messiah? Probably not! Undoubtedly, there was more waiting to do until the child grew through his early years, through adolescence, and through the so--called "silent years." Finally, when he was in his early thirties, he stood in the River Jordan and was baptized by John as a voice from heaven proclaimed him the dearly loved Son.
He preached about something called the kingdom or the reign of God, but we're still waiting for that kingdom to arrive in all of its fullness and, of course, we pray for it to come each time we say the Lord's Prayer. "Thy kingdom come ..." we pray. And as we pray, we wait. He broke bread with his disciples in a meal we have come to call the Last Supper, and he promised us that whenever we eat the bread and drink from the cup we proclaim our Lord's death until he comes again. For his return, we continue to wait. He promised the presence of the Holy Spirit to his followers and then instructed them to wait. "Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Of course, our waiting can take different forms; emotionally we can wait in a number of different ways. For example, here's a high school student who was just caught cheating on a final exam. He's sitting in the school office waiting to explain himself to the principal. Can you see how his waiting is filled with fear and dread? Here's a young woman waiting by the phone. She and her husband have been trying to conceive a baby and finally they think they've succeeded. She's been to the doctor; they've run the tests. And now she's waiting for the results. Can you see how her waiting is filled with hope and expectation? Here's that young woman's mother. She too has been to the doctor, but her reason is not nearly so hopeful. She's discovered a lump and she's waiting for the test results. Her waiting is filled with anxiety.
Waiting for God is like waiting for news about that hoped--for pregnancy - hardly a time of dread and doom, but a time of expectation and excitement as you anticipate the new birth that God can bring about in you. "Stay in the city," says Christ to his disciples, wait there "until you have been clothed with power from on high."
Of course, Christ wanted that time of waiting to be more than passive waiting. It was meant to be a time of active waiting, a time of witnessing. "You are witnesses to these things," says Christ to his disciples (Luke 24:48). As you may know, the word "witness" has two different meanings. On the one hand, we witness something when we observe it, when we internalize it, when we experience it taking place. On the other hand, we also witness to what we have observed when we share our experience with another. As seminary professor Tom Long has written: "In the first case we become aware of some event; in the second case, we make others aware of that event." Professor Long goes on to say:
An unbreakable bond exists ... between these two meanings. One cannot witness in the second sense unless one has witnessed in the first sense. We give testimony only to that which we have experienced. We can bear witness only when we have been an eyewitness.2
If this is true, then to be a witness to the Christian faith is not just a command to go out and tell others what we believe, it is first and foremost an invitation to learn, to study, to grow. Unless you have an experience of faith, you cannot testify to the faith. Unless you receive, you have nothing to share. Unless you take in, you have nothing to give out.
Perhaps you've heard the old parable about the Holy Land. There are two seas there. One of those seas is fresh and clean and filled with fish. Trees surround the banks of the sea, and their roots reach down into the rich moist soil to draw nourishment from the ground. Birds build their nests near the water's edge, families build their homes there, and the children play along the water's edge. The River Jordan flows into this sea with sparkling water from the hills around Palestine.
The River Jordan flows south to another sea as well. Here the fish don't splash, the birds don't sing, and families almost never make their homes by the water's edge. The water is bitter in this sea, so no one drinks from it, and the air above is so thick you can practically cut it with a knife.
What could the difference be between these two seas? It's not the River Jordan - it empties the same clean, clear water into both of them. Nor is the climate the difference - it's basically the same for both. The difference is this. The Sea of Galilee does not keep the water it receives from the River Jordan. For every drop that flows in, another drop flows out. The receiving and the giving go on in equal measure. But the other sea is different. It keeps every drop of water it receives, giving none of it up. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. The other sea gives nothing. It is dead, and is named, appropriately, the Dead Sea.3
To be a witness to the Christian faith is much the same. The giving and the receiving, the taking in and the giving out, need to go on in equal measure. If you are always on the receiving end, then your life will grow stagnant and stale. And if you are always on the giving end, then your spiritual well will eventually run dry until you have nothing left to give. To be a witness to the Christian faith requires balance - the receiving and the giving need to occur in equal measure: education and mission; spiritual growth and service; Bible study and evangelism.
These, then, are two of the Ws of the Christian life - waiting and witnessing. And the third of them is worship. "While Jesus was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and they were continually in the temple blessing God" (Luke 24:51--52).
Here are two observations about worship and the first of them is this: worship is one of the most natural things that we humans do. Go anywhere in the world - even to the most remote location - and you will find human beings participating in some form of worship or another. Douglas John Hall, the Canadian theologian, offers this observation: "... no tribe of Homo sapiens or its forerunners has ever been located that did not worship some deity." Indeed, says Hall, we might "name our species Homo religiosus (the religious species) just as accurately as Homo sapiens."4 Not only that, but our human ability to worship is one of the things that distinguish us from all other life forms on planet earth. Think about it. No other living thing is capable of worship. Pets like dogs are capable of devotion, of loyalty, of affection, but not of worship. Our Golden Retriever comes close, of course, especially when it's time for dinner and she bows down to the one who feeds her, but even dogs, among the most loving of pets, are not capable of worship. Worship is one of the unique attributes of being human; it is one of the things that set us apart from every other living creature. To worship is one of the most natural things that we humans do.
But worship, at least at this time in American history, is also one of the most unusual things that we do. Some people speak about going to church today as the consummate counter cultural activity, the thing that sets us Christians apart from everybody else. Indeed, in an essay in The Washington Post, Henry Brinton, a Presbyterian pastor, says, "Sabbath keeping seems like a very subversive activity, because it coos 'play' when the world shouts 'work.' "5 Recently, a friend of mine told me about a man all dressed up in a suit and tie who went outside one Sunday morning to get in his car. A neighbor, still in his bathrobe, was picking up the newspaper when he spotted the man in his suit. "Where are you going dressed up like that, to work?" asked the neighbor. How sad that this neighbor had not a clue that the man was actually on his way to worship.6
Here's a test for you to conduct. The next time you drive to church on Sunday morning, survey the neighborhood. Determine how many of your neighbors are going off to church. Undoubtedly, many of them are not. Instead, they are cutting the grass, working in the garden, drinking a second cup of coffee as they read the Sunday newspaper, going for a ride on the nearby bike trail, playing golf, going to the beach, and so on.
A married couple from my former congregation attended an overnight office party at a downtown hotel. On Saturday night some of the participants were planning to get together for brunch the next morning. But my friends said, "We'll have to take a rain check. We're going to head back home early so we can go to church." "You're going to go where?" asked the astonished others. How revealing that attending worship has fallen so far out of favor.
But maybe that's not all that bad, because these days most of us who attend worship come for the right reasons not because of guilt or fear of eternal damnation; not because it will help us to advance our career; and certainly not because attending worship is the socially acceptable thing to do, because, frankly, these days it's just as acceptable to go to Sunday brunch and then go shopping at the mall.
Rather, we come because we want to come. We come because we believe that worship enriches our life. We come to give thanks and praise to the One from whom all blessings flow. We come because we believe that worship puts us in touch with the power of God that sends us out into the world to witness to our faith in both word and deed.
Waiting, witnessing, and worshiping. Can't you see how they are all interrelated and how they all depend upon each other? Without them - all of them - the life of faith is incomplete.
____________
1.
2. Thomas G. Long, The Witness Of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 78.
3. Portions of this parable can be found in Leslie Weatherhead, Steady In An Unsteady World, Stephen A. Odom, ed. (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Judson Press, 1986), p. 125.
4. Douglas John Hall, Why Christian? For Those On The Edges Of Faith (Minne--apolis: Fortress Press, 1998), pp. 18--19.
5. Henry G. Brinton, "God Rested, And So Should We" in The Washington Post, August 9, 1999, section B2.
6. This story was shared by Gary W. Charles, pastor of the Old Presbyterian Meeting House in Alexandria, Virginia, who is writing a book about the ways contemporary Christians worship, serve, study, and belong.
