"A Sermon Series on the New Creed"
Part III: The Church for Whom? The Church is called to love and serve others
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Text: Matthew 4:18-25
In Leadership Magazine, Philip Yancey tells a story about Albert Einstein that many people don't know. Einstein had portraits of two great scientists, Newton and Maxwell, on his office wall. However, near the end of his life, he decided to replace them with portraits of Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer. When asked why, he said, “I think it is about time that I no longer had on my wall images of success but rather, images of service.”
We all know what Gandhi did for his people, for peace and for the poor. We know what Albert Schweitzer did for the people of Africa; the great theologian, scholar of Bach and doctor gave so many of his days for those who were the weakest. Gandhi and Schweitzer are clear examples of service. The fact that Einstein put them up in his office tells you that he understood, in all his brilliance, that really true greatness in this world is found by those who serve.
That is why I love the following line in the New Creed of the United Church of Canada: “We are called to be the Church, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil.” It seems to me that those words encapsulate what it means to respond to Jesus Christ. In communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast in this country, there are United Church congregations seeking to be faithful and to love and serve others.
I hear people say sometimes that it really doesn't matter if churches close and congregations cease to exist; they have done their work and now they can go into oblivion. But I am sad when churches close, because I realize the importance of congregations. I know the United Church doesn't have a monopoly on this - there are others who can take up the mantle of love and service - but nevertheless, one voice, one body, one group is no longer there. Those churches that remain must continue to love and serve others and to be passionate about it.
The importance of this was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago as I sat (yes, again) in a coffee shop. But not my normal one - I am branching out! This was a no-name coffee shop on the corner of Sumach and Queen Streets in Corktown. Many of you may go by it on the TTC.
I stopped in for a coffee before getting back on the streetcar to go and visit someone at St. Michael's Hospital. I sat at a table by the window wearing my clerical shirt and read the newspaper. A gentleman walked by and saw me, so he came in and asked, “Would you like to buy me a muffin?”
I said, “No, not particularly, but I will if you are hungry.”
He smiled and said, “I'd like that.” He continued, “You're a priest, are you? Where are you a priest?”
“At Timothy Eaton Memorial Church,” I replied.
His eyes glazed over; he paused and said, “He's dead, isn't he?”
I said, “No, we don't worship Timothy. It is a church built in his memory.”
“Ah,” he said. “So what are you then?”
I asked, “What do you mean, what am I?”
“Well, what are you with one of these “D” things - you know?”
I said, “Oh, you mean denomination?”
“Yeah, that's right.”
I said, “It is the United Church of Canada.”
He smiled and said, “I am a guest member of the United Church of Canada.”
I think he thought we were a golf club or something! I said, “You are a guest member of the United Church of Canada? Pray, tell me, where you are a guest member?”
He said, “Metropolitan United Church, just down the road.”
I bought him a coffee and a muffin and he sat next to me - but only for a minute, as he clearly wanted to go somewhere else. I found out that he was a “guest member” because he went to their “Out of the Cold” program on Thursday nights in the middle of winter. For him, this was a source of great pride and great comfort. It wasn't my congregation, but I felt proud. I felt delighted that the church had helped somebody who was clearly in need, and awfully glad I had bought him that muffin.
Why is this important? Why is that kind of service important? You can probably recount similar stories from coast-to-coast. Our own congregation has the food bank, the work we do to help people in the neighbourhood and the support that we give to Alcoholics Anonymous. Other churches have clothing depots or provide “Meals-on-Wheels.” The list goes on and on, but why is it important? It is because Jesus said, and I quoted him two weeks ago, “I will be with you always.” Last week, I quoted him talking about the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, and he said, “I will send him to you. He will be with you always.” The Son and the Spirit are with us always. But how do they come tangibly alongside the world? They come alongside the world by the Church ministering to others as Jesus and the Spirit minister to us.
Matthew captures that magnificently in his description of the call of the disciples. Most scholars agree that he took passages from Mark, Chapters One and Three, and brought them together almost as if they were one story. After Jesus called the disciples, he went into the towns and started to heal, restore and mend that which was broken. Thus, Matthew links the calling of the disciples with the care, love, restoration of and ministry to people. He does this deliberately, because it is the sign of God breaking into the world. Jesus breaks into the world by calling disciples and healing brokenness. Ever since, the Church of Jesus Christ has understood that its calling comes with the command to go into the world and restore what is broken.
David and Warren Wiersbe put it brilliantly in these following words on ministry:
The foundation of ministry is character.
The nature of ministry is service.
The motive of ministry is love.
The measure of ministry is sacrifice.
The authority of ministry is submission.
The purpose of ministry is the glory of God.
The tools of ministry are the Word of God in prayer.
The privilege of ministry is growth.
The power of ministry is the Holy Spirit.
The model for ministry is Jesus Christ.
To that, I say “Amen.”
That is exactly the way in which Jesus envisaged ministry. It is a ministry empowered by the Holy Spirit that calls us to love and serve others as Jesus loved and served others; to seek justice as he sought justice, to resist evil as he did, but on the understanding that it is the continuation of his ministry. So where does this power to love and to care for others come from? It comes from being the Church.
Doug Hall, a great United Church theologian, says there are two things that we need to keep in tension with one another when we talk about ourselves and our relationship with Jesus: We need to have both identification and differentiation.
Identification means that our actions are identified with Jesus in people's minds and hearts. Often, they see Jesus Christ through what we do. To use Paul's great phrase, “We are the Body of Christ.” Christ makes his appeal through us. We are, as Paul said, “Ambassadors for Christ.” Whether we like it or not, we are identified with Christ the moment Christ, to use the Creed's phrase, calls us to be the Church.
But there is a differentiation as well. We are not Christ; we are the Body of Christ, but he is the Head. We are needful of his power, grace and divine calling. We cannot do this on our own. So Hall says we must understand that the Church and its relationship with Jesus Christ is exactly that - a relationship. It is not that the Church can say it is Christ, although throughout the centuries some have done that. In the great Reformed tradition in which we stand, we have a problem with that statement. On the other hand, we have a problem with saying we can be the Church without being connected to the Head as our source of power. There is no question, when you look at what the Scripture says, that there is both identification and differentiation; we need to keep both in mind at all times. Christ comes alongside us so that we, the Church, might come alongside others.
I love the rites of spring, and last week as my wife and I walked through Leaside, where we live, a little girl cycled toward us. Her mother was somewhere in the background and it was obvious from the way the girl was cycling that this was a rite of passage: Her training wheels had been taken off! I could see the little pink handlebars coming straight toward me down the sidewalk, wobbling from side to side. I thought, “Oh-oh, there is going to be a head-on collision!” I didn't know which way to go, because she didn't know which way she was going!
I looked carefully and saw that actually, the child's mother was jogging behind her with one hand on the girl's shoulder - that's all, just one hand on her shoulder. As she moved and swerved, her mother gave her the balance she needed and kept her going in the right direction. I think of us, the Church, as sometimes being wobbly. But I am sure that there is a hand upon us, holding us steady, guiding us and showing us the way. That is the relationship between the Church and Jesus as we seek to love and serve others.
But who do we love, and who do we serve? Clearly, Jesus went out into the world and loved and cared for those who were outcasts, those in need of healing and restoration. He didn't go, as he said, to the well; he went to the sick. He didn't go to those who had everything together; he went to those who were in need of healing from their brokenness.
I think the Church today does that quietly. I know there will always be those who say that we don't need God and that we can do things all on our own. Absolute foolishness! I don't think you can sustain some of the ministries that I have witnessed over the years if you don't have God as part of it. Think of how we help people spiritually in the Church. Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, for example, supports the Toronto City Mission, which was created in 1879. We encourage it and many of us provide leadership within it. The Mission serves communities throughout the city and helps young children. It gives them a sense of faith, self-esteem, hope, promise and a desire for the future by lifting them up from where they are and giving them a sense of what God would have them be.
Sometimes we help people who need physical care. I think of an organization that I support, the Missionary Health Institute, which has been around a long time, helping to heal missionaries and providing care for God's workers all over this world. It quietly goes about its work unheralded - not on the front page of the newspaper, not on the front page of MacLean's Magazine, but caring for people day-in and day-out all over the world.
I think of the Yonge Street Mission, which we have supported and which has been around since 1896. It feeds the poor, helps bring clothing to those who cannot afford it, and has an Evergreen Centre that supports young people. I have visited it and I have watched youth work on computers, finding a sense of dignity and hope, whereas the street gives them nothing but despair.
Everyone is talking these days about the world's food shortage. I have been reading documents by the Mission and Service Fund of the United Church of Canada about the problems of ethanol and the fact that there might not be enough crops to feed the world - and those articles were written a few years ago! Again, the Church was quietly going about its work, thinking of justice and being concerned for the world. Again, this was not front page news - just service.
That was what Jesus did! Jesus went about healing that which was broken. The people who were called lunatics - and it literally means “moonstruck,” those who were mentally ill, those who were challenged with diseases, those who were paralyzed. He restored them physically, but he also healed them spiritually. Because they had these conditions, they were unable to go into the synagogue; they were not able to be righteous and morally pure, and weren't able to worship God in public. He mended them - that is the ministry of Jesus. That is the ministry that the Church should have: The restoration of the broken.
Where should this take place? Matthew uses extravagant language. He says, “All diseases, every place, all communities.” Why? He saw in Jesus an expansive ministry: From Galilee to the Decapolis; from northern Judea right through to towns and cities such as Damascus, Philadelphia, Pella and Gerasa - towns all around the area and, as far as those who were listening were concerned, virtually the whole world as they knew it.
It was an expansive vision of Jesus' work. I don't want to sound overly triumphant, but I recognize that every day, on every continent and in virtually every country throughout the whole world, there are disciples of Jesus Christ giving their lives, time and energy to love and serve others, to seek justice and to resist evil in dangerous places, all because they are empowered by Jesus Christ. Again, not front page news. Not even on the back pages. Not even referred to in the editorials. They just go about it quietly.
When I hear people saying that we do not need God, we have everything sorted out, I want to say “No!” More than that, I want to say, “You need to get out more. You need to get out and see what the disciples of Christ are doing throughout the world.” I know there are moments when we feel that it is all too overwhelming, there is too much to be done and ask, “What is our love and service doing in this great, big picture of the Kingdom work?” Let me tell you, friends, it means a lot.
I read a fascinating piece by a man called Elmer Bendiner, who was a United States Air Force pilot during World War II. He flew B-17 bombers. One day he was flying with his crew over a castle in Germany when there was flak the plane's fuel tank was hit. So they decided to turn back; they were worried. They thought that at any moment they were going to explode, but they made it back to the ground. Immediately, the captain of the plane, Bohn Faulks, got out and inspected it. It wasn't just one 20 millimetre piece of ammunition that had hit the tank - there were 11!
That plane should have exploded in mid-air, but it didn't. So they examined it carefully and noticed that none of the 20 millimetre shells contained an explosive. Instead, when they took one apart, they found a piece of paper with a note written in Czech. They got a translator to decipher it, and all it said was, “This is all we can do for you right now.” These Czechs had made sure that the explosives were taken out, and it saved the Americans' lives.
To love and serve others under the power of Jesus Christ, my friends, is to save lives. It may not seem like it is moving mountains. It may not seem like it is transforming and changing the world, but loving and serving others says quite clearly, “This is what we can do for you right now.” So in your heart, with Christ, go and do it. Love and serve others! Amen.