5/1/24

Sunday went off the rails for me! I twisted my ankle on Friday, spent a lot of time icing it that evening and on Saturday, and thought I’d be fine on Sunday. Didn’t even want to mention it; didn’t want Dorene making fun of my age; thought I’d get through the morning with no problem. 

But about 5 minutes into the sermon, I was afraid I was going to fall, my ankle hurt so badly. I should have sat down – after all, Jesus preached sitting down (Matthew 5:1). Instead, I ended up jettisoning about ⅓ of my sermon, trying to get through it with as much dignity as possible. 

In a nutshell, what I said was that Israel, often pictured as a “vine” in the Old Testament, had a vocation to be “the light to the nations” (Isaiah 49), but they failed. Jesus came as the “true vine” (John 15:1) and as branches of the vine, we were called to abide in Jesus, and we do that through worship and by studying the Bible. And we’re called to bear fruit, which I’ll say more about this Sunday.

Now, here’s what I didn’t say:

Just like Israel, we can get off-track. Remember, Jesus said he was the “true” vine, and we were the branches. It’s possible for branches to find themselves tangled where they don’t belong (which is why Jesus said they need to be pruned). I have a boxwood in the back of my house with a Jackson vine growing in it. It’s so intertwined it’s hard to see where the boxwood ends and the Jackson vine begins! 

But, branches can become sidetracked. Branches can focus too much on themselves; worship services can become too much hype, and churches can become too much like businesses. Organizations like the Unstuck Group or the Association of Related Churches provide packages that include everything their member churches need, including visuals, song-sets, marketing tools and fill-in-the-blank self-help sermons crafted by consultants and psychologists that preachers can personalize to make it sound like they wrote it (I am not making that up). 

Branches can become sidetracked. The glitz and the glamor of the franchise churches and the world’s way of measuring success can surely be tempting. Taking a bite out of that apple might not make us like God, but it might make us like whatever the church du jour of the day is . . . or so the consultant (the modern version of the garden’s tempter) would like us to believe. 

Branches can become sidetracked;

No. Church isn’t about show biz at all. Church was and is about coming together to see “on earth as it is in heaven” actually happen. Yes, we come together to worship, but the focus of that worship is on God and what God has done and is doing to redeem his lost creation. And then, we leave to serve - feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison – and by serving this way, we do the Father’s will.

And the example for living like that starts at the top. Jesus, just a couple of chapters before this one, summed up his life’s work when he tied a towel around his waist and washed his disciples’ feet. And he told them to follow his example. 

In Matthew 20:28, Jesus said, “The son of man did not come to be served but to serve.” There’s our example.
 
We don’t give to gain. We don’t volunteer at LCCI or Manna house nor do we give to mission projects in order to make ourselves feel better or to score points with God; we do these things because it’s a natural overflow of a heart that “loves God and loves others.” James 2:26 tells us that “faith without works is dead.” Why? Because works are a natural overflow of a heart transformed by the God who came to earth as a servant, washing his disciples feet and telling us to do the same.

But the branches can get sidetracked. 

I served in a church once where, to save money, they got the staff to paint the interior of the church building. It was a fun chance to serve together, but it really didn’t save them any money because they had to hire professionals to repaint most of it. 

But what galled us, besides taking away actual time when we needed to be working (they did a lot of that, by the way), was when we looked around, where were our leaders? One was there with his camera, taking pictures of us doing the work, but none of the so-called “executive team” (the use of business language is a sure sign there’s a problem in a church – we’ll never do that at Christ Church) were there working beside us. 

Many CEO-led churches are filled with people who want to lead but don’t want to serve – especially when it comes to the “least of these” in our communities. And the example of that starts at the top. 

In the New Testament, church was simple: believers met in house churches (they couldn’t legally own property) made up of no more than 25 to 30 believers. Each smaller congregation was part of a greater fellowship that spread throughout the city, with members using their gifts for the good of the Body and for the transformation of the world – you can read about it in passages like Acts 2, Romans 12, and I Corinthians 12. These people abided [is that a word?] in Christ and got their marching orders not from a consultant but from the Source himself. 

Was it perfect? By no means! Just look at Paul’s letters. But it changed the world (as I’ve written about over the last few weeks). 

Times have changed, and our experience is a lot different from the experience of the early church. But the mission is the same: Loving God . . . Loving Others.

And it begins when we do what Jesus said to do:  Abide in Christ. Bear fruit. Love. 

That was the rest of Sunday’s sermon. We’ll finish up this week!