May 15, 2011
"Why Are We Here?"
W. Gregory Pope, preaching
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Series: Practice Resurrection
Philippians 2:12-18; Luke 4:14-21
We are living in this Eastertide season of resurrection with prayers and dreams of resurrection for the church. We believe the Risen Christ lives among us and within us, and as a community of faith, we are to here to practice resurrection, to embody the life and love of the Risen Christ in the world.
Why do you come to church?
Why are you a part of this community of faith?
What are your dreams for us?
What do you hope happens among us?
From what I have seen and heard in my twenty plus years of being a pastor, there are five almost universal reasons that, I believe, sum up the answer to those questions for most people who come to church.
One: I think most of us are here in the hopes that we will experience a worship service that comforts us, applies to our lives, and helps us experience the presence of God.
Two: I think many of us are here for relationships.
Three: We believe we are here to take care of one another in time of need.
Four: Some of us are here because we are looking for a place to serve others.
And five: I think many of us are here with a desire to shape the church into what each of us would like for it to be.
I’m sure that doesn’t cover all the reasons most of are here, but I think it comes close.
To what degree are those reasons your reasons? Maybe your mind tells you there perhaps should be something more, but what is it that brings you here week after week? Are you are for loving, caring relationships? Are you here for worship that comforts you, applies to your life, and helps you experience God? Are you here to serve others? Are you here to shape the church into what you would like for it to be?
There is, I believe, some goodness and rightness about those reasons. But I also think those reasons alone miss the larger vision God has for the church in the world.
As I think of why we gather here week after week, there is a perspective I would want to add to that list of five. It may very well already be your reason for being here.
I believe there is a vision for the church that can restore a greater sense purpose and authentic mission to who we are and why we are here.
I would propose that we are here:
to be formed into followers of Jesus in order to continue the mission and ministry of Jesus which, based on the words of Jesus in Luke 4, is to bring life, healing, transformation, and love to the world.
(REPEAT)
The very same Spirit that came upon Jesus at his baptism comes upon us at our baptism and throughout our lives calls us, guides us, and empowers us to continue the very same mission and ministry that Jesus began, bringing good news to the poor, grace to the brokenhearted, and freedom for the oppressed.
We are here to proclaim the good news that God does not stand on the side of the rich and powerful against the poor and oppressed, but that God stands with them and for them and has not abandoned them.
God is calling together a community of people called the church who will take the words of Jesus seriously and carry forth God’s purposes in the world working for justice, not just talking about it, not just giving to charity, but who actually give their lives in the service of social and economic justice for all people.
We spent the first three months of this year exploring the Sermon on the Mount.
Tom Long calls it the preamble and constitution of the church. Others have called it the Magna Carta of God’s Kingdom.
We find in the Sermon on the Mount what it means to walk in the way of Jesus.
In those words we discover the kind of community Christ calls us to be:
to bring life and healing, transformation and love to the world. In the Sermon on the Mount and the sermon of Luke 4 we find the mission of the church’s journey outward into the world. To take the journey with Jesus out into the world, we must at the same time be making a journey inward. In order to bring life and healing, transformation and love to the world, we must be rooted in a transforming relationship with the Source of all love. We call it spiritual formation.
It is the purpose of worship, Sunday School, and the relationships we make here.
Paul calls us to work out our salvation, our wholeness and well-being as a community, with a holy seriousness, with reverence and intention, until every trace of disease - selfishness, grumbling, disputing, and so on - is gone.
For God is at work in us, enabling us to do God’s will and live for God’s pleasure. And God’s pleasure is a people continuing the work of Jesus, working to bring life and healing, transformation and love to God’s world.
To be a Christian community is to be committed to exploring life through the way of Jesus -
wrestling with it, learning from it, and being transformed by it. So with reverence and intention
we come here to learn and to practice the ways of prayer and action, grounding ourselves and sustaining our lives in a transforming relationship with God, so that through us God can transform the world.
Are we here to do that kind of work and be that kind of church?
Do we gather for worship with the aim of offering more and more of ourselves to God?
Are we here for relationships that not only sustain us when we are in need but also help shape us in the way of Jesus?Are we here to be equipped to serve and befriend the poor and oppressed? to bring life and healing, transformation and love to the world?
Peter Rollins says: Christianity at its core does not explain life, it brings life.
Does what we do here bring life and healing, transformation and love to the people of the world?
Does what we do here help bring about a transforming relationship with the Source of life and love?
Are you here to shape the church into what you would like for it to be,or to help create a community that nurtures one another and helps change the world?
Some times I think our frustration and dissatisfaction with the church stems from the contradiction of the kind of church we are desiring and the kind of church God is trying to create.
Our calling is to proclaim and embody a subversive and radically different way of living that changes the world. To use Paul’s language, we are here to “shine like stars” in the midst of a dark world. Shining with the light of harmony, selflessness, and service to others, “holding forth the word of life,” “pouring ourselves out for the gospel,” living the good news, holding it up with your lives. Paul’s hope is that we might become better people than we are, growing into being the children of God that we are.
We are called in this place to be formed into followers of Jesus rooted in a relationship with God
in order to continue the mission and ministry of Jesus bringing life and healing, transformation and love to the world.
Our faithfulness is not determined by the size of the crowd but by the degree to which we are formed into followers of Jesus who continue the mission and ministry of Jesus, shining like stars,
bringing life and healing, transformation and love to a dying, diseased, and violent world.
To the degree in which there is a difference: Will we cease trying to create the church we want and be the church for all people that God needs to bring life and healing, transformation and love to the world?
This is not something we can do in our own power, by our human capacity alone, but by the joining of divine and human capacities.
God is at work among us in this place.
God is inviting us into a partnership.
Will we say yes?