A Community Set Apart

Since I have no idea what to post first, let me start with my last sermon. The following sermon was preached at Dauphin Way United Methodist Church on May 22, 2005.

1 Peter 2:9-12
But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God's holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

"Once you were not a people; now you are the people of God. Once you received none of God's mercy; now you have received his mercy."

Dear brothers and sisters, you are foreigners and aliens here. So I warn you to keep away from evil desires because they fight against your very souls. Be careful how you live among your unbelieving neighbors. Even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will believe and give honor to God when he comes to judge the world.

I’ve got to confess: There have been times when I’ve found it hard to tell the truth. My first speeding ticket was earned just blocks from the church. It was just about 14 years ago. Me and my little MGB were going 47 down Dauphin Street (35 was way too slow according to my 16 year old mind). The officer flashed his lights and pulled me over on Homer Street. Hoping that he would show a little leniency, I told the officer that I was just on my way home from church. That was the truth. He didn’t care. My ticket was 80 dollars. But the 80 dollars wasn’t what I was worried about. I had a record! I had been caught breaking the law! Nobody can find out about this!

My parents especially could not know about this. See, I had tickets to a concert, and I was sure they wouldn’t let me go if they knew about the ticket. So, every second of my life for the next four weeks was about trying to find a way to pay for this speeding ticket and not let my parents find out about it. (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!) It wasn’t summer quite yet, and I wasn’t working, so finding 80 dollars was tough, tougher than I thought. Even if I had the money, I wouldn’t know where to take it. Then, I realized that on my ticket, a court date was given. Again, not knowing how speeding tickets got resolved, I thought, “I’ve got to stand before a judge?! For a speeding ticket?! What am I going to do?” To complicate matters more, the court date was the day after the concert!

So, after much contemplation and deep thought, I devised a plan. I would tell my parents about the speeding ticket (this is just perfect) when I got home from the concert. Let’s see, if I got home at midnight…and the court date was at 9:00….I’d still have nine hours.

That’s exactly what I did. When I got home from the concert, they were up, and I laid it
out on the table.

Some of you who know my parents recognize that they are not here this morning. Well, some memories are just too painful. Through the grace of my parents, a judge, and a day’s worth of driving school, all turned out well.

At the heart of the issue was my unwillingness to confess who I was, a sixteen year old who got caught speeding. I was afraid of what the consequences would be. And, yes, I got grounded (the MGB was put up for a while). And, yes, I had to pay for driving school. But, in the end, telling the truth was so much more valuable to me. I experienced a kind of cleansing. Telling the truth will set you free. I recognized, too, that I didn’t have it all together. This 16 year old didn’t know everything.

What got me into real trouble was not the ticket, it was my fear of telling the truth about who I was.

It sounds a little bit like the church to me. I believe that the church has been afraid to tell the truth about who we are. And, we’ve been afraid to claim truth in a world where the greatest sin is narrow-mindedness.

So, what is the church? Well, there are volumes and volumes of work on Ecclesiology, but I believe that the best source for finding out about the purpose of the church can be found in the letters of the New Testament. In those letters of the New Testament, we learn “how to be the church.”

The writer of our text this morning hits on a key understanding of the entire Bible, “The people of God are separate.” They are “foreigners and aliens,” as 1 Peter puts it, in their own land. When we hear the word “holy,” righteous, sinless, spotless are words that usually come to mind. That’s fine, but add to that understanding “holy” as meaning something that is separate, other, set apart for God. The church is, then, God’s community set apart. We have different values from the world, different traditions from the world, different understandings of what is true and what is fulfilling. It is important that we tell the truth about those values, traditions, and ideas of fulfillment.

Nearly everyday, someone will tell me what they have found not to be true and fulfilling: professional success, status, alcohol, the next sexual encounter: these are the lies that the world sells. It is important, then, for us to come together week after week, just as we are now, as an enclave, reaffirm what we know to be true and prepare ourselves for lives lived in a world with a different understanding of fulfillment.

But, we have difficulty telling the truth about who we are. The church (and, in fact, throughout salvation history, God’s people) have always been at their best when they seemed to be the weakest. Relying on God and his victory was imperative to Moses in Egypt, the Israelites when battling the Philistines, and the early church when they were being martyred. We don’t do quite as well when we have some sense of power other than God. The Crusades are an example. Even today, we won’t tell the truth about who we are because we fear that the small place that we have at the cultural table now will be taken from us. Instead of saying that we are a community set apart by God in order to (as 1 Peter says), “show others the goodness of God, for he called us out of the darkness into his wonderful light,” instead of telling the truth about who we are, we seek to look as much like the culture as possible, thereby supporting the lies of the world.

Our churches run on business models that make perfect sense and are highly successful in the business world. No wonder the history of embezzlement in the church is no better than that in the business world. Nevermind the fact that the church’s financial stability is based on faithfulness and discipleship.

For centuries, the church has looked to the sciences to evaluate its own faith story, attempting to explain extraordinary stories like creation and the flood by the world’s avenues. Nevermind that we have an extraordinary God who has an extraordinary story for us to be a part of.

In recent years, the church has become more consumer driven, so that in worship, in book stores, and in movies, what people see in church looks like what they see in the world. Nevermind that the assumptions of the church challenge the assumptions of the world.
I’ve always thought that the world was supposed to look more like the church. Well, it seems that the church is continuing to look more and more like the world.

And God cries out, “You are my chosen people, a kingdom of priests, my holy nation, my very own possession. Once you were not a people; now, you are my people.”
We need to tell the truth about ourselves, set ourselves apart.

So, Brian, are you suggesting isolationism. No, not at all. I’m simply saying that we must be better about breaking down the lies of the world and speaking the truth.

We have an example here in Mobile. Too many teens die in automobile accidents where alcohol is involved, too many. Yet the church is silent. Sure, we prayed for William Mitchell while he was in the hospital, and we continue to pray for his family in their loss. But, we fail to speak truth and shine light on why parents continue to suffer and children like William Mitchell continue to die at such a high rate.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to get over our fear of being discounted so that we can fulfill his promise of being relevant and life changing.

My problem when I was 16 wasn’t my speeding ticket. My problem was my unwillingness to tell the truth that the ticket belonged to me. In the church, the problem isn’t the gospel message. The problem is our unwillingness to tell the truth that the gospel message belongs to us.

So, our invitation from God is to be his church, his community set apart. Stephen Everett Greenleaf IV and Ellen Clarke Doyle are being baptized into the church today. Our invitation is to live before them the truth of the Gospel so that they will recognize the lies of the world. Our invitation is to tell the truth about who we are, “for he has called us our of the darkness and into his wonderful light.”

And here is the good news: Truths are like lies in one way, the more you tell, the easier they get.

Let us pray: Oh, Lord, source of all wisdom, teach us to tell the truth about who we are and about who you are, so that others will see your goodness and so that the world might look like your church. In Christ’s Holy Name we pray, AMEN.