Fruitful Congregations: Passionate Worship

Acts 16:11-15

September 27, 2015

Mark S. Bollwinkel

 

It remains one of my favorite Easter moments.   It happened in Reno while Bonnie and I were serving at St. Paul's UMC back in the 1980's.    "Bob" had a mental illness.   A paranoid schizophrenic, he was able to manage independent living as long as he took his medications and checked in with his doctors each week.   It was at the state mental health program that he met "Mary", also a paranoid schizophrenic.   Somehow in the cloud of their disorders they fell in love.  Her parents asked me to perform the wedding, which I did, not knowing up till the last minute how it would all turn out.   It was lovely and the reception in the social hall afterwards was lovely and very, very quiet.

Not long after came a beautiful Easter morning.   The small church was beautifully decorated and packed, well over a hundred people.   Anticipating a crowd we solicited extra ushers and recruited the husband of one of our choir members.  He rarely attended church.  She was there every Sunday.    For some unknown reason, when "Mary" came into the church with "Bob" and her parents, she walked straight up to the tall, well dressed recruited usher and punched him right in the face.  She startled him more than hurt him.  He was so shocked that he threw down his bulletins and walked out of the church never to return...expect on Christmas Eves, sitting way in the back.

As you can imagine there was a huge kerfuffle.  The usher didn't want to call the police.  "Mary" and her parents went back home to make sure she had taken her meds.   And then we began the service.  

But that wasn't my favorite moment.  It happened during the sermon.

"Bob" had stayed at church through all the commotion, sitting in the back, kind of oblivious to it all.  But 2-3 minutes into the sermon, he got up and walked down the central aisle and sat down at the end of the pew about five rows in.   Two to three minutes later while I am preaching away, "Bob" gets up again, walks down the central aisle about five rows closer to the front and sits at the end of the pew.   He is quiet and polite.  His eyes are as big a saucers.  And he is coming closer and closer to the pulpit and me.  

Sure enough as I get into the conclusion, "Bob" gets up once more, walks down the central aisle and sits down in the very first pew right in front of me.   He is quiet, very polite and his face radiates joy.   Like a little kid at Christmas morning he is so happy.  His smile goes from ear-to-ear.   

This was one of my best of all time Easter sermons…and….about the only thing I can think of while I am preaching is “what is Bob going to do next?”  Is this the day that "Bob" decides to join me in the pulpit, dance naked on the altar or punch me in the face?!   A lot of the people in the church were thinking the same thing. 

Well, we get through the sermon, the offering and singing "Christ the Lord Has Risen Today".  The service ends and the congregation goes to the social hall for refreshments.  After shaking hands with everyone at the door I go to find "Bob" still sitting in the front pew with a big smile on his face.  I sit down next to him and ask, "Are you all right?" and he simply says, "You mean that God loves even me?" 

For me in that moment we can see the entire purpose of worship.

In his book Five Practices of Fruitful Living, (Abingdon, 2010) UM Bishop Robert Schnase writes:

 

 During this worship series we are exploring the nature of discipleship.   Inviting people to discipleship, nurturing their discipleship, living out our discipleship to Jesus is what the church is all about.

 

When we join a United Methodist church we make a public vow to live out our faith in Jesus Christ by our "prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness."   Bishop Schnase suggests that there are five spiritual disciplines corresponding to those membership vows which when practiced connect us to God and with each other; deepening faith, passionate worship, extravagant generosity, bold service and social justice, and radical hospitality.   I am convinced that as individuals and as a church we will find our way in life as we practice the five attributes of fruitful Christian living.

Today we focus on Passionate Worship and our membership vow to support our faith with our presence in worship.   And by "worship" we are referring to corporate worship.  Of course, we can individually worship at the beach or in the mountains or in the easy chair next to the bed as we wake up or go to sleep at night.  In this reference we are talking about when we gather as a community to worship together.   As important as it is to develop our personal spiritual practices we are convinced that we find something in community worship that we can't find anywhere else.

 
Schnase suggests that passionate worship in song, prayer, teaching and as we are sent out into the world to offer witness can be an opportunity to...1) Orient Ourselves toward God, 2) Discover the transcendent, 3) Engage the spirit and 4) Bring us back to ourselves.

More than a concert and a lecture, in worship aren't we all seeking a moment to connect with God, who we really are and who we are called to be?

Consider Lydia.   She is the Apostle Paul’s first European convert to Christianity.

She was called a “God fearer” or “a worshiper of God” as translated in the original language of the New Testament.   The term referred to a Gentile who was sympathetic with and committed to worshipping the God of Israel.  One must be born a Jew.   Conversion to the faith is a long process only fully realized by one's children.   Yet throughout the Ancient Near East where ever there were Hebrew communities, there would be those drawn to its monotheism and traditions.  

The gospel writer Luke refers to “worshippers of God” a number of times in the Book of Acts (10:1-f, 13:16, 26, 16:14, 18:7).  In Luke’s gospel Jesus’ heals the slave of a Roman Centurion and refers to him as "worshipper of God", an example of faith that outshines the pious rulers of Israel (Luke 7:1-9).  

Along with being a “God fearer” Lydia is a single woman head of household and a business owner.   This is extraordinary at a time when women were considered subservient to men and had little claim to legal rights or social status.

On a Sabbath day she is down by the river, outside the gates of the Greek city Philippi, where other women interested in Judaism had gathered to worship and pray.  It could have been a small and simple synagogue.  The place could also have simply been under shade of a tree along the river.   Such a spot was a common place of theological study and worship for those without, or with limited, institutional support for their faith (Note; John 1:48, Nathanael is recognized for his study of the scripture by “sitting under a fig tree”).  In a Greek city of a Roman colony, we can assume that the Jewish community was quite small. 

As Paul and his co-workers in the Gentile Mission came to new cities they would often seek out such places to teach about Jesus.   They would find potential proselytes to Judaism with Gentile backgrounds more open to considering Jesus as Messiah than those entrenched in the traditions of the synagogue.  As a person of financial means, Lydia invites Paul’s delegation to accept her hospitality which leads to the baptism of her entire household (also note the same with the household of the Centurion Cornelius, Acts 10:1-f).

As a generous, independent, wealthy, spiritual seeker we can only imagine how lonely and isolated Lydia's life would have been in a society that routinely discounted who and what she was all about.   Yet she was so passionate about worshipping the One God of Israel that she was willing to sit down by the river side just to hear the stories, read the scriptures and pray with her sisters excluded, for the most part, from power and access in their society.   It would be in that faith and community that she would find a place to be all that God was calling her to be.

Passionate worship can be loud; it can be silent.  You can worship passionately sitting down, standing up, dancing in the aisle or kneeling.   It can be graced with classical music or rock n’ roll.  The form of worship doesn’t matter so much as the heart we bring.

I dream of a church where worship is fun as well as reverent; celebrating tradition while not afraid to try something new.  Where people know how to pray and enjoy it; frequently and regularly, privately and corporately, in silence and in song.* I dream of a church that when one becomes a member, that if in town, we expect to worship here every week, not just when we can fit it in.   

Here at Church of the Wayfarer we have a beautiful sanctuary, a talented organist playing a historic instrument.   We have outstanding guest musicians each week.  We have wonderful volunteers as ushers and fellowship hour servants.   The styles and traditions of the worship to which we are accustomed are important and fulfilling.   But those worship traditions we so often love are not attracting new comers to Main Line Protestant churches.    To reach out to new generations of those folks who consider themselves "spiritual not religious" it will mean that we find new ways and times and styles of worship.

The contemporary praise song “The Potter’s Hands” (Hillsong) includes this verse:

You gently call me, into Your presence

Guiding me by, Your Holy Spirit
Teach me dear Lord
To live all of my life through Your eyes

 

That's really why we worship and why we worship passionately; to get a glimpse of the way God sees us and the world, and to respond to the invitation to live our lives accordingly.   And the way God sees us…whether a paranoid schizophrenic like “Bob” or a God-fearing woman like Lydia …again and again is with "Yes", "Yes", "Yes". 

"Bob" on Easter morning got the message of God’s unconditional love for him as did

Lydia down by the river side.  

It is a grace we don't have to discover all alone.  Corporate worship can bring us back to ourselves as we find our voice and sing our song.

 

Amen.

 

*(Reshaping Ministry: Essays in Memory of Wesley Frensdorff, Josephine Borgeson and Lynne Wilson, Editors, Jethro Publications, Arvada, CO, 1990)

 

Fruitful Congregations: Deepening Faith

Luke 9:1-6

September 20, 2015

Mark S. Bollwinkel

In this sermon series, we are considering the mission of the church as the nurture and equipping of disciples.   As we say at Church of the Wayfarer, we are a church “Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out”.   We believe this echoes Jesus’ “Great Commandment to “…love God with heart, soul, mind and strength…and love your neighbor as yourself…” (Matthew 22: 34-f).  A fruitful congregation then is one that not merely attracts new members and creates new programs.  A fruitful congregation “makes disciples” as its life and love contributes to God’s transformation in the life of the believer and the world.

We will consider United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase’s book The Five Practices of the Fruitful Congregation  (Abingdon, 2013) as he outlines five essential behaviors of discipleship; Passionate Worship, Radical Hospitality, Bold Mission and Service, Extravagant Generosity and today’s subject Deepening Faith.  The follower of Jesus that practices these disciplines will grow closer to God and to others, which is the consequence of discipleship and the central mission of the church.

To that end, I want to pose a riddle for us to consider this morning:

Do you believe in Antarctica?  [Indulge me!  This is a preacher's riddle; all of you who have actually been there don't get to play!]  

Few of us have been there to touch or see it first-hand.  We have come to trust the second- and third-hand sources of evidence that Antarctica exists.  We base our knowledge on first-hand accounts of those who have been there, on scientific evidence and the record of its history in maps and photographs taken from space.  Thousands of people have contributed to this body of knowledge.  Few of us have directly seen Antarctica, yet, we believe it exists. 

Although raised Jewish, when asked if he believes in God over his many years in the media, award-winning interviewer Larry King is famous for his agnostic answer, "I don't know; I've never met Him."  This response is shared by many who are strangers to or estranged from religion.  Unless they have a convincing, direct, personal experience of God, for them God doesn't exist. Woody Allen puts it this way in his jokes, “If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank account.”   

One of the challenges to belief in God is that many don't trust the second- or third-hand witnesses of faith.  The evidence in their "maps" (holding up a Bible) is confusing and at times conflicted.  The evidence of God in the lives of religious people may be even more dubious as we repeatedly see the pious betray their values and the humanity they seek to serve.

But just because one hasn't personally experienced God or seen God in the lives of those who espouse God's existence doesn't mean that God doesn't exist.   

Humanity has known about Antarctica for less than 200 years.  Antarctica was discovered in 1820.  It wasn't until 1907 that Ernest Shackleton led the first expedition to the South Pole.  Just because human beings hadn't directly experienced Antarctica until then didn't mean it wasn’t there. In fact it had been there all along.

Spiritual expression is found in all human cultures since pre-history. For some that is proof of God (Francis Collins, The Language of God, Scribd, 2006).  For others it is evidence of the evolutionary value of community in shared religious behavior and nothing more (Barbara King, Evolving God, DoubleDay, 2007).   Millions upon millions of people in all times, places, languages and cultures have experienced the reality we call "God".  They have left us a legacy of their art, music, philosophy, accomplishments and even failures.

For many of us moderns, although we haven't been there it is common knowledge that Antarctica exists but unless we have our own, personal, direct experience of God, well then, God doesn't?  

How do we know?  How can we know what to believe about God?

In our New Testament lesson this morning, Jesus sends out the disciples to proclaim the "kingdom of God and to heal." To “proclaim the kingdom of God" meant for them to announce that the promised future of God envisioned by the Hebrew prophets...a world governed by love, peace and justice...had broken into history in the life and teachings of Jesus.  All who chose to follow could join the parade.  Physical and psychological healing is a sign of that future (Luke 4:18-19) breaking into the present.

Note that the resource that Jesus sends out with the disciples to do the work of the Kingdom is not money, equipment or social status, but each other.  In the gospel of Mark's version of this same story, Jesus sends them out "two by two" (Mark 6:7).  In other words, in the Christian tradition, the full potential of our spirituality is discovered in community.  That is what John Wesley, the founder of Methodism meant when he said, "The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social; no holiness, but social holiness.”  We are all in this together.

In her book “When Spiritual Not Religious Is Not Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church” (Jericho Books, 2013), UCC pastor and author Lillian Daniel expands on her well-documented concern about the modern trend toward "personally manufactured spirituality."

Describing a long cross-country airplane trip during which she is introduced as a pastor to the person next to her, the fellow traveler is a self-defined "spiritual not religious" person who then goes into a long explanation about why he no longer goes to church and how terrible some churches can be.   Instead, he now finds God in a sunset or at the beach or while in the mountains.   He finds God as he watches his young son play with their puppy at home.     Being polite and finally extricating herself from the conversation, Daniels writes:

 

"So you find God in a sunset?... You are now comfortably in the norm for self-centered American culture, right smack in the bland majority of people who find ancient religions dull but find themselves uniquely fascinating... Can I spend my time talking to someone brave enough to encounter God in a real human community?  Because when this flight gets choppy, that's who I want by my side, holding my hand, saying a prayer and simply putting up with me, just like we try to do in church."  (Daniels, p. 128)

 There is nothing wrong with finding God in the awesome beauty of nature, at the beach, in the mountains or watching a sunset.  The Judeo-Christian tradition has long known God to be found in nature -- in fact we know God as the Creator, the spirit which binds us all in the natural order. (Examples: Genesis 1-2; Psalms 8, 121, 144; Job 40:15-f)

 

"So you find God in the sunset? Great, so do I.  But how about in the face of cancer?  Cancer is nature, too.  Do you worship that as well?" (Daniels p.6)

 
If all we want from spirituality is comforting platitudes and to be left alone we don't need the church.   If we reduce Christianity to "being a nice person and doing good for others" we can do that on our own.   But when illness comes, or a loved one dies, when our business fails or our teenager wraps his car around a tree, we want something more than finding God in a sunset.  In fact, it won't be intellectual answers that we will need at such a time, as much as church friends and family to wrap their arms around us, cry with us and walk with us in the journey through the valley of the shadows.  We are all in this together.

Last Wednesday we held the first of six Koinonia sessions downstairs in Carlson Hall.  “Koinonia” is a New Testament term for “community”.   It begins at 5:30 p.m. with a Grief Support Group led by Pastor Robin, followed by a potluck supper at 6:30 p.m.  At 7:15 p.m., I lead a Bible study based on a current book; we are now reading Jay Parini’s Jesus: The Human Face of God   (Icons, 2013) and wrestling with what Jesus really means to us.  It’s a class where it is safe to ask any question you may have in your spiritual journey.  At 8:00 p.m. we are considering the formation of a Covenant Discipleship group.

All are welcome.  It’s OK if you have to miss a class.  It’s OK if you just want to come to the potluck and nothing else.    

And…if you want more out of your faith, if you want to discover this God we find so elusive, if you simply need to know that somebody cares about you, we need each other to do so.   The Sunday morning music, ‘brilliant’ sermons and marvelous coffee-hours of this church are all fine and good, but we Methodists really believe that it will be in small groups that we will discover the lost continent of spirituality for which so many of us are looking.

One of my first jobs in seminary 40 years ago was in the library.  One Saturday morning, Albert Allier and I were at the sign-in desk when a man with two large brief cases came walking through the entrance.  We asked if he had any books to check and he said, "No," they were all his.

Just before the library closed late that afternoon, the same man came out with the two brief cases clearly loaded down with weight.  We asked him if he had any books to check out and he said, "No" they were all the ones he had brought in with him.  

Suspicious, I ran outside and got the license plate of his car as he drove off.  Albert and I reported our concerns and the license plate number to the library director that next Monday morning.  She called the police and within a few days, a detective came asking us to identify this particular man.  It turned out this fellow had 750 volumes belonging to our seminary's library in his basement, which having been caught, he was happy to return.  When asked by the detective why he would steal books from a seminary library he answered, so he could "study the Bible on his own."  The poor fellow thought he could get the heart of Christianity by studying books alone in his basement.  We concluded that he hadn't gotten to the "Thou shalt not steal" part!

Spirituality is, of course a deeply personal thing, located not just in our heads but in our hearts. That being said, the fullness of any spiritually cannot be found alone.  Even the contemplative hermit needs a community to feed and pray for them.  

We only know that Antarctica exists because of the contribution of the community of hundreds if not thousands of explorers, sailors, scientists and cartographers.  Our "belief" in Antarctica is not the product of a private or superficial experience.  Why would we determine our belief in God as it was all up to us alone?

My hunch is that we are here in part this morning because somewhere deep down inside we want more than platitudes and convenient Christianity for ourselves and our family. For the long-timers here, they have found something so significant in their lives that COTW has become a part of it.

"Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself." (Daniels p. 128)

A lot of the folks who join a United Methodist church have been members somewhere else and at some other time in their life.  They settle down with us because they find that we will welcome them where ever they are in their journey; that it’s OK to have doubts and questions; that we are a safe place to heal from the wounds of their religious past. 

 

We have no desire to judge other churches or put down other denominations.  We're not perfect and we've had plenty of our own failures.  That's why Jesus sends us out "two by two." We need each other to get it right, to "Reach up, reach in and reach out."

 

Amen.

Fruitful Congregations: First Things First

Matthew 6:24-34

 September 13, 2015

 Mark S. Bollwinkel

 

The mission of a church is not to fill the pews, sign up new members, raise a balanced budget or keep its property maintained.  Those are all good things for an institution, to be sure, but that is not why a church exists.  A church exists "to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world"; at least that's how we United Methodists understand it.    Believing that the love and message of the Christian gospel is contagious, if we are good at "making disciples" then we will see the fruits of that effort in our pews, membership, buildings and money.  But those are secondary goals.  

There have been churches excellent at those institutional benchmarks by means other than "disciple making"; churches organized around the adoration of a charismatic preacher; churches with an ideology insisting that they alone have a patent on the truth of God; or churches promoting a compelling social cause that becomes their sole reason for existence.

But in the Biblical tradition the community to which Jesus invites us is about discipleship. 

I am aware that for some the terminology of “making disciples” conjures images of the forced conversions that have happened all-too-often in Christian history or ‘Elmer-Gantry-like-snake-oil-preachers’ who manipulate the innocent selling salvation for donations.   We don’t have any shortage of these today.

One of the consistent admonitions we are hearing from church experts is that traditional church terminology and culture is a "turn off" to those not experienced in church life, especially those under 50 years old that are rarely familiar with church culture.  Clergy robes, traditional hymns, whether we call it the "Narthex" or a "Lobby" can be confusing for those not used to church life.   Even the terminology "disciple/discipleship" may throw up a road block for the "spiritual not religious" folk?  [Would you be willing to ask some, like your kids, like your co-workers or neighbors and let me know?]

The dilemma is that we could so "dumb down" our Christian experience by homogenizing our language and traditions that we appear no different than the Rotary Club or YMCA (not that there is anything wrong with either, we just have a different reason for existence!)  Or, we could become so insistent that the newcomer assimilate to our insider language and rituals that they have no interest in making the effort.

United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase's book The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations (Abingdon 2008) blesses us with a challenging vision of the church.  He describes five practices at the heart of discipleship and the fulfillment of our membership vows as United Methodists:

Bold Mission and Social Justice

Passionate Worship

Deepening Faith

Extravagant Generosity

Radical Hospitality

 

Anyone, anywhere on their spiritual journey...from new comer to old timer...who commits to live out these five practices will be blessed as they grow in discipleship to Jesus Christ.  By “discipleship to Jesus Christ” we are not talking about an intellectual conformity to doctrine or some new standard of piety.   We are talking about "Reaching up, reaching in and reaching out" which here at Church of the Wayfarer we feel embodies Jesus’ greatest commandment, “To love God with heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors as ourselves” (Matthew 22:34-40).    I am convinced that wherever we are on our spiritual journey if we practice Bold Mission and Social Justice, Passionate Worship, Deepening Faith, Extravagant Generosity and Radical Hospitality we will grow and prosper as people and as a community. 

What if we…individually and corporately…were to dedicate the next year committed to these five practices of fruitful living?     The next five sermons in this series will touch on the five practices and challenge us to consider them as benchmarks of our faith.

In our scripture lesson this morning from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches one of the most significant challenges to the spiritual life.  It is as relevant for us today as it was for those who heard it 2,000 years ago.

-You can't serve God and money.

-All the worry in the world won't add a thing to your life it will only deplete your spirit.

-Don't worry about tomorrow, today has enough worries of its own.

-Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be provided.

 

Let's be honest.   For self-sufficient, multi-tasking, consumers such as you and me these are hard words to comprehend, let alone follow.   We actually believe that material wealth can guarantee our security.  We are convinced that we have the ability to control our lives and get what we want.    We insist that we can have life on our terms and we want God to bless it.

And then the cancer returns.  Or the spouse leaves.  Or the job is shipped overseas.  Or the kids end up rejecting everything we believed in.

Jesus is preaching to people investing their spiritual energy in that which has yet to occur.  Brilliant and quick they can project multi-possibilities for every contingency days, weeks or months ahead.   As a result they can't sleep.  They need medication to maintain.  The priorities of their lives are upside down.  [Sound familiar?]

Anxiety drives us to isolation.  Faith drives us together with common purpose and meaning.   And to these people...to people just like you and me...Jesus invites us to follow.

I make no apology for our passion to invite people into discipleship to Jesus Christ convinced that such will contribute to the transformation of their lives...my life...and the transformation of the world.   To be a disciple doesn't mean that you have achieved spiritual enlightenment and superiority over others.  It simply means that you and I have committed ourselves to the journey.  To practice sharing, loving, growing, giving and service to others.  And doing so together.

In a few weeks, I will be privileged to participate in the memorial of a dear friend.  Lily lived 94 years devoted to the five practices of fruitful living, as Bishop Schnase outlines them.   As a young woman and Roman Catholic in Belgium she was a decorated member of the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation during World War II.  She and her husband immigrated to the USA and ended up contributing to the electronic industry of the Silicon Valley.  They raised a beautiful family, became United Methodists, taught Sunday school, volunteered for church suppers and projects and was the Communion Steward of our church in Los Altos for decades.  She was often one of the first to greet the new comer to church on a Sunday morning and I would hear again and again how that greeting and her humble faith would become the reason so many would join.  Lily was a disciple of Jesus.  It was her first priority in life and it was reflected in everything she did, who she was as a person.   People like Lily are why we have churches in the first place.  They aren’t places where we can hide from God’s claim in our lives rather they are launching pads from which to go out into the world with the grace which inspires and sustains us.  

Churches thrive when their members and friends radiate the love of God in their lives.  You can see it in their five practices of fruitful living.  The French author of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, once wrote:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

 

Now don’t get me wrong.  Worship attendance numbers, dollars in the plate, maintaining a beautiful and historic building and garden are important.   But not many new folk will be interested in our church if our message to the world is “Come join a church so you can volunteer for a committee and make donations to the budget”.  

I ran across this slogan on the church-internet sources I frequent the other day, which kind of sums up my point this morning:

THE MARK OF AN EFFECTIVE CHURCH IS NOT HOW MANY PEOPLE COME BUT HOW MANY PEOPLE LIVE DIFFERENTLY AS A RESULT OF HAVING BEEN THERE.

Do we, members and friends of Church of the Wayfarer, live differently as a result of having been here?   Do others in the community see the fruits of discipleship in our lives?   For if they do they will want to check out this place for themselves.

 

Bold Mission and Social Justice

Passionate Worship

Deepening Faith

Extravagant Generosity

Radical Hospitality

 

We all want to see our church grow and prosper as an institution.   Church of the Wayfarer has an exciting future ahead of it.   An essential first step toward that future is to put first things first.

 

Amen. 

The Way of Love

 Luke 14:1, 7-14

 September 6, 2015

 Mark S. Bollwinkel

             Thirty-seven years ago I traveled for the first time to Sarawak, East Malaysia, on the northern part of the island of Borneo.  During my week there I met with church leaders of the Iban Conference of the Methodist church of Malaysia.  The Iban are the old headhunters of Borneo and I was there to research their rural development ministries.

            From Kapit, a logging town in the interior of the rain forest, I went out with an Iban church team to visit the long house church at Rumah Dari, six hours north by dugout canoe.

            We traveled all day up a small river, pulling the wooden longboat over rocks when it got too shallow.  When the water was deep we would zoom by outboard motor under overhanging branches and orchids, vines and ferns, watching parrots and hornbills fly across our path.  It was as if we were in the Jungle Boat ride at Disneyland.

            When we finally reached Rumah Dari we were exhausted, hot and sweaty.  We arrived just as the 200 folks of this village on stilts were getting ready for their late afternoon bath.  Our team was eager to join them.

            It was quite a sight.  Everyone goes down to the river, young and old, boy and girl, to bathe at the same time.  Men went down stream and women went up stream in two neat and distinct groups.

            Everyone kept some clothing on while bathing.  The Iban are modest and proud people.  The ladies bathe with sarongs tied properly around them and the men with trunks or briefs on.  It was a happy occasion with lots of water play and laughter, swimming and lots of soap.  The Iban are very clean people.

            I jumped right in.  I was desperate for a bath and the water felt wonderful.  My presence created quite a stir among the people, as I was the first white person to have visited Rumah Dari in six years.  Many of the children had never seen an “orang puteh” before.  Some were afraid I was a ghost, others thought I was covered in paint.

            Never-the-less, the occasion of seeing a tall (in comparison to their average male), fat, red bearded, white man taking a bath in their river was the high point of their day.

            The folks quickly gathered around the banks of the river to watch me finish my bath.  There were very polite, and very curious, talking and giggling among themselves.

            My church teammates who had brought me to Rumah Dari got a big kick out of this and explained to me all that was going on.

            Then it came time to get out of the water.

            I asked my friends how I was supposed to get out of my wet underclothes and into dry ones.  They explained, by word and example, that one takes a dry sarong, slips it over the head, and while holding an edge in your teeth, you step out of the wet clothing, place it aside and then step into the dry clothing.

            It sounded easy enough.  I took a dry sarong, slipped it over my head, stepped out of my wet underclothing.  So far so good.  Two hundred people were watching me undress and all was going well.

            Then, with my back to the crowd on the riverbank, I stepped into my dry clothing.  As I did so I stepped down on the sarong and pulled it out of my teeth.  It fell to the ground and before I quickly pulled it up around myself again, a huge cheer roared out from the village.  They clapped and yelled, slapping each other on the back.  We all laughed together.

            That night after dinner at our community meeting and worship service, they lovingly gave me a new nickname, “Bulan Besai”, which literally translated means “Great White Moon”, the nearest thing in their experience to what they had seen that afternoon at the community bath.

            The story illustrates my clumsiness and Iban curiosity.  But I also like to think of the event as an example of “conspicuous Christianity”.

            I stuck out like a sore thumb in their world.  I had made a fool of myself in front of them.  Yet they also knew I had traveled 10,000 miles away from my family, to a strange and difficult land.  They knew I had done so for Jesus and his church’s efforts to help feed their children.  In the end we became brothers and sisters in Christ.

            Three years later I would return to Sarawak with Bonnie, Matt and Daniel to teach in their seminary.   I discovered that many more people than those at Rumah Dari had heard about the legend of Bulan Besai.

            After living outside of the United States, one of the challenges is getting used to the inconspicuousness of Christianity in our society.  In many parts of the world where Christians are a minority they can be identified by their clothing, their surnames or their jewelry.   Here in North America is an easy place to hide one’s faith.

            According to the Pew Religious Survey 71% of Americans identify themselves as Christians, 62% say they are affiliated with a church and a 1/3rd of those will attend a Sunday service once a month. The media will hold up a TV preacher, or a picket line protestor, or an angry pundit as if they were a spokesperson for all 247 million identified Christians in the USA, but excluding those rare individuals who make the evening news, for the most part, believers or unbelievers all look the same and act the same. 

            How can you tell who is a Christian and who is not?  Here in the USA you can’t tell by one’s clothing, or one’s surname, or even by our bumper stickers. [By the way if we have a Christian bumper sticker or an “ichthus” fish symbol on our cars we had better drive with compassion and courtesy.  If we cut people off, honk our horns out of anger or display the universal hand gesture of displeasure to other drivers who then see our bumper sticker/fish signs, it just reinforces the growing secular dismissal of Christians as a bunch of hypocrites. The same goes for the clergy who wear clerical collars, or those who wear a crucifix for all to see.   If we are going to “talk the talk” we had better “walk the walk”.

            In the end, the only thing that distinguishes us as disciples of Jesus is our capacity to love.

            Our love for each other and the world is not just an intellectual, personal or contemplative love but also an active way of life, a way of life that can be observed by all around us.

            Christian love is conspicuous; it stands out like a sore thumb.

            In community after community, it is no coincidence that shelters for the homeless, the Community Food Banks or programs for the victims of domestic violence or human trafficking were all started, and are now sustained, by people of faith.

            It is no coincidence that the vast majority of prison programs in our nation connecting the inmate to the outside are run by faith-based organizations.

            It is no accident that churches around the world have been providing food and medical relief to Rwanda and Burundi, Afghanistan and the Sudan, Bolivia and Honduras years before and years after government programs have come and gone.

            Christian love is conspicuous.

            It’s conspicuous in the couples who fight to keep their marriages alive in the face of trails and temptations, and in the singles who with courageous efforts keep their families going in spite of broken hearts.

            It’s conspicuous in the many saints of the church, in this church, who generously share their time and money for Christ’s ministry, rejecting materialism while content and reliant on God’s care.

            Consider our gospel lesson this morning, as Jesus teaches the rich host that he should not only invite friends and family to his banquet, but “the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind” as well.

            For Jesus, righteousness didn’t mean superiority or the right to condemn others who are different.  Just the opposite.  The truly righteous welcome those who don’t count to their tables.  Jesus describes a radical love, a love that includes not excludes, a love that is humble, not full of self-righteousness.

            This is not an easy or comfortable love, a romantic love.  In fact, this is a hard lesson to follow.  Who would we refuse to have at our dinner table?  The AIDS patient, the illegal immigrant, people with different sexual orientations than our own, persons of different races than our own, even specific members of our own families who we have written off we would not welcome to our tables.

            The love to which Jesus calls us urges us to invite even those who don’t count.

            That kind of love stands out in contrast to the cynical, expedient world in which we live.

            We are about to be invited to the table of the Lord, the sacrament of Holy Communion.  All are invited.  It is a conspicuous act by those who choose to participate for we will physically, publicly demonstrate our need for God’s nourishment in our lives, our commitment to respond to Jesus’ teachings.  We don’t do it passively.  We act to receive it.  We don’t do it anonymously; all can see us as we partake.  And we don’t do it alone; we share this symbolic meal in the community of like-minded people who seek the same promise as we do.

            A life where God matters.  In a world of accomplishment and acquisition, we step forward to say that life with God matters.  It can make all the difference.

            It may not be as conspicuous as dropping your sarong in front of 200 people, but it is a conspicuous commitment to the way of love none-the-less.

 

            Amen.