January 20, 2002
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Does It Mean To Follow Jesus? Prayer: Eternal and loving God, fill us with your presence, anoint us with your love, empower us by our assembly in this place. Hear us as we pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts may be acceptable in your sight; O God, our rock and our redeemer. We pray in the name of Jesus, Amen. Over this weekend people in cities throughout America will celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. You may have seen the commercial that shows Martin as a young man. It says that before he was the leader and preacher he became, before he was a minister, before he was the man we know him to be, he was a member of the YMCA. That is all true. But it is also true that before that he was the son and grandson of pastors, he was raised in the church hearing the stories of the One story that connects us. That story is that in Jesus Christ we have a Savior into eternity and a guide and mentor in our daily life. He became an advocate for justice, peace, and nonviolence. He was a scholar and a pastor who lived his life being an evangelist as we are called to be. How was that so? It is so because an evangelist is one who bears and shares the good news of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a minister, a Christian, who studied Gandhi and other philosophers, but who believed in and followed Jesus. He lived his life as a follower of his, and all that he did was a result of his Christian faith. Today I want to talk about what it means for us to follow Jesus and how doing so is an act of evangelism, which in turn makes each of us an evangelist. Now, I do not know what image the words evangelist and evangelism bring to your mind. It may be of people knocking on your door to tell you about their church, or it may in the colorful piece of mail you received the other day from the new church in your neighborhood telling you about all that they are doing and inviting you to stop by. It could be all of that and none of that. Maybe it is a Pee Wee basketball league, a church sponsored dance troupe, a coat drive in winter, or education opportunities opened to the community, a growing Vacation Bible School experience, or meaningful worship that draws people from fifty miles around. At its heart, evangelism is simply the means by which one person is introduced to a relationship with Jesus Christ in a way that leads them to want to know him, and to become part of a community of faith, in other words to join a church. But we say, we are not evangelists. Why not? Because for too many of us, our image of evangelists may include TV preachers who move with authority and charisma, floppy Bible in hand, around a huge chancel. Most of them seem to have the terrific ability of inspiring people in such a way that they will give generous support to their ministries, even though they have never met them. It may ease our minds to know that evangelists are sometimes preachers without congregations who move from place to place conducting great worship services, Billy Graham is an evangelist in that sense. There are some women in this day and time who have a passion for preaching and the ability to help people seek a relationship with God but no official church permission to preach. Often they will call themselves evangelists. For us, our acts of evangelism may be in the simple acts of inviting and welcoming people to our worship service. However it is we go about it, every believer in Jesus Christ is an evangelist. Still, we might ask what does it mean to follow Jesus? Two stories from the gospel of John help us to know what it means to follow him. Following Jesus means first of all recognizing Jesus for who he is. John the Baptist is out with his disciples; like Jesus, he had a group of followers too. The scene is described so casually that we can well imagine seeing them in the food court of our favorite mall, or standing at the corner of Broad and High, or at Cup ‘O Joe’s, or Starbuck’s, or even at the movies. They are just apparently watching the world go by when Jesus comes along. You will notice the contrast with Matthew’s account of the baptism of Jesus which we heard last week. Then John the Baptist knew Jesus. But in John’s gospel he looks at Jesus and says: “There he is, the Lamb of God, the one who will offer himself as a sacrifice for all of us. He is before me, even though I came first. I’ve just come to introduce him to the world. That is why God told me to watch for the one on whom the Spirit of God would descend like a dove, he is the one God has sent to the world. I saw it happen to Jesus.” A more contemporary reading of the early verses of John’s words says: “This is the man I’ve been talking about, ‘the One who comes after me but is really ahead of me.’ I knew nothing about who he was - only this: that my task has been to get Israel ready to recognize him as the God-Revealer. That is why I came here baptizing with water, giving you a good bath and scrubbing sins from your life so you can get a fresh start with God” (Eugene Petersen, The Message, The New Testament in Contemporary Language, Navpress, 1993). What does it mean to follow Jesus? It means recognizing the one who gives us a fresh start. We fall and fail, we don’t always hit the mark we aim for, we get lost sometimes but, when we follow Jesus we can find our way and we can share the map with others to help them to find their own fresh start. So it is a week later when John and his disciples are out and about again that Jesus comes by again. John’s response is the same as before. “There he is, the one who takes away the sins of the world.” But this time two of his disciples decide to follow Jesus. Jesus wants to know what they are looking for, they want to know where he lives, understanding that it was not unusual for a teacher’s students to live in the house of the teacher. They go with him and stay with him for several hours. The result of the visit was that one of the new students of Jesus became a follower of Jesus and an evangelist. After spending the day with Jesus, Andrew went home and said to his brother Simon, “We have found the Messiah”, we have spent the afternoon with the one God sent to the world as the source of our hope and salvation. Following Jesus means doing what Andrew did, recognizing Jesus not only as a teacher, but as a man at ease with all kinds of people. He could indeed talk with the religious and political elite, with men, women, and children from all walks of life. He was indeed one who could sit comfortably with the rich and the poor. But it is also to know Jesus as the one sent by God into the world to be the Christ, and then to share what we know with somebody else. His brother Simon meets Jesus and his life is transformed as Jesus gives him a new name and a new mission in life. We have a mission too. It is to be and to live the good news of Jesus Christ in the world. In his letter to the church at Corinth and to the church here, Paul says that in our life together, we can really show the world what we are able to do because we follow Jesus Christ. We are able to live with gratitude. In a few verses, Paul will begin to express some serious concerns about the church. But he begins his letter by telling them how grateful to God he is for them. He knows that God’s grace and love are in them, and he wants it to shine through. What are you grateful for? I know that I am grateful for you and for the ways that we help each other grow in our faith. I am grateful to worship in a place where God’s grace is poured out continually. Because God is gracious, we are able to understand how rich we are in Jesus. This richness is not about how much money we have, or don’t have. It is about the state of our heart and soul. You’ve seen it, the poverty of spirit all around us, maybe we see it in ourselves when we look in the mirror. There is the person who has no self-esteem, and no self-respect. Their lack of esteem and respect lead to a lack of regard for themselves and for others and can lead to terrible cycles of bad decisions, life stealing addictions, violence and destruction that can plague us all the days of our lives. But through Jesus we have riches even in our ability to speak. There is incredible power and security in being able to say of ourselves, “I am a beloved child of God, and because I am, I am a bearer, a carrier of Christ’s good news. I am loved, I am valued, I matter and so does everyone and everything in God’s created order. That is the good news we share with the world. We can meet the expectation of God that we will be faithful followers of Jesus Christ and servants of our communities. I was reminded of that expectation at the BREAD Assembly last Tuesday night. As I was walking into First AME Zion Church, a young woman, her children in the car, stopped, rolled down the window and asked me if I would do her a favor. My first thought was “I don’t have any money. Then I began thinking she wanted to know where the parking lot was, or if she was in the right place for the meeting, I said, “yes.” Then she said, “would you pray for me and my family?” And then before I could ask her if she had a specific request, she drove away, and I offered a prayer for her and her family as I entered the church. She expected that someone going into a church ought to be able to pray for her, and she was right. The other thing that happened at the Assembly was that BREAD members chose an issue to emphasize in the coming months. The choices were all important, and each will be given attention in the future. The three choices were racial profiling, advocacy for a living wage for low income workers, and access to health care. We chose access to health care, understanding that all three of the issues are related to our quality of life in central Ohio as are the other BREAD issues of education, public safety and safe, decent, and affordable housing. Participation in groups like BREAD provide us with an opportunity to say this is what the church is about, it is in the name of Jesus, to work with other faith communities to make the places we live, play, work, and worship better. As we speak what we know (and learn through worship, Sunday School, and Bible Study, what we do not yet know), we get stronger and the testimony of Christ is stronger in us. As we increase in strength we will be able to make use of the gifts we have. We have here gifts in music, in compassion, in a commitment to inclusiveness and diversity. We can increase our ability to pray (which is simply honest conversation with God), to be in worship together (to be in the company of other seeking believers, wherever we are on the journey - others will be there too). As our gifts and abilities increase, we will be able to reach out to others. Finally, when we follow Jesus, we are able to know with all five senses that God is faithful. We can see God in each other’s faces, feel God in each other’s touch, smell God in the food and flowers we share, hear God as we greet each other, and taste God in the bread and cup of communion. The New Jerusalem Bible says, “You can rely on God, who has called you to be partners with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord”. We can indeed rely on God, and we can trust God to get us to the places we need to be. We can live in the faith that God will not leave us, ever, that Jesus Christ will live in us, and the Holy Spirit that wants to be in the very breath we take. That is the good news we share and live. We are good news bearers, who can in these times, help others to know that the God who is faithful will be with us as we share all that is given to us. God has promised, and the promises of God can be trusted absolutely. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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