Today I want to declare to you what you already know. We are a good news people. We are not a naïve, eternally happy people who see no difficult times, we know better than that. Nor are we a people who refuse to acknowledge that life, even in the church, is not always rosy; sometimes thorns stick us in delicate and sensitive places. If you’ve ever been pricked on the finger by a thorn, then you know how that thorn stick hurts. But the pain is so much more intense when we step on the thorn with a bare foot, or when we sit on the thorn. Last summer, while I was cleaning out a flower-bed, a wasp stung me on the arm. It hurt, and there was little good news in the experience except that it sent me on a search and destroy mission in search of the wasp’s nest.

We are good news people and as such we believe in hope. Hope is not wishing, hope believes that God will direct the future as surely as God has directed the past. Paul wrote to the good news people in Thessalonica to encourage the people then to stick together and to remember who and whose they were. We can learn the same lesson. Why would the church need to know such a thing? Paul tells them because the 20-80 rule was true even back then. You know the 20-80 rule; in just about any organization, including the church of Jesus Christ, 20% of the people do 80% of the work.

Paul wrote to the church to tell them and he tells us as we read his words, to believe the good news of Jesus and to remember the traditions that have held us up and brought us to this place. Paul tells them he has given them the best model he could. He has worked hard to earn his way, he has been faithful to the call of God on his life. He told them all of that because he wanted to encourage the ones who were working to keep working, and he wanted to encourage the ones who were not working to get started. Some work hard in response to God’s call on their life, others sit and watch and receive the benefits of what others do.

The word idle really means stubborn, willful, resistance. One writer describes the attitude like this: “the word ataktos primarily describes behavior that is insubordinate or irresponsible; perhaps these are individuals who rebel against the community itself, chafing at the constraints imposed by the needs and wishes of others. Apparently, one form that irresponsibility takes is that they eat the food of others ‘without paying for it’, and they are unwilling to work. We would rightly refer to this as idleness or laziness, but the underlying problem may be their rebellion against the church itself. The passage does not hint at the reasons for such behavior. Some have speculated that fervent expectations that [Jesus would return and bring the last days] have fueled a kind of retreat among the people” (Texts for Preaching – Year C. Louisville: W/JKP, 1994, p. 599). The thinking was, if Jesus is coming soon, why work hard when we can just wait to be taken up to heaven with him?

Paul says it is not so. We do not know when Jesus will return to ransom the church, so in the meantime, we work like our lives and the life of the church depend on it, because it does. “Now is not the time for idleness”, Paul says. “Now is the time for working so that as God sends a vision, we can see it and we can live it together.”

Do we hear his word of encouragement as a word for us? Now is the time to work and to believe a better day is coming. Each of us has a part to play. Surely, if we cannot teach, or sing, or meet, or plan, or clean, we can pray daily for this congregation and its well-being. We can pray for our members, those who are not yet members but who visit frequently, and for those whom God will send. We can pray for our ministry teams and for our leaders. We can participate by showing up most Sundays, being in small study and fellowship groups, and supporting the church as generously, and sacrificially as we can.

I have a photograph of a John F. Kennedy quote on my study door. I like the quote because it is filled with hope, optimism, and because it still calls on the best we can offer and more. It comes near the end of his inauguration address just before the best remembered words of the speech. Just before he said, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, he said:

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from that responsibility – I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world” (John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961).

The next year, challenged by the Soviet Union sending a man into outer space, John Kennedy boldly declared that the USA would send a man to the moon. He said, “We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because the goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others too” (John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962).

How difficult was the task? It was so difficult that in the HBO Series “From Earth to the Moon”, a NASA engineer said something like, “we have to use tools that haven’t yet been invented, made from materials that do not yet exist.” And in June, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin indeed walked on the moon.

I took you on that historical journey because it has meaning for us today. We need to take some bold and courageous steps. Those of you who were at the board meeting last Tuesday evening heard that we have some critical financial challenges ahead of us in 2005. The crisis is real and the opportunity we have is to trust God and the Holy Spirit, and ourselves to give us a creative spirit to bring energy, faith, devotion, and everything else we have to solving it. So we need not be hopeless because the good news is that plans are being developed to help us overcome the coming crisis so that we can continue to be the faithful people God calls us to be.

Phillip Bliss wrote: “Got any rivers you think are un-crossable? Got any mountains you can’t tunnel through? God specializes in things thought impossible, and [God] will do what no other power can do.

Now is the time for working, it is not a time for sitting back and watching. It is not a time for gossiping or complaining about how it used to be. It is time to build up and act up. It is time for us to grow up in Christ and do all that we can. It all depends on God and God depends on us, and I believe it is within us to do what we have to do.

If we are going to have hope for the days ahead, and I do have hope, we do indeed have to dream big, think big, and do big things we may not be able to imagine right now.

I do not believe that God wants this congregation to be an open only on Sunday church. I do not believe God wants the church to fade away, and I know that we do not want those things either. This city needs our witness. It needs to know that we are a church that loves and receives all people in Christ’s name, that we respect the mind and the spirit, and that we care for people body and soul.

People need to know that they can come here just as they are, and hear that they are loved by God, redeemed by Christ, and kept and sustained by the Holy Spirit. This community needs the witness we bring when we say to them, come and be part of a house of faith and hope, where you might be challenged, you will be accountable, but you will not be condemned. Come to this place where God promises again to do a new thing in us, and see what new things God will do.

The chorus says: “I will do a new thing in you, I will do a new thing in you. Whatever you ask for, whatever you pray for, nothing will be denied, says the Lord, says the Lord.” (Audrey Byrd. Copyright 2000. GIA Publications, Inc.).

I want us to ask for strength and courage to claim the promise made to Isaiah and a hope-filled people. God promises to do something so new that what came before is forgotten. We know we can’t really forget the past, nor should we forget…there are good memories and good people back there. But we also know that we can’t go back to the best or the worst of the way it was either. So let’s move ahead and claim the promise now. If we claim it now, we can begin to live it now. Claim joy in this place now. Claim abundance now. Stake a claim to the best of us in this place right here and right now. Claim God’s presence in this place now and into the future. Believe that we have a future now. God is doing a new thing. Claim it now.

Why now? Because “the vision of the new heaven and the new earth fosters hope even as it elicits incisive action. It is simply not true that only programs outlining goals attainable on the basis of pragmatic logic are capable of moving people to action. Perhaps that is the case in movements that exclude a spiritual dimension, where the warning not to aim too high is in order, lest failure to reach the goal translates into a sense of defeat. For those whose identity is grounded in God’s sovereignty the case is very different. No goal short of the restoration of all God’s creation to its intended wholeness will satisfy the yearning of the Servant of the Lord.” (Interpretation series. Isaiah 40-66. Paul D. Hanson. Louisville. John Knox Press, 1995, p. 246).

We can begin to claim the new heaven and earth by reclaiming our commitment to Broad Street Christian Church. We can allow God to give us what we need so that every one of us does what we can to transform and grow this church, and not one of us says, “there is nothing more I can do.” We all can do something – pray for a sense of discovery and revitalization and let God do a new thing in you. Let’s catch the vision and move into the future God holds for us.

We are good news, hope-filled people. Because we believe in Jesus Christ crucified, dead, buried, and raised, because we are good news people who celebrate the resurrection, we know God can do amazing things. God has in the past and God will do it again. In the meantime, God has given us this house of worship, this ministry of inclusiveness, and the good news of Jesus Christ to share. That is who we are and that is what we offer back to God.

Thanks be to God. Amen.