CHRIST DEFINES US
Colossians 3:12-17
Sermon preached by Rev. Garry Billing in City Baptist Church, Launceston, May 24, 2009, to commemorate the 125th Anniversary of the Cimitiere Street Tabernacle and the formation of the Baptist Union of Tasmania.
I came across the following statement, and I wonder what you make of it:
Christians collectively seem to be suffering from a strange amnesia. A high proportion have forgotten what it is all for. Week by week they attend services and go through their time-honoured routines, but give little thought to the purpose of what they are doing. (author unknown)
On this 125th anniversary, we celebrate with thanks to God the varied history of this community of faith with its roots in the formation of the Cimitiere Street Tabernacle. We also mark the concurrent formation of the Baptist Union of Tasmania.
All Christian congregations are called by God, through Jesus Christ, to be communities of faith empowered by the Holy Spirit, to live as witnesses and agents of God's love and justice in the church and in the world.
Today I invite you to consider such a call through the lens of Baptist heritage and present distinctives which mark us as a people:
"who believe in soul freedom;
who affirm the priesthood of all believers;
who submit to biblical authority without credalism;
who hold firm to doctrinal convictions while "speaking the truth in love";
who strive to be racially (and gender) inclusive not simply in numbers but in shared leadership and power;
who are committed to the separation of church and state;
who are dedicated to engage in evangelism without reticence or embarrassment;
who struggle for peace and justice without hesitation; and
who realise that God's circle of friends is always larger than our own and, therefore, seek relationships within the whole household of God."
- Dan Weiss, General Secretary, American Baptist Churches.
No doubt the mettle of Tasmanian Baptists has been well put to the test over the past century and a quarter. But I think the opportunities and challenges facing the church today are perhaps greater, and more wide-ranging than they have ever been. There's an urgent need for the church to BE the church. It's time to be confident of who we really are as God's people and what God's call upon us means for NOW
It's a tragic thing for individuals or groups when they lack a clear sense of identity and don't know how to define themselves. Why? Because if they don't know who they are its almost impossible for them to accept and fulfil a worthwhile purpose. Oh, they may achieve certain things. They may make a mark of sorts. But it won't be with an underlying and satisfying sense of meaning.
Take Peter Sellers for instance. A brilliant actor with an outwardly successful career, he remained to his dying day a complete enigma to others and to himself. 'I haven't a clue who Peter Sellers is', he confessed — and for once he wasn't joking! According to his fourth wife, his mind was in constant turmoil concerning his purpose on this earth and whether life itself was worthwhile. The painful pathos of his existence was that he lived in a no-man's-land of melancholia, loneliness and futility. He had no final point of reference.
From a biblical perspective Christian individuals have no need to feel this way, and the congregations they make up don't have to languish in dithering uncertainty about who they are meant to be. They don't have to be stymied by lack of purpose by falling prey to the "Sellers syndrome".
There's a clear word from God that brings everything into right focus for us. At this point I reach beyond our Baptist heritage to a biblical one. In the Good News version of Colossians 3:12, a typical phrase of Paul is presented as a mind-blowing affirmation. Listen: You are the people of God. He loved you and chose you for his own. Believe this, and nothing can be quite the same as before. Come to terms with its implications and there'll be wonder in your mind, and fire in your heart! In this core statement, divinely bestowed identity, issuing in worthwhile purpose, is put in such a way as to highlight the gracious work of God. And friends, remember! This is the God who really values us — who redeems us — who welcomes us — and who opens us up for life's most liberating and joyous possibilities.
There's a clear word from God that brings everything into right focus for us. At this point I reach beyond our Baptist heritage to a biblical one. In the Good News version of Colossians 3:12, a typical phrase of Paul is presented as a mind-blowing affirmation. Listen: You are the people of God. He loved you and chose you for his own. Believe this, and nothing can be quite the same as before. Come to terms with its implications and there'll be wonder in your mind, and fire in your heart! In this core statement, divinely bestowed identity, issuing in worthwhile purpose, is put in such a way as to highlight the gracious work of God. And friends, remember! This is the God who really values us — who redeems us — who welcomes us — and who opens us up for life's most liberating and joyous possibilities.
Let me share a story about a young aboriginal boy:
The lad had been the victim of constant abuse by a racist teacher who tried to grind him down and make him believe he was nothing but a filthy, lazy "abo". One day the child fled the classroom in tears and hid under the toilet block. After a dreadful scene in which police dogs were used to try and frighten him out, a more humane member of staff came on the scene. Physically shoving the others aside, she reached out her hand to the cowering little figure. " Who are you sonny?" She asked. "Don't know miss", was his confused response. Coaxing him out of hiding, she put her arms around the boy and said, "I know who you are. You're Harry, and I want you in my class".
That's what divine grace is like — the unexpected gift of accepting love. We don't deserve it. We can't earn it. We know that. We can only accept it and live in it. Without the accepting love of that sympathetic teacher Harry might well have joined the large percentage of his dispossessed people whose despair so often leads to alcoholism and early death. In fact Harry grew up to become a fine leader among his own people. The teacher's love gave him new life and dignity.
Now, we know that in Christ God was reaching out to us in our confusion and alienation in order to draw us to himself. In all that Christ said, and did, and was, God was spelling Himself out in terms we can understand if we want to. The good news is clear. The out-stretched arms of the crucified Son of God, reaching out as if to hug the whole world remain to this day the ultimate demonstration of that costly grace through which God makes us his own. It's as if God were saying to us individually and collectively: "I know who you are, and I want you as my people. I want you to realize how profoundly I value you and how strongly I believe in you". This is the embrace of grace.
Christianity says that when we are received into communion with God we already begin to participate in a quality of life called eternal — and we are freed to fulfil a magnificent destiny. So radical a change is this that Paul, the writer of Colossians, can describe it only in terms of death and resurrection. Those who come to the Lord in repentance and trust become partakers of his resurrection life and co-workers with him in his mission in the world. Our Christ-identity, then, is set down firmly at the beginning of chapter 3, ahead of the ethical teaching that follows. The implication is: Remember who you are and act it out! Put behind you the negative, destructive patterns of your former state and learn to live in the fresh air of grace.
Everything is transformed, says the apostle. You have been raised to new life with Christ. You have a new affection: Set your hearts on things above where Christ is. (3:1) You have a fresh basis for your thinking: Set your mind on things spiritual — not the transient mundanities of this age with its warped values. You have an energizing hope: When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory (3:4) You will be part of his kingdom's fulfilment — for you are the people of God.
You see, it's Christ who defines us as his people. It's Christ who prescribes our distinctive lifestyle, and Christ who energizes us to fulfil his mission in the world. God has always chosen to work primarily through a people. He has enlightened that people concerning his purposes or them and for the world. Throughout Scripture, He has put right in their face the clear challenge to be his people and do his work.
Worship and mission are twin marks of such a people. Leighton Ford rightly points out that worship that doesn't lead to witness is spurious, while witness that does not press us back into worship is likely to be shallow and finally fruitless. As people of God we receive our life from Jesus Christ. The only way our churches may be strengthened, as we desperately need, is to increase our awareness that we are utterly dependent on Christ. We do this through worship as we respond to God in celebratory praise and gratitude and seek his power to translate our thanksgiving into thanksliving.
Thanksliving means a whole new pattern of life and relationships. Christianity is a faith that must be seen to be believed. And as a congregation we may be quite sure that what others see when they look at our corporate life may indeed make the vital difference as to whether or not they do believe. So, may we let the god-qualities (v12) of compassionate care, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience flow through us for our fellow Christians as well as for the world at large.
Such qualities won't necessarily push us to the top of the popularity stakes, however. The gospel for which we stand also confronts the word's systems and attitudes. It holds out a radically alternative lifestyle. Some people don't want to be challenged about their consumerist lifestyle, their myopic self-centredness, their failure to be proactive peace-makers, their lack of care for God's created order, their failure to seek gospel social justice and so on. They seem content NOT to be prodded out of complacency or challenged by the comprehensive claims of the Lord Christ . But history shows that at least they can't help taking notice of a group of people who live with distinctive integrity and transparent love. It is, and always has been, the distinctive witness of the Christian community at its best that challenges the world to come to terms with what we stand for, and face the Christ revealed in the New Testament.
When J.B. Phillips set about paraphrasing the Acts of the Apostles for his Sunday School class, he found the story coming alive for him in a stark and inspiring way. Here's what he said about it:
No one can read this book without being convinced that there is someone at work here besides mere human beings. Perhaps because of their readiness to believe, to obey, to give, to suffer, and if need be to die, the Spirit of God found what surely he must always be seeking — a fellowship of men and women so united in love and faith that he can work in them and through them with the minimum of … hindrance. Consequently it is a matter of sober historical fact that never before has any small body of ordinary people so moved the world that their enemies could say, with tears of rage in their eyes, that these people have turned the world upside down.
(Book of Acts, preface)
This gets to the heart of the challenge before us today as we celebrate 125 years of witness in central Launceston and throughout the State.
Let's ask ourselves: what is God wanting of us now? What will it mean to move forward together in effective mission? What might God want to turn upside down (or right way up) through us, and here? We realise how futile it would be to try and copy what took place in a different age and culture. We know we simply can't replicate the New Testament church and its conditions. We live in the 21st Century. Obviously it's different culturally, philosophically and in many other ways. True! But, friends, here's the common denominator: - There's an urgent need to find that same source of vitality as the early Christians had. And we need a similar distinctiveness & credibility of corporate witness.
I'm with Rene Padilla, Latin-American missiologist, who craves the recovery of a more biblical gospel and a more faithful church. Theologian Jurgen Moltmann talks about the crisis facing the church — a crisis of credibility and relevance. And he reckons that this crisis will only begin to be overcome as we seek a spirit-produced rebirth of practical exemplary fellowship. In other words he looks for Jesus in the dinky-die relationships between professing Christians.
Jim Wallis sharpens the point in his paperback A Call to Conversion:
The greatest need of our time is not simply Kerygma — the preaching of the Gospel, nor diakonia, service on behalf of justice, nor charisma, the experience of the Spirit's gifts, nor even prophetica, the challenging of the ruling systems. The greatest need of our time is koinonia, the call simply to be the church, to love one another, and to offer our own lives for the sake of the world. The creation of living, breathing, loving communities of faith at the local church level is the foundation of all the other answers. He goes on: The community of faith incarnates, (fleshes out) a whole new order, offers a visible and concrete alternative, and issues a basic challenge to the world as it is. The church must be called to be the church, to rebuild the kind of community that gives substance to the claims of the faith.
Isn't this precisely what Paul's taking about in Colossians 3?
What's he on about if not a quality of life among believers that "Gives substance to the claims of the Faith"? We must get very down-to-earth about these matters as Paul himself does in verses 12-14. The practical out-working in our relationships of qualities like compassion, humility, tolerance, forgiveness and love make the church credible as the people of God and demonstrate the Kingdom life-style before a watching, but sometimes sceptical world.
In what we're thinking about today, it's plain that the church doesn't exist to provide a cosy society for the in-group — what one writer cheekily calls a hen-run where those who have nothing better to do may cluck and peck among themselves while the world of real men and women passes them by. William Barclay says: Christianity is community. Christianity has on its divine side the amazing gift of peace with God and on its human side the triumphant solution of the problem of living together.
That triumphant solution can take diverse forms.
Today, in many places, there's fluidity in expressions of church — a mixed economy of conventional and so-called fresh missional expressions of church. I'm convinced that's healthy as long as our patterns of church life arise from our focus on Christ himself, a consequent shaping by his own heart of mission, and openness to diverse ways in which that mission can be fleshed out locally.
One of the things I find commendable about City Baptist Church is your preparedness to support your inherited style of congregational life whilst exploring alternatives that might extend Christ's mission to other groups and sub-cultures here in Launceston. As I see it, this is in true sympathy with the entrepreneurial spirit of our forebears of Cimitiere St. Tabernacle, who broke free of entrenched patterns to pioneer new Gospel initiatives. As historian Laurie Rowston says of them "it meant a renewed theology, a rediscovery of mission and the creation of an organisation for the fulfilment of that mission". (unpublished MA thesis, 2009) The prevailing Calvinistic focus on divine election and the "in group" began to give way to a healthy re-emphasis on outreach, on evangelism, and on engagement with the society of the time, for the sake of the Gospel. Under the guidance of God's Spirit our forebears began to think in fresh ways, to experiment, to imagine afresh how God might want to use them for his Kingdom's advance. Perhaps we can catch something of this spirit today.
It's time for sanctified Christian imagination to come into its own. In my opinion, much talk about vision is often too linear. Frequently it points only to more of the same, only bigger, better and, hopefully, brighter. The kind of imagination I have in mind invites a paradigm shift to a different way of seeing the world. It explores alternatives, it thinks 'diversity', and it conceives poetic and artistic responses (as the prophets have always done). Sanctified imagination risks creative initiatives and, under the inspiration of Christ's spirit, crafts something new for God's kingdom.
What are some of the areas to express such innovation?
Let's be adventurous as a people of reconciliation — dismantling dividing walls between disparate groups and welcoming one another as Christ has welcomed us. Let's be creative in expressing acceptance. In an increasingly depersonalised society where people sometimes feel themselves to be little more than a computer digit, the church will value each unique person as he or she is, and by being an inclusive fellowship, support them in developing their full potential in Christ. Let's be prodigiously generous in giving and serving, looking (as Paul says) for every opportunity to make the gospel concrete before our neighbours, whether they belong to our "set" or not. Let's be artisans of hope in a world that wonders whether there can be a viable future. Where people see only twilight and gloom, radiate the light of him who said, I am the light of the world, the person who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.
At an international evangelism conference a few years back, there was a graphic dramatization of Lesslie Newbigin's assertion that to be a Christian congregation anywhere is to be part of a mission that reaches out to the ends of the earth. Six lighted torches, one for each of the six continents of the world, were borne, Olympic-style, into the conference stadium before over 12,000 delegates. The torches symbolized the fact that already the Gospel is penetrating to the farthest reaches of the world. The light of Christ is illuminating multitudes who sit in spiritual darkness. Those attending that convention accepted afresh the responsibility of carrying Christ's light into the far-flung communities where they live and work.
What of us?
Do we accept that in naming you and me as his people God gives us an inescapable mandate for mission? Do we take on board the fact that his "Good News" can be credible within our specific setting only as its transforming, renewing power is plainly at work among us and in us? Dare we pray, in the words of one of the great hymns: God of grace and God of glory, On your people pour your power. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour.
Since this is an historic occasion, I finish with another story — a true one from an earlier time. Francis Howgill, who wrote this story, belonged to a 17th Century Christian fellowship whose spiritual renewal and consequent explosive power led to enlivened missionary enterprise. There was a tremendous impact for Christ reflected in effective attacks on a variety of social evils. I leave for our prayerful pondering the challenge of this heartening historic testimony. Sometimes a blast from the past can do us a power of good!
The kingdom of heaven did gather us and catch us all, as in a net, and his heavenly power at one time drew many hundreds to land. The Lord appeared daily to us, to our astonishment, amazement and great admiration, so that we often said to one another with great joy of heart: Is the Kingdom of God come to be with men? And will he take up his tabernacle among his people as he did of old?
And from that day forward our hearts were knit unto the Lord and unto one another in true and fervent love …. And that was a strong obligation or bond upon all our spirits which united us one unto another. We met together in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, treading down under our feet all reasoning about religion. And holy resolutions were kindled in our hearts as a fire which the Life kindled in us to serve the Lord while we had a being. And mightily did the Word of God grow amongst us and the desires of many were after the name of the Lord.
O happy day! O blessed day, the memory of which shall never pass out of my mind!
And thus … the Lord did form us to be a people for his praise in our generation.