Pass It On
Posted on Jan 18, 2015 by David Whetter
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who abides in which of us. Amen
As most of you know, this year Salem will celebrate it’s 130th anniversary. For over a century and a quarter, this congregation has gathered in the name of Jesus to be the church here in Lenexa, Kansas. Now for us Lutherans, being the church over the past couple of centuries has traditionally meant we gather to worship in a specific way. In fact, when Lutherans first began to immigrate to this country from different parts of the world, it became a priority of ours to create a common style of worship and a common worship book. Now this was and still is one of our strengths. The down side of our history is that in many ways, Lutheranism is often defined by its style of worship.
But, scripturally, worshipping properly, which is what we often talk about, and argue about, is not a main topic of discussion. Now, in all four of our Gospel stories, Jesus’ baptism is told about, but what I find very interesting is that in not one of the Gospel stories are we told that after Jesus was baptized that he went to worship. No, instead, what we are told is that after Jesus was baptized, he got busy doing ministry and focusing on growing what later will be called the church. After being baptized, Jesus begins healing, he begins teaching, he begins sharing God’s love and he begins inviting people to join him. It seems to me that if we claim to be the church, which here at Salem we have proclaimed we are the church for 130 years now, and as the church we are to be Christ to the world, then our focus ought to be on healing, teaching, sharing God’s love and inviting others to come and participate in this great mission.
If we look at the 2016-year history of the church, and more specifically we look at how John tells us today how Jesus began his ministry what we discover is that the church, that is the Christian faith, is passed from person to person.
Every year at this time, we have to report our figures to the ELCA. We are asked to report things like how many baptized members we have. That is, how many people from the youngest to the oldest are on your books? We are asked to tell how many confirmed members we have. That is how many of those baptized members are voting members? We are asked to tell on average, how many people come to worship each Sunday morning. But, we are never asked to tell how many people we shared the gospel story with. We are never asked to share how many people we invited to come and see Christ at work in our lives and in the church. We are never asked to account for any of the things Jesus taught us to do. We measure our success in the church by the number of people on our rolls or sitting in our pews on Sunday morning, but when we read these stories of Jesus and his ministry, we are told that Jesus was interested not in how many people gathered when he spoke, but instead he was interested in how these people were changed by his message. He was interested in wanting to make sure those all around him were healed, fed, clothed, cared for, and he wanted everyone to know of God’s love. And in every case, he offered this ministry to everyone, not just Jews. In fact, in the one story in which we are told he appeared to not want to offer God’s healing presence to a non-Jew (Mark 7:24-37, we will read this story in September) he changes his mind and he heals this non-Jewish woman’s daughter. Jesus mission was to share the good news of God’s love and to grow the church by inviting others to join him.
What was it about Jesus that caused people to believe in him and follow him? I wish I knew, but what we do know is that like we heard in our story this morning and like we will hear next week, when Jesus invited those first disciples to come and follow him, they did and they did it immediately. Personally, my guess is that people heard about the healings and the promises he was making of how all are loved by God. And not only was this man saying these things, but when people saw him, they saw God at work in him offering healing to people like them, people that were not wealthy, not well educated… Jesus not only talked the talk, he walked the walk.
In our story today we have no idea as to whether or not Philip and Nathanael knew about Jesus before this. Maybe Philip had heard about Jesus from Andrew and Peter, since they lived in the same town. We just don’t know, but what we do know, is that when invited to come and follow Jesus, Philip does it and not only does he go, he then goes and invites Nathanael to do the same and when Nathanael expressed skepticism about anything good coming out of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth, Philip simply says, “Come and see for yourself.” It appears to me, when people hear God’s story and they see people participating in God’s story, they too want to be part of it. In our Gospel stories what we learn is that when people meet Jesus they are changed. When Jesus would meet people, he came to know their deepest need and then he offered them that.
In the church today, all too often we identify our needs and then if we are really good, we go and try to find people help us with our need. As I noted a couple of minutes ago, Salem has been a part of the church for over 130 years. This past week you all received a copy of our proposed 2015 financial budget. It’s not pretty and for the next week we will discuss and argue about the money. We will spend a lot of time this year focused on money and yet, as the church we ought to be spending our time inviting others to come and see not how they could help us with our budget, but instead we should be inviting to come and see Christ at work through us.
When our focus becomes one of inviting others to come and see Christ at work through us, I believe with all my heart that not only will our congregation grow, but more importantly the church will grow. God’s kingdom will grow and they in turn will pass that story on and will invite more people to come and see.
I often wonder what our church would be like if instead of spending the past 500 years worrying about how we worshiped and whether or not our worship actions were right, what if we would have spent the past 500 years inviting people to come and see Jesus at work in our congregations. What if we had spent the past 500 years passing the story of Jesus?
We know the story of Jesus. We have experienced him in this congregation. We know he is alive and well and we ought to be passing that story on. We ought to be inviting everyone to come and see. But it is hard and often times we are afraid that we will get a response like Nathanael gave. Remember what Nathanael said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” In today’s world we will probably hear things like : “Can anything good come out of the church? It’s antiquated, behind the times, speaks the wrong language; it’s pre-scientific and irrational; it’s judgmental and full of hate.” And to that I say, if we are truly welcoming, truly working on God’s mission for us, then like Philip our response to those naysayers ought to be, “come and see.”
My hope for all of us this week is that we might spend time in prayer asking God to open our eyes and our hearts to his ways. I hope that we might see that our call is to pass on the story of Christ and to not be afraid to take risks to grow the church. Passing on the story of Jesus can be risky, it is a risk we ought to be worth taking. Amen.