The Eliot Church of Newton

Texts: Luke 24: 36-48 and Mark 16:15

Whenever Liz and I get to go to a Sox game, we walk from the T station over to Fenway. Inevitably, there is a guy on the bridge over the Pike wearing a sandwich board stating to all of us happy fans that “You Are Going to Hell unless You Get Saved By Confessing Your Sin and Taking Jesus as Your Lord and Savior.” He doesn’t say much, but the message is clear.    Whenever I see that guy, I have a brief urge to knock him over and send him tumbling down.

Once, in a subway station in New York City, a beautiful woman in a white dress was preaching in the sweltering bowels of the train tracks. She never let up. She was possessed by the passion of her words, non-plussed by the fact that no one—no one really cared about what she was saying—they cared that she was in their way to catch the next train! I marveled at her self confidence while at the same time feeling a bit embarrassed about being a person of the same faith she was professing.

Secretly, you want to know what I think?
Secretly, sometimes, I wish that some Christians would not take the Great Commission so seriously. You, know, that little verse I read from Mark? That’s the Great Commission: Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to ALL CREATION.

From the guy at the Sox games to people in bumper-stickered cars that say “Warning, if the rapture happens, this car will be driverless” I wish they all would stop taking their bibles so seriously and tone their ‘good news’ proclamations down a few hundred notches. 

(Here is the second I might get struck by lightening.)

I don’t know if you have the visceral response that I have to those who insist on preaching about Jesus in the streets. Do you?  For me, it feels offensive, and invasive—and usually the message isn’t about love but about fear. But my response is also mixed with a tee-tiny bit of guilt.  Jesus’ last request is a pretty clear direction for his disciples: Go Into the World, and Proclaim the Good News. Evangelize-- (which literally, in the Greek, means to proclaim the current good news—to bring up to date, to make aware of….) The problem is that the only evangelism model we mainline protestants really know about is…well, those people out there doing cold calls in the name of Christ. 

So what do we do with this clear command of Go Ye Therefore? Typically, the mainline protestant church’s response has been not to do much at all. We don’t even train our clergy on how to do it with grace and integrity. I didn’t have evangelism 101 in seminary—did you Tony?  We are all “embarrassed to propose our faith to someone else, as if we were trying to sell something. And we are so deeply concerned to respect others that we do not want to give the impression of imposing our own ideas or to try and convince others--especially when it is a question of a subject as intimate as trust in God.[1][2]

Plus, those cold call evangelists are so sure of everything, aren’t they?   That their way is the high way, and the only way, and….even though we take the Bible seriously, we don’t always take it literally, and it is just kind of hard, at times, to articulate why the Christian faith  matters to us—especially when we don’t have hard and fast answers to everything.

Let’s be serious. Take this business of resurrection—we read today of a Jesus that vanishes and reappears, that breaks bread with his women and men followers, who is not a ghost, but still extremely mysterious, who asks for a piece of broiled fish and who holds a bible study after dinner as if it were completely normal.

The disciples didn’t think it was normal. They sound like us, a band of questioning seekers and doubting believers. They journeyed together, they were fearful, but still they fed each other and others, they listened and received God’s call, and studied together. They became a community of faith, in spite of themselves, and in spite of not having all the answers[3]  

… Especially about the center of our faith—the risen Christ. No one can explain back then and no one now could explain the resurrection, so the disciples back then and we, can only describe our experience of it. And that experience is mysterious, unexpected, sometimes brief, but always transforming. It changes lives, our lives, and it matters.

Church growth expert Martha Grace Reese writes that “The primary focus of the church today must to be helping people grow closer to God in Christ.” In other words, the church doesn’t exist for itself, for its own community—but rather it exists because in community, we help each other, and the world grow closer to God. However you define that. She also thinks it’s really important for us to be able to articulate why does being a Christian matter? (insert ‘person of doubting faith’ or whatever you are comfortable for the word Christian Her point is if we can’t articulate why it matters, then why not join a country club, or a self help group. What difference does Christianity make? Why does it matter that you are involved in the life of a church?

I have thought about these questions a lot. In spite of my questions, doubts, skepticism, and occasional snarkiness who seem to be much more confident in their faith beliefs, this is why I think my faith matters, and why the Church matters. I am going to share little pieces of my experience with the resurrection.

As I child, I was raised in the church. My most vivid memories are eating cheerios from a baggie, wondering why the altar picture of the man in a robe, standing at a door knocking on it, looked so sad. I remember singing at the top of my lungs, holding a hymn book upside down, and making up words because I couldn’t remember. I remember playing among the tombstones in the graveyard, and avoiding the outhouse if at all possible and lots of macaroni hot dishes and jello salad with carrots at pot lucks.  I might not have known God then, but I knew Love in that country church. And it mattered—because frankly, it was one of the places I really did feel safe. Always. This is the mystery of the risen Christ.

As a teenager I was a church geek. I sought a personal relationship with God….I wrote prayers and was president of the Luther League. I was not pretty. I was not popular. I wasn’t a star athlete. I was happy, and I was sad, and I was angry and I was lonely. I was a teenager. In church, I met adults who listened to me, and cared for me—not what I accomplished.  I knew God personally a little better, but more importantly I knew Love in that town church. I learned that God thought that I mattered—in the midst of the trials and tribulations of being a teenager.  

I could go on and on, but in short:

Because of other’s evangelism—which did not mean people talking to me about Jesus, but on a deeper level, Christian witness was and is about making others aware of the value that they have in God’s eyes. The proclamation was “communicating these words of God that rang out five centuries before Christ:  ‘You are precious in my sight, and I love you’” (Isaiah 43:4)[4]

Where else do we find out about this—our preciousness, and that we are loved? Where else do we  do we have space to pray, to worship, to depend upon others in spite of ourselves, to wonder and question, to feel safe, and yet be challenged to be better people? Where else but church? Not many places. It doesn’t happen in my book group, it doesn’t happen at the pottery studio, it doesn’t happen on Facebook or Twitter, or even in the animal rescue group I am a part of. I experience community in these places, but not always the risen Christ. (I know, we don’t always experience the risen Christ in church, but at least we try!) And, because I am a part of a faith community that has nurtured and supported my faith, I am able to be open to mystery of God, even in the most unexpected places.  

Yesterday afternoon, Liz and I were walking from the T station, over the Pike, to go to the Sox game. There was a man wearing a sandwich board that proclaimed that Jesus was the only way. He was a different man than the one I have seen previously. He was elderly, with a grizzled beard. He was handing out pamphlets…and we walked by, I resisted my secret urge to push him over, but Liz, stopped, and took a pamphlet. He looked at her, and said, “Bless you.” It was sweet. Heartfelt. It communicated, “You are precious in God’s sight and you are loved”. 
Humbled, and touched, I realized you never know when the risen Christ is going to show up. Even in an old-time evangelist.

This is why God matters.
This is why faith matters, and why I believe in the promise of Christian community, especially one like Eliot.

Why does it matter to you?