On Saturday I gave another speech. Here is a transcript for those interested…
I’d like to start by asking a question – ‘why are we here?’ I don’t mean that in a theoretical sense. It is not my intention to examine the philosophical thought processes through the ages and contrast them to the Biblical Truth. (In other words, don’t check out yet, there’s still a small chance I might be entertaining). By asking why we’re here I don’t intend to examine the West Minster shorter catechism and its assessment that we are created by God and our reason for being here is to glorify and enjoy Him forever. Those are big picture answers to very large questions. Mine is smaller. I don’t mean to ask why we exist, or why we were created, but why are we here. In this room. Sitting at these tables. This early in the morning.
Time for a show of hands. Who is here because of the food? I don’t know about you, but the only way I’m choosing getting up at seven in the morning, on a Saturday, for food over sleep is if I know it’s the only chance I’ll have to eat all day. I’ll take the extra sleep in otherwise. You know what; I have a newborn, so the only way I’ll choose food over extra sleep is if I’m not eating anything else for three days. So as lovely a meal as has been prepared for us today, it’s not the food that’s bringing us together. Who is here for extra credit? Who came to make up for a missed Sunday or to impress God with their diligent attendance? Keep your hands up so the elders know who to put atop of their visitation list. Maybe you came because you heard there’d be some painting of the church building to do and you really like painting. Really, really like it. Who came this morning in order to hear me speak? (Long pause) I didn’t think that was the case, but I thought I’d ask anyhow. So why are we here? The answer lies in Psalm 133:1
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell together in unity!
This good and pleasant united dwelling is that of a community. It is the Christian community, or rather the reality and desire of it, which brings here today. I’d like us to look at just what the nature of our Christian community is, but it may be most beneficial if we first examine what our Christian community is not.
We are not a consolidated group of people. A time will come when a centralized city comes down from heaven and “…nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.†(Revelation 21:27). That time hasn’t arrived yet. Downtown Tacoma has made a lot of improvements over the years, but it’s still a long way off from the New Jerusalem John saw while in exile on Patmos. We are a scattered people. Zechariah 10:8-9 says:
8“I will whistle for them and gather them in,
for I have redeemed them,
and they shall be as many as they were before.
9Though I scattered them among the nations,
yet in far countries they shall remember me,
and with their children they shall live and return.
I stress this for on reason. There can be a strong temptation within the Christian community to separate itself from those outside of Christ. A desire to run out the homosexuals, drunks, prostitutes, unwed mothers, drug addicts, and anyone else deemed undesirable on account of their life and sins. That desire is wrong and not reflective on what the Christian community is meant to do. I quote Luther now –
“The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ: he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?â€
Remember that Jesus humbled himself by leaving his place in heaven to become a man and walk with men. While on earth he didn’t do what the Jewish leaders of the day expected the Messiah to do. Jesus said in Mark 2:17 – “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Christ did not spend his time with the Scribes and Pharisees, who through their own pride established themselves to the people as the righteous representatives of God. They would have expected this great prophet to sit and honor them, not a bunch of tax collectors, prostitutes, and drunks. Jesus understood that the fullness of time for communion with His people had not yet come. John 11:52 states that Christ died so that his children who are scattered abroad will be gathered to Him. After Christ’s resurrection he tells his disciples to go and spread the Word making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
At this point some of you may be thinking to yourselves – he said he was going to talk about why we’re here at this breakfast and all he seems to be saying is to get up and walk over to Wright Park to spread the gospel. Well you can’t leave- we still have some singing and painting to do when I finish. My point in all this is that these breakfasts and gatherings should not and cannot be all we experience in and for the Kingdom of God. If no one knows that you’re serving Christ but the people in this room, I’d like to offer that you may not be serving Him very well.
As C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, we are a group of soldiers behind enemy lines, aware that God has landed in the form of Christ onto the enemy occupied territory thus assuring our victory, yet waiting for the time “he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.†(Matthew 24:31). The Christian community is to be spread out among the people. Our temptation may be to hide underground and wait out the days until we are called home in the relative comfort of friends. We’re to be fighting in the open, not hiding from our enemies under the earth like those who fearfully hid from God’s wrath in Revelation 6. Our community is akin to an underground resistance.
We’re not sitting here together in order to actively engage in warfare with the enemy. We’ll all head back to the front lines soon enough. We’re together for another reason. I want to go back to Lewis’ notion that we are soldiers behind enemy lines. Some of you may be familiar with the television series ‘Band of Brothers’. The story follows a company of paratroopers who jumped behind the Nazi front lines in France the day before D-day. A combination of darkness, limited technology, and military resistance caused these troops to be scattered and dispersed upon landing in the French countryside. The soldiers were there to fight the enemy, but oh, the joy they must have felt when, literally surrounded by German forces they came upon a brother. We likewise are here to rest from the onslaught of the devil and the world. This sweet yet temporary respite is a blessed gift of grace. Time away from the front-lines facing wave after wave of sin, temptation, even treason from our own flesh. Christ, our king, in his perfect providence has blessed us with a relief from warfare that may well batter us to a very low estate were we left alone. Just as those allied soldiers would take a few moments to enjoy the company of their comrade, getting a glimpse of the peace that would come over then upon completion of their mission, we’re here with our fellow soldiers, resistance fighters,
We are gathered together through and in Jesus Christ. We come together under His banner, and in His name. Imagine again, if those paratroopers who entered France on June 5th, 1944 had all done so on their own accord with their own idea regarding the best course of victory. The operation most likely wouldn’t have gotten off the ground, and if it somehow did, would have been a catastrophic failure. Our fallen nature and egos cause separation between man and man, and man and God. You need to look no further than the child’s playground or the world of politics for proofs. We do not have access to God without Christ, our peace and mediator – for “no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.†(Luke 10:22). Nor can we successfully come to one another in the name of any man outside of Christ – the apostle Paul warned the Corinthian church of this mistake in 1 Corinthians 1:11-13 — “What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?†We are here through Christ alone.
Paul’s words to the Corinthian church shed light on the problem of treating the Christian community as an ideal rather than a divine reality. I’d be wrong to say that things just aren’t going to work until everyone comes to the Men’s breakfast. I, and I’m sure others, would love to see more men coming on a regular basis. There are innumerable of areas of devotion and dedication that we would love to see more involvement in. We need to be careful not to set these desires up as ideals which our community ought to live by.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in Life Together –
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first and accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
We cannot love our vision of what this community should be like more than the community, blemishes and all, itself.
I started off this morning by asking why we are here. The answer, I told you, was because we are a part of the Christian community. True enough, but then I started to talk about the community’s responsibility not to be withdrawn from the world, and the necessity of following Christ as members of that community rather than ourselves. Again, true enough, and I pray it was also edifying.
“So, why are we here?”
“Because we’re part of the Christian community.”
“Okaaaay.”
“So, why are we members of the Christian community then?”
That answer lies in Jesus Christ. We are members of the Christian community because we are Christians. As such we know that our salvation is unattainable by ourselves. Jesus has told us through his Word that we are guilty of sinning against Him and that our sentence is eternal death in hell. He further tells us that by faith, we may clothe ourselves in His righteousness. We understand that our lives, as redeemed in His blood, are no longer our own. Our righteousness is His righteousness. We no longer belong to ourselves, but belong to Christ. As elect hearers and partakers of Christ’s promise, the Word is on our tongue, made clean by the hot coals of Christ’s imputed righteousness. We are to share the Word with others, yet it is also our desire to have the Word given to us. The community satiates our desire to hear the very Word that is in our hearts through the lips of our brothers. Says Bonhoeffer –
…the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s Word to him. He needs this again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth. He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation. He needs his brother because of Jesus Christ. The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure.
It is Christ! All Christ! The love Jesus has poured out on us, His death which shielded us from death – is all Christ! That love, that peace, that unfathomable free gift given by Him! Being chosen before time, having the enormous weight of our own guilt and sin, a weight that was crushing the life from us, lifted from our backs is all Christ! And we love Him for it! We look at those whom he made who are lost – unaware or unwilling to be freed of the terrible burden pressing them deep down into the grave. We look at them, and remember that our desires were once the very same and we weep for them! We plead with them and with God that they might be saved – and all too often, they won’t have it. Our hearts break at the thought of their loss. But, oh the joy when one who is dead in his sins is raised again in Christ! The celebration that Lazarus’ friends and family felt upon seeing him rise up from death and walk out of his tomb is the very same that we feel when we see God giving a man a new heart and saving him from everlasting death. And look around! Consider the miracle in this room full of men who were raised from the dead by Jesus Christ! THAT is why we are here! Think on that and remember those brothers and sisters who wade through constant death in the missionary fields, or in the solitudes of prisons, or their own homes. They do not have the same blessing that we are experiencing right now by God’s grace. Bonhoeffer again:
…The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other’s benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!
You are Christians. You desire Christ. Come and get Him. Come to these breakfasts. Come to prayer meeting. Seek out fellowship with your brothers and sisters. Not because you have to if you want to ‘really’ be a Christian, but because you want to. Because of your desire for Christ and how He is revealed to you from within your brothers. We come here for encouragement. The voice of Christ through our brothers helps us to properly fasten the full armor of God. We learn through them how to better use our sword of the Spirit and to best defend ourselves with the shield of faith.
I’d like to close with more words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who has been a tremendous help in regards to my understanding of the Christian Community – “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.†Amen, brothers. It is true. Let us now pray that we would be reminded of this precious gift of community. That we would not forget it nor take it for granted.
