Chapel August 30: A New Community

This sermon, based on Romans 12:19-21, was preached in weekly chapel at Grand View University on August 30, 2011, by Pastor Ken Jones.

In the reading from Romans today, Paul gives us a pretty great list of ways to behave if you’re going to live around other people. It’s good to be diligent, to be honorable toward others, to be patient when bad stuff happens. Who doesn’t want to be around someone who’s humble, peaceable and hospitable?

For my money, this passage is a pretty good description of what we want the ministry at Grand View to be about. When you attend events, engage in a Bible study and show up at chapel, this is what you ought to expect: People who are authentic, loving and welcoming. A Word that is preached honestly and without hubris. And work done well and with diligence. You ought to expect an intermission from the incessant demands of the world around you. You ought to expect to be able to settle into warmth and welcome. You ought to expect us to recognize all the places you’re already being judged in your life and, in return, to call you into God’s grace and mercy.

All the signs we put together for our Walk to Worship today are designed to give you a clue about what you can expect. For wherever the small, faithful Body of Christ gathers, you’re going to get hypocrites trying to get it right. You’re going to get guys with ripped abs and fellows like me. You’re going to get people willing to give of themselves to you. You’re going to encounter folks whom God has pulled kicking and screaming into a relationship. You’re going to meet up with fellow sinners who’ve fallen and can’t get up, people who need a safety net, people who know the outrageous love of the one who’s caught them.

Here’s the catch, though. What Paul hoped for in the group of believers in Rome and what we hope for in ministry at Grand View isn’t going to happen the way we hope it will. It won’t happen because of some decision or commitment on our part. That’s because every one of us involved is broken. Each of us knows sin. Each of us spends our days focused on ourselves. We do persecute. We do curse. We’re haughty and think we know it all. We keep score. We give up. We see to our own needs first. Our decisions are forgotten and our commitments fall to the wayside. That’s what sin does in us. It mis-shapes us and turns us in on ourselves.

But it’s also not the end of the story. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is the end of the story – the limit and the goal. God has come to us in Christ Jesus, God’s Son. And Christ has seen fit to take you on, to take me one, to grab hold of all of us, and bring us into his community, his gathering, his body. Sometimes it happens with us going kicking and screaming. Sometimes we can’t help ourselves, because he not only the best option for us, he’s the only option and hope – an irresistible hottie of divine and eternal love. Sometimes we just wake up and find ourselves right there at Christ’s mercy seat because our friends have carried us in.

And once Jesus has you, he’s going to make something of you. Paul’s list of behaviors isn’t just a set of suggestions. It’s a description of what people begin to look like when they see their own helplessness and experience the fullness of God’s love in Christ Jesus. People who are honest about their own brokenness start changing when they’re flooded with what Christ comes to give. The proud become humble. Mean girls in your hallway become kind and open. Jocks who are tools begin to lift their weight for others. People who see themselves as sorry nothings begin to regard themselves as valuable children of God. And all those burdens and tasks of life start to look like callings and vocations – divine magnets pulling you away from yourself and into lives of meaning and service.

So here’s my promise to you this semester: I’m going to mess up. Angie Larson is going to take a swing and a miss. The Ministry Team is going go bonkers with all their responsibilities. And you? You’re heading down the same path with us. But this will always be a place and a time where the hoped-for community of Christ and the grace, mercy and steadfast love of God will show up. It will be an intermission – a time in between, a grace space, God showing up, maybe just when you need him most. Amen.