The Rev. Neale L. Miller

Sermon for January 1, 2006

Scripture: Psalm 65/Romans 15:20

Sermon Title: “Evangelical Ambitions

               Advent behind us, the church’s season of watching and waiting concluded, it is time to invite a good friend back into the sanctuary.  A man who really needs no introduction, “Paul, my friend, we’ve missed you.”  Though our friend hasn’t been gone so long as to strain our memories too much, a word or two might nonetheless help us get reacquainted.  But let’s allow Paul to speak for himself.  “You all so lately returned from Bethlehem and the inn where Jesus was born retain in your minds eye certain images, images of mother, baby, and shepherds keeping watch of their flock.  Not yet born myself when his mother gave birth to the Lord, I like you must rely on imagination to take me where I was not personally privileged to be. No, neither nor I were present to witness Jesus’ birth, but whether present or not we celebrate the “good news” he has brought to our lives.

               In our acquaintanceship with Jesus we can personally verify that the angel of the Lord knew what she was talking about when she announced to the shepherds, ‘I bring you good news of great joy.’ We have experienced the joy of knowing Jesus.  In a very real sense, friends, the joy of knowing the Lord took over my life. So completely did that event occur that my life was set on an entirely new course.  I wrote about that in my letter to the church at Rome.  If you can give me a minute I can retrieve that letter.  Oh yes, here are the very words I wrote, “I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation.” 

              Paul was an evangelist, a bringer of the good news of Jesus Christ. You might say that evangelical ambitions defined Paul’s career, for no objective animated his life as thoroughly as proclaiming that good news.  Oh yes, we cheer the birth of Jesus, but Paul had not a single word to say about Jesus’ birth, his life being absorbed totally in the significance of the good news our Lord’s birth inaugurated.  

              Paul was the principal evangelists of the first century.  Paul, however, did so in a distinct, even unconventional, way.  You see, Paul felt called by God to do his own thing.  “I will not go where others have gone.  I will not build on someone else’s foundation.”  This avowal of Paul is very important, because it is one that none of his contemporaries, the other evangelists who carried the good news of Jesus into the world, were prepared to make.  “I will lay my own foundations, thank you very much.”

            But where, and among whom, would this activity take place?  By the middle of the first century when Paul was converted, the gospel was not well traveled at all.  A mere decade or two after Jesus’ death and resurrection few beyond Jerusalem and Palestine had really heard the gospel message. Moreover, many of those who had first heard the message were Jews who were disinclined to share it beyond their community. Paul, however, entertained no such qualms. Ignoring the social boundaries that were so prominent in the first century world, Paul’s ministry embraced male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. His ministry among this latter group, the Gentiles, truly set Paul apart.

              Paul redrew the map with his evangelical ambitions.  There were no borders, be they national, race, or class that could contain them.  Paul, of course, came by his evangelical ambitions by means of the most extraordinary event.

               I take you back to where it all started for Paul. It is a site we Christians have visited many times in our study and worship. The book of Acts has the story.  “Now as [Paul] was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light flashed around him.  [We are in familiar territory aren’t we?  We know about that Damascus road experience.]  The light referred to was, of course, a harbinger of a life-changing encounter with the risen Jesus, an encounter through which the Lord commandeered Paul’s life.  And, friends, I feel fully justified in using that word, for Paul’s life, post the Damascus road experience, became an appendage of Jesus’ life, an appendage through which Jesus’ message of salvation was delivered to the world. 

              If you know much at all about Paul, you know he was the most unlikely source in which evangelical ambitions might reside.  In one of his letters he described himself as “a zealous persecutor of the church,” yet owing to his experience on the Damascus Road he became a changed man, who---his words---considered “the loss of all things…as rubbish in order to that [he] might gain Christ.”

              Paul was willing to surrender all things “in order to gain Christ.”  Just a single line in his personal biography, but it was a line to which Paul added other lines just like it, day by day, event by event, as he traveled into the Gentile world laying foundation after foundation for Christ.  The evangelical ambitions of Paul were so enormous that those ambitions took control of his life.  No, not where others had been, Paul set his sights on those places and those people who had not been exposed to the good news of Jesus Christ.

              His experiences as a disciple of Christ, however, provided Paul with a multitude of possible excuses he might have used to chuck his evangelical ambitions. He suffered persecution, bitter ostracism, beatings, and jail virtually from the day he confessed faith in Jesus, experiences that turned his life into a saga written in blood, sweat, and tears. He might well have sought another less stressful line of work had his evangelical ambitions not kept egging him on.  As you become acquainted with Paul’s story you have to marvel at the depth of faith in Jesus that fueled his ambition. 

              Paul took a lot of heat, but such was his passion for the gospel that he didn’t let up. Again, keep in mind that he didn’t really have to expose himself to persecution.  He didn’t have to be ambitious. He might, for instance, have accepted a high salaried position in one of the several churches he founded. Surely he had all the gifts, and them some, that would commend him to a church searching for a pastor. Yet Paul’s particular ambition would always be qualified by the adjective, “evangelical.” 

              That qualifying adjective has distinguished Paul’s ambition from that of many pastors, church leaders, and churches throughout history.  “Evangelical ambitions.”  There are many worthy ambitions to which we in the church might commit our time, talent, and treasure.  But evangelical ambitions? Do we really want to accept the responsibility to take the evangel, the good news, to places it has never been?  Indeed, it raises another question even more fundamental than that one.  Do you and I value our relationship with Jesus sufficiently that we want to share that experience at all? 

              Rick Warren, who serves an evangelical congregation in California, comes at that question in a very helpful way, when he presses churches like this one to define our purpose.  Judging from the reception his book, “The Purpose Driven Church” has received, there appears to be a large number of churches for whom Warren’s counsel has made sense.

              A while back, at least eight years, a group of us here at Lakeview got together in a series of meetings in an attempt to address the purpose question, deriving from that process our church mission statement. I am proud of the work we committed to that project.  It is a solid and functional statement, and, in my judgment, still valid.  However, it suffers from a significant shortcoming: it’s simply too wordy.

              Rick Warren, and other members of the growing consultant corps who assist churches and other organizations to define mission priorities, stress that a good mission or purpose statement is the kind of statement that each member of the organization could promptly recite if awakened from a deep sleep in the middle of the night.

              Now, as purpose statements go, Paul’s is about as succinct as you can get: “My ambition is to proclaim the good news where it has not been.” 

              In my acquaintanceship with the good news to which Paul is referring, I don’t really see how a church can realistically consider itself to be a church if it doesn’t share those evangelical ambitions.  As I read scripture, the church really only qualifies as a church when its energies are committed to telling the story of Jesus and salvation to the broadest audience possible. Yet, that said, the evangelical content of the message---Jesus is the world’s savior--- is inert without evangelical commitment to support it.

              The kind of commitment that supports evangelical ambitions, friends, arises from one source and one source alone.  It arises from the content of the message which prompts such commitment.  The message of the gospel is summarized in such pithy sound bites as “Jesus saves,” or “Jesus is the incarnate word of God,” or “Jesus is the light of the world.”  But one gospel summary for which I am particular appreciative appears in the Heidelberg Catechism, one of the confessional documents of the Presbyterian Church.  The gospel summary offered there comes in the form of a response to this question:  “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?”  To which the catechism offers this response:  “My comfort, [the statement reads] is that I belong body and soul, in life and in death---not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who at the cost of his own blood fully paid for all my sins and has completely freed me from the dominion of the devil; that he protects me so well that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation.”  That, friends, is gospel.  

              I repeat, the kind of commitment that supports evangelical ambitions arises from one source and one source alone.  It arises from the content of the message upon which the commitment is based. So, I ask you, to what life principles do you adhere?  What is your source of comfort in life and in death?  Or we might frame the question as Rick Warren does, “what is your purpose in living?” 

              Though the “life and death” purpose question is one the church is, on behalf of Jesus Christ, compelled to ask, other agendas constantly intrude. There is the building, the budget, the plans for the next church event, and there are the church officers to be recruited.  It was to those agendas that our two congregations were wedded before the storm.  How comfortably we carried on back then.  Note that I have said not a word about Christ, or evangelical ambitions in identifying those agenda items.    

              We have a problem. The church can’t sustain evangelical ambitions, its essential task, if it is off its message, continually committing the greater share of its time and energy to activity that fails to address its central purpose. Remember, the question before us as individuals, before the church:  What is our purpose?  Why did God put us here?  Why was Christ willing to die for us? For what sins am I accountable that keep me from fulfilling God’s purpose for my life?

              The questions I just posed, friends, are the questions we must entertain, repeatedly entertain, if we are to fulfill Christ’s commission to take his good news to the world.  Fact of the matter is, we have nothing really to share with the world, a world that needs to hear the life-sustaining good news of Jesus Christ, if we ourselves haven’t dealt with those basic questions. u

              This, friends, is a place to engage questions of life and meaning under God.  This is a place to confess sin and seek forgiveness.  This is a place to pray.  This is place to offer praise and thanksgiving. This is a place to fellowship.  But the time we will have on Sunday morning is merely an hour or two out of a 168 hour week.  The essential work that you will do to refine your identity as brothers and sisters of Christ cannot be accomplished here.  A Christian identity is labor intensive. 

              Passivity does nothing to shape a Christian identity. Can we ever hope to know the meaning of life under God if we don’t press that question?   Can we ever hope to know why Christ was willing to die for us if we don’t ask that question?  Can we ever hope to know how sin is debilitating our lives if we don’t ask that question?

              Passivity is this generation’s major affliction.  The church for many is just another Sunday option. [Oh, it’s a nice day why don’t we go to church.] Passivity afflicts the church. Few adults participate in the church’s Christian education offerings.  The church nominating committee struggles to compose a list of church officers. Sunday school attendance is sporadic.  Church committee obligations are ignored or only haphazardly fulfilled. And why?  Not necessarily because we are irresponsible or negligent, but because great amounts of our energy is committed to other things, and truth be told, in most instances, very valid and worthy things.  Yet however valid or worthy, can we allow those things to so absorb our lives as to neglect our relationship with the one who gives us life?

              “Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news.”  Evangelical ambition is a wonderful, powerful thing. Through it God’s kingdom is being built, and through our baptism we entered that work force. Our baptismal identities are precious, the most precious gift we will ever have, for through it God has made us his own. 

              His confrontation with Jesus on the road to Damascus channeled Paul’s ambitions in a direction he would never have dreamed of before that event.  There are events in your life and mine that have channeled our ambitions, events that challenged us to rethink who we are and what we want from life. The storm has posed just such a challenge for many across the Gulf Coast region. So what have we learned?  School is very much still in session, but I think we have learned one thing and that is that passivity is not the answer.  We can’t assume that others, city or national agencies and officials, are going to take care of us.   Likewise the church can’t expect its role in our radically changed circumstances to be presented to us all neatly delineated and defined. We own the responsibility of defining our ambitions.

              God has afforded us a wonderful opportunity to define our ambitions in wholly new circumstances.  Lakeview and Carrollton will be reconstituting themselves as communities, churches like ours can exert a powerful influence in these circumstances, if our ambitions are thoughtfully, faithfully and prayerfully defined. We, friends, have what our communities so desperately need, we have gospel, good news.  The question is, will our ambition rise to the level of the good news we have been given to impart?

              PRAYER

              Ambition is a wonderful gift, O God.  In response to its promptings women and men have accomplished many extraordinary things.  Aptitudes have been refined, talents developed, skills honed.  We praise ambition, O God, the indispensable catalyst to achievement.

              We praise the Apostle Paul, O Lord, in whom a mighty ambition to faithfully serve you resided.  We praise you for the steadfastness you planted within his soul, the ardor you gave to his spirit, the clarity you gave to his vision, that he would risk his very life that the name of Jesus might be pronounced among the nations.  Though we have not been given to see the world through his eyes, though we have not been appointed to a ministry of his dimensions, O God, may our ambition rise to his level.  May we not accept mediocrity in endeavors undertaken in your name, half an effort when you expect a full one.

              Guard us, heavenly father, from the temptations that would divert us from your holy purposes. You call us to be alert and on guard but we are continually losing our way, succumbing to the appetites of our baser natures.  Too proud to confess our vulnerability, we repeat the same old mistakes, and we learn nothing for our troubles.  It is light you offer, O Christ, but accustomed to the shadows we continue to walk our dimly lighted path. 

              In your mercy, O God, spare us from the distress our errant wills are causing.  Through the ministrations of your Holy Spirit, daily brace and fortify us for our journey. In the community of the faithful may we discover strength and purpose, and through the unity we forge as fellow travelers may we be emboldened to expand our community beyond these walls.

              Lord of life, who in baptism engrafted us into one body without distinction as to class, race or color, we pray for our world fragmented by war, injustice, and persecution.  We pray for those who are deprived of hope today as a result of political oppression, economic deprivation, or racial injustice.  We witness suffering in the television newscasts, but the images we see on a screen cannot communicate the trauma experienced by those seen kneeling over loved ones cut down by terrorists.  We do not experience the agony of the starving, the resignation of the forlorn whose children will live deprived of medical care and education. Yet, O God, you call us to act, to be agents of hope and reconciliation for our world.

              We pray for those who preach and teach peace, and those who serve our nation and humankind in peacemaking endeavors, even as we await the day when these prays for peace are finally answered.  

              On this first day of January we come here eager to savor what this new year has in store. It is a fresh start that many of us crave, an opportunity to chart a new course.  Resolve and motivation high to pursue our new aspirations, abide with us, O Lord, that we may continue on our course when resolve and motivation weaken.  Strengthen us in the good we might do, even as you embolden us to withstand temptation.  Teach us to be as patient with others as we would wish them to be patient with us.

              Lord, we give thanks for one who has completed his journey on earth and is now at home with you.  We lift our Bill, grateful for the life he lived in our midst, and the love for you that was so prominently revealed in the life he lived. We pray for Sue and the family in this difficult hour, and equip them with the special strength they will need to bear the burden of this hour.

              Abide with all here gathered, O God of hope, for it is through your Spirit active in our midst that the great ends of the church, and the evangelization of the world are accomplished. All praise be to your name, O God most high, father of our Lord Jesus Christ.