It's Not About Me ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 3)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, during worship this past Sunday morning, September 9.]

Mark 9:33-35

While I was serving in my first parish, the bishop appointed a group of twenty of us in the synod--ten laypeople and ten pastors--to be trained by a prominent not-for-profit institute as conflict management consultants. After receiving our training, one layperson, the superintendent of a northwestern Ohio school system, and I were sent to mediate at a small town congregation in deep conflict. The congregation's most recent pastor had been gone for some months, the latest of a series shepherds essentially driven out by one faction of the congregation. That faction actually consisted of just three people: a prominent business-person in the community and his daughter and son-in-law, who worked for “Dad.” It was them against the rest of the church.

My lay colleague and I spent several days and nights listening to parishioners. What became apparent was that these three people were calling all the shots. They viewed other members with a smug and smiling contempt, certain that their financial acumen gave them the ability and the right to make all decisions. 

After we gave our recommendations to the synod and to the congregation, those three people continued to be in control, eventually sending it on a death skid--even though at the time it was, like Living Water, a medium-sized and growing congregation--with their arrogance and penny-pinching.

Let’s be honest. We all like the idea of being in control. We’re born with that preference. It comes from our inborn sinful nature. And, no matter how much progress God has made in what the Bible calls our sanctification, the process of making us over in the image of Jesus, as long as we are still in this world, at our core, we will want to be in charge. 

But friends, that’s not the way of life for a disciple of Jesus. 

And it’s not the way of life for those who are blessed to be part of Jesus’ Church. 

As we continue to consider the Biblical teachings on which Thom Rainer builds his book, I Am a Church Member, we come to one of the most frequently ignored essentials of church life: Being a member of Christ’s Church is not about my preferences. 

It’s not even about the preferences of a majority of church members. 

It’s about God’s preferences, God’s call on His Church at any given time.

Truly, if gratitude for God’s undeserved and saving grace was at the forefront of our thinking...if we consistently appreciated that Jesus bled and died for our sins and then gives a share in His resurrection with God to all who repent and believe in Him, we might never be selfish again in our daily lives or in the Church. But that’s a hard proposition.

To see how hard, all we need do is take a look at Mark, chapter 9. Please open a Bible to that chapter and consider it for a moment with me. 

Six days after telling the apostles that some of them would soon see the overwhelming glory of God, Jesus took three of them--Peter, James, and John--to a mountaintop, where His appearance was transfigured before them. The three apostles saw the perfection of heaven shining from Jesus and Elijah and Moses affirming the greatness of Jesus. They saw that Jesus was God. (Mark 9:1-13)

On returning from the mountaintop, Jesus cast a demon from a boy after the other nine apostles had been unwilling to do anything for him. (Mark 9:14-29)

Then, Jesus predicted, for a second time, that He would be crucified for the sins of the world, but rise again. (Mark 9:30-31)

Now, tell me something. If you had been, say, Peter, James, and John and you had just seen Jesus’ transfiguration, seen Him cast a demon from a child, and heard Him speak of how He was going to offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, and then, rise from the dead, wouldn’t you think, “I will do anything for this man’s glory. This is God and I will do what He wants and not what I want”?

But here’s a stunning truth: On this earth, before we have died in Christ and risen in His power, even when God's presence and power are manifested obviously to us, we will tend to want our own ways. 

Do you doubt that? Take a look at Mark 9:33-35. It picks up immediately following the events we’ve just looked at. Verse 33: “They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house [here, the house signifies the Church, the fellowship of believers in which Jesus talks to His disciples, including you and me], he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the road?’”

Of course, Jesus knows what they’ve been talking about. His question is a bit like that posed by God to Adam in Genesis. He knows what Adam’s been up to and why Adam is hiding, but he asks Adam, “Where are you? [and]...Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” [Genesis 3:9, 11] 

As in the garden and God’s questions of Adam (and later, Eve), Jesus is giving the disciples a chance to be honest with Him, to confess their sins and receive His forgiveness. 

Listen: The God we know in Jesus is always anxious to give forgiveness and restoration to us if we will only be honest enough with Him to admit that we have sinned, that we’ve been selfish. 

King David in Old Testament times knew this and so he prayed, “...a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17) 

None of us will ever be what we are meant to be as human beings and as disciples of Jesus unless we are willing to be broken in the realization of our sin and human limitations. We must leave all pretenses of being “all that” before God can make us whole through the grace He offers us in Jesus Christ.

Mark 9, verse 34: “But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.” The disciples were bent on getting their ways even though they were in the presence of the Greatest of all! It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Verse 35: “Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’” 

Imagine how the lives of our churches and the life of our world would be changed if we took these words of Jesus seriously! 

Imagine what our families and communities would be like if we tried to outdo one another in serving each other, in not wanting to get our ways, in not wanting to push ourselves forward.

Folks, do you know what most turns many people off to the Church? It’s when they come into a congregation and see the “Christians” treating each other with the same disregard and nastiness that they see in the world at large. When outsiders see Christians bent on getting their own ways, they don’t see the One they need and, whether they know it or not, crave. They don’t see Jesus.

To be sure, no Christian is perfect. 

No Christian congregation is perfect. 

But in fact, a local Christian congregation is precisely the community of which imperfect, sinful people need to be a part. In this fellowship:

• we confess our sins together, 
• we hear the good news of Jesus together, 
• we together welcome new members of Christ’s body in the waters of Holy Baptism, 
• we are strengthened and renewed by Holy Communion together, and 
• we are together empowered by the Holy Spirit to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  

But even then, the sin inside of us, the sin of the world, and the sin that comes from the evil one can trap us. 

I think that the author of I Am a Church Member, Thom Rainer underestimates how powerful the pull of sin is on each of us, even on Christians who want to be the servant-disciples Jesus calls us to be. Toward the end of chapter 3 of his book, Rainer writes of the commitments to church membership he has in his book, “...these commitments are not easy. In fact, without God’s power they may prove impossible.” 

I so recoiled at that last sentence that I crossed out the words, “may prove” and replaced them, in capital letters with the word, “ARE.” The sentence should read, I believe, “In fact, without God’s power they ARE impossible.”

My source for saying that is Jesus, Who has told all who would do the good to which God calls us, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) 

Without prayer in Jesus’ name and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we cannot believe (1 Corinthians 12:3). 

Nor can we make good on any of the commitments we make as members of Christ’s Church. 

You can find the commitments that we Lutheran Christian church members are asked to make at the top of page 201 in the green hymn books. This is part of the service of Affirmation of Baptism. We commit ourselves to 

• “continue in the covenant God made with [us] in Holy Baptism,...
• live among God’s faithful people,...
• hear [God’s] Word and share in His supper,...
• proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,...
• serve all people, following the example of our Lord Jesus, and...
• strive for justice and peace in all the earth…” 

And when we are asked to make these commitments, knowing that we can keep none of them in our own power, we’re also told to say, “I do [so commit myself], and I ask God to help and guide me.”

In the end, our capacity to live in the community of Christ’s Church and to accept that the Church and our own lives are not about our preferences and desires, we must daily come to God, daily confess our sins, daily receive forgiveness in Jesus’ name, and the power of the Holy Spirit to live more like the disciple Jesus died and rose to make me. 

We must give each day to Jesus if we are to live as God’s people and truly be members of His Church. 

May daily surrender to and trust in Jesus be the lifestyle of this congregation. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Jesus and the 'In' Crowd

[This was shared during the 10:15 worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Mark 9:38-50
The chorus of a song from the ‘60s goes, “I’m in with the ‘in’ crowd/I go where the ‘in’ crowd goes/I’m in with the ‘in’ crowd/And I know what the ‘in’ crowd knows.” We all like feeling that we’re part of an ‘in’ crowd. Everyone wants to feel accepted and valued. But, we human beings are also sinners. And so, our desire to feel accepted and valued by others can (and often is) expressed in sinful ways.

The first followers of Jesus felt valued and accepted as they never had in their lives. The One they confessed to be God’s promised Messiah or Christ, the Anointed King, had called them, taught them, and then, entrusted important work to them. They felt like they were part of the ‘in’ crowd.

And it went to their heads.

Please turn to our gospel lesson, Mark 9:38-50. (Page 580 in the pew Bibles.) It begins with the apostle John opening mouth and inserting his foot. But to understand how badly he does so, we have to consider the events that come right before our lesson.

In Mark 9:1-13, Jesus takes the inner-most group of apostles, Peter, John, and John’s brother, James, to a mountaintop. There, the appearance of Jesus is transformed (or transfigured) and the light of heaven shines from Him. Moses and Elijah from Old Testament times, appear, and a voice from heaven says, “This is My beloved Son. Hear Him!” The lesson is clear. Moses and Elijah were great servants of God. But Jesus is God, with power over sin and death, the power to give forgiveness and new life. John saw and heard all this.

Beginning in Mark 9:14, we see that the first thing Jesus must deal with after coming from the top of the mountain with Peter, James, and John, is a boy with a demon. The boy’s father had asked for the other disciples’ help when Jesus and the trio of apostles had been on the mountain. But they had been impotent in dealing with the evil, reminiscent of God’s people’s inability to remain faithful to God back when Moses had been on Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments about 1500 years earlier. Jesus casts the demon from the boy and explains that the disciples couldn’t do the same thing because they hadn’t prayed and hadn’t fasted, emptying themselves of any dependence but on God. John saw and heard this too.

According to Mark 9:30-32, Jesus predicted His death and resurrection for the second time. But the disciples, including John, didn’t ask Jesus anything about this. Instead, they fell into an argument among themselves about which one of them would be the greatest person in Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus cuts in and tells them: “If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” John saw and heard this too.

But, still intent on drawing bright lines in the sand between Jesus‘ ‘in‘ crowd and the rest of the human riff-raff, John says to Jesus in verse 38: “Teacher, we saw someone who does not follow us casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow us.”

Jesus might have turned to John and said, “Not following us, John? Don’t you mean not following Me?”

And Jesus would have been right to pose that question. After all, John and the other disciples hadn’t been born of a virgin according to Old Testament prophecy. The disciples hadn’t been affirmed by the Holy Spirit at the Jordan River. And no voice from heaven had affirmed that the disciples were God.

A follower of Jesus, like you and me, might tell our unbelieving friends, “I’m not perfect, but like the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:1, I invite you to ‘imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.’” But no follower of Jesus should ever see themselves as an ‘in’ crowd made of them and their buddy, Jesus. Jesus is our Lord, God, Savior, King, Master, and Friend. But Jesus isn’t our buddy. We aren’t and never will be Jesus’ equal.

Sometimes, I think, we twenty-first century Christians turn Jesus into just another buddy or teacher. That’s a mistake. Jesus has not rescinded the words He spoke to Philip, “[The person] who has seen Me has seen the Father.”

What’s ironic about John’s words to Jesus, is that just a few verses earlier, the disciples had been unable to cast a demon from a boy because they didn’t pray and open themselves to the God they knew in Jesus. They had experienced their own powerlessness and need of Jesus. Yet, when they run across a guy who understands Jesus’ power and is casting out demons in Jesus’ name, they don’t tell him, “Good job!” or, “We wish we had faith like that!” They order him to stop because he’s not part of their group!

In verses 39-41, Jesus tells the disciples to back off from forbidding the stranger to do good in Jesus’ name. No one, Jesus says, who sees Jesus’ power over life and death first-hand in this way will be able for long to resist witnessing to the goodness and lordship of Jesus.

In verse 41, Jesus says, that even people who give cups of cold water to followers of Jesus because of Jesus are demonstrating a saving faith in Jesus that will result in eternal rewards. There will be surprises in heaven: People who, without calling attention to themselves or holding positions of visible leadership in the Church, lived lives of daily repentance and renewal, trusting in Jesus Christ alone for life and hope, will be with Christ.

Our job as members of Christ’s Church then, is to repent for our ‘in’ crowd mentality and to invite others to themselves repent of sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ alone. “Join our fellowship of recovering hypocrites,” we should say, “and imitate us as we imitate our Lord Jesus.” You and I are called to not build walls to keep others out, but to build bridges by which they can come to know and follow Jesus.

In the balance of our lesson, Jesus has some tough words for those who think of the Church as an ‘in’ crowd or a community group or a fellowship for “our kind.” That’s why Jesus warns good church-going Christians in verse 42. “Whoever causes one of these little ones [He’s referring to all children of God, no matter what their age] to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea.”

Jesus was telling John and the disciples that if they persisted in their ‘in’ group ways, they would die, losing their connection to Jesus, losing their eternal lives. Folks, it’s a sin to withhold the good news of Jesus Christ from those who need Him as much as you and I do. It’s a form of murder to wall people off from Christ because we never share Him with others. As Rick Warren forcefully puts it: “The church that doesn’t want to grow [that doesn’t want to invite others into Jesus’ kingdom] is telling the world to go to hell.”

Maybe it’s because the very first step for a church to move away from being an ‘in’ crowd toward becoming a bridge to the grace, forgiveness, and new and everlasting life that belongs to all who repent and believe in Jesus Christ, that, starting at verse 43, Jesus gives a series of vivid parables about the need for Christians to get rid of anything in their lives that prevents them from following and trusting in Jesus with complete and joyful dependence.

In verse 43, Jesus says, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better to for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched...” Jesus says similar things in verses 45 and 47 about our hands and feet.

Jesus isn’t literally saying to cut off parts of our body. Our body parts can’t cause us to sin, of course. Jesus says elsewhere that it’s from our hearts that “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witnesses, [and] blasphemies” come.

What Jesus is telling us is that if there are habits of thought, life, or associations that readily entice us to sin, we need to get those things out of our lives. Better, for example, to go without the affirmation and the friendship of life’s in crowds than to carry them like millstones around our necks right into the fires of hell, separated from God or well being for eternity!

So, what do we do in response to Jesus’ words to us today?

First, I think, we need to ask God to help us see the church and our relationship with Christ differently. The New Testament words for church is ekklesia, which means, called out ones. By the grace of God given to all who believe in Jesus Christ, we have been called out of a world dying in its sins to live with God, in the words of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, “in righteousness and purity forever.” And the Church is not to be a self-centered in crowd. We who have been called out of the dying world, are commanded by Jesus to be “fishers of people,” calling others to follow Jesus too. “Go, make disciples of all nations...” Jesus commands us.

Second, we need to regularly repent for how we have seen the church as an in crowd rather than as the body of Christ in this world, each member called to tell others about Jesus in their own ways. The Augsburg Confession reminds us, repentance consists of two parts: “one is contrition...terror smiting the conscience with a knowledge of sin...the other is faith, which is born of the Gospel...[that] believes that sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, comforts the conscience, and delivers it from terror. Then good works, which are fruits of repentance, are bound to follow.”

Third, we need to make a commitment to being witnesses for Christ to others. When we experience the forgiveness, comfort to conscience, and deliverance from the terrors of hell that come to all who repent and believe in Jesus, our task becomes clear. We will want to share Christ with others. We will want to invite others to follow Christ with us as we worship Him, serve in His Name, and study His Word.

There are people you and I know whose lives are unbearable living hells and who face an eternity of the same all because Christians of their acquaintance haven’t gotten over themselves enough to show them simple compassion or to invite them to know Jesus.

Our world is in a world of hurt. Jesus is the answer and the cure.

As we approach Friend Day on November 11, make it your job to let the hurting people you know that the God we know in Jesus Christ wants to be with them now and forever.

Don’t let a day go by without sharing Jesus with somebody in some way. Amen