T – E – A – M
Romans 12:3-8
October 28, 2007
We come today to the third in the series of stewardship messages as we move along toward our Consecration Sunday celebration. Two weeks ago, we talked about our commitment. If you remember, I said that God has made a commitment to us so perhaps it is time that we make a commitment or a recommitment to God.
We talked about the promises you made when you became members of the church. You promised that you would uphold the church with your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service. Last week, we talked about prayer and how important it is to the support of the church.
Today we want to launch into the second on the list of commitments; the commitment to support the church through your presence. In other words, it’s about showing up. It’s about making yourself available for corporate worship and study and fellowship, and yes, even committee work.
At the last church I served, there was one young couple who were both graduates of Indiana University. He was a dentist and she was in charge of corporate accounts at Lake City Bank. They were great folks. But I knew that I could never get hold of them on Saturdays between September and December. Wherever Indiana University was playing football, they were there. That was during the time when IU lost many more games than they won. I would often tease them about throwing money away by going to watch losers, but they were not fair weather fans. Whether it was in rain or shine, in sunny weather or stormy skies, in the heat of September or the cold of late November, they were always in their seats down at Memorial Stadium.
I don’t know who wrote this, but I found a list of reasons why one person quit going to football games. Here are his top ten.
• The band always played songs he didn’t know
• He could stay home and watch the games on television
• He played when he was in Junior High School and disagreed with the way they coach now
• His parents made him go to football games when he was a kid, so he was going to let his own kids decide for themselves
• They were always asking for money when he went to the stadium
• Sometimes you have to stay late because the game goes into overtime
• It was always either too hot or too cold
• People at the game are unfriendly and didn’t speak to him when he went
• They keep changing things. They change the stadium, the uniforms, the plays, and the coaches. He just didn’t like change, so he wasn’t going to go
I don’t know if any of those excuses sound familiar or not, but I’ve heard every single one of them from folks talking about their church participation. Have you ever used one of those to try to justify your own non-participation? Do you know anyone who has?
Let me give you just five reasons why your presence in church is important. Reason number one is strictly utilitarian. From a cost vs. benefit perspective, you live longer when you go to church. So for no other reason than you want to beat the life-expectancy odds, church is a good place to be.
In general, people who attend worship services one or more times each week live about eight years longer than those who never attend religious services. Actuarial studies reveal that people who never attend church live to about 75, while those who attend services at least once a week live to an average age of 83. So, even if it is for selfish reasons, it seems as though church is a good place to be.
The literature also suggests that people who attend religious services are healthier than those who do not. They are less likely to smoke and/or drink excessive amounts of alcohol.
The second reason why your presence is important has to do with the fact that we were created to live in community. As you know, I am fifty-four years old, and still continue to frustrate my parents from time to time. They especially get frustrated with me every summer – although they have pretty much given up – because I never go to family reunions. They don’t seem to understand that we can’t get to the Lovell reunion in Goshen or the Carmer family reunion in Auburn by noon on Sunday. Besides, the way both sides of my family eat, the food is pretty much gone by 12:30 anyway.
But my mom and dad are right in one way. Family is important. If the family is healthy, members will see each other on a regular basis. The same is true of God’s people. That is why God didn’t stop with Adam. We were created to be together, to live and work together, and to worship and serve together.
The first two chapters of Genesis tell the story of creation in two different ways. In chapter one, the Bible says that God created humankind in his image, as male and female (1:27). The story is fleshed out a little more in chapter two. In chapter two, God created the man first. Then he said, “It is not good that the man should be alone…(2:18). God tried to forge a partnership between the man and the animals. But the animal kingdom provided no suitable partner, so God created another human being.
The same thing can be said about our faith. The New Testament knows nothing about solitary Christianity. People often tell me that they can be Christian without going to church. They say that it is not church attendance that makes them a Christian, but I find that sort of dubious. I challenge you to go to the Bible and show me a place in which attendance at worship and other gatherings is not an essential part of being a Christian.
A third reason why God expects us to be in church was set by the example of Jesus himself. The fourth chapter of Luke tells the story of the forty day wilderness experience of Jesus following his baptism. Walking out of the desert after forty days, he traveled immediately to Nazareth, his boyhood home. When he came to Nazareth, it says that he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day…as was his custom.
That is just something he did. It was something that was expected. He knew what his top priority was. He knew that he could do nothing until he was first grounded in worship.
There is a new movement going on out there. Many churches across the country are doing it. They dismiss worship for one week in order that the people can go out and serve their communities in some way. I have not seen the statistics, but I wonder how many folks actually participate in volunteer opportunities on Sunday morning, and how many just use that as an excuse to sleep in late.
Now I am all for service to the least of these in the name of Christ. Of course that is our obligation as Christians and servants of the King of Kings. Last week, I spoke of putting action into our prayers. That is incredibly important.
But an even greater responsibility, in my mind, is worship. That is the standard set by Jesus himself. He walked the length and breadth of the land; healing, casting out demons, teaching and preaching, and raising the dead. But those activities of his never took place during the appointed time for worship. It is in worship where you – if you remember last week’s sermon – offer your adoration, confess your sin, receive affirmation of forgiveness, and then receive your commission to go out into the world.
Worship is all about establishing priorities. I read a story about an incident early in the presidency of James Garfield. One of his staff came to him on one Saturday night and told him that they had scheduled a cabinet meeting for the next morning at 10:30 am. The president told his assistant that he had another commitment at that time, but the advisor was insistent. He wanted to know what could be more important for a new president than a meeting of his entire cabinet.
Garfield said that every Sunday morning, he had an appointment to worship. He said that if his cabinet insisted on meeting, they could begin without him and he would be there as soon as he could.
I don’t think that there is a more important meeting during the week than the meeting we have with God as we worship. If we are too busy to worship, then it seems to me that we are too busy.
A fourth reason for the importance and centrality of being present in worship and other church activities has to do with our baptism. The fact of the matter is that when you were baptized, you were initiated into the family. The introduction of the baptismal liturgy for United Methodists goes like this.
Brothers and sisters in Christ; Through the Sacrament of Baptism, we are initiated into Christ’s holy church. We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through the water and the Spirit. All of this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.
One of the congregational responses to a baptism goes like this.
We give thanks for all that God has already given you and we welcome you in Christian love. As members together with you in the body of Christ and in this congregation of the United Methodist Church, we renew our covenant faithfully to participate in the ministries of the Church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service, that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.
On occasion I talk with people who have given up on the church. Sometimes they say to me that they don’t believe anymore; that they think all of this God stuff is just fairy tales; that God has nothing to do with their lives; that they can get along just fine without God; that they are not going to waste their time.
Then I will ask them if they are baptized. Many times they will answer in the affirmative, at which point I say, “Good luck.” When they ask me what I mean, I say, “Good luck at running away from God. You were baptized. You have become part of the family. You are one of us now. Whether or not you believe it or whether or not you accept it, good luck running away because God doesn’t let go easily.”
Baptism makes you are part of the family. You belong here. The church’s witness is lessened when you are not here. This is just what baptized people do: they participate in the corporate life of the church.
A fifth reason why your presence in church is important has to do with teamwork. Throughout the history of the church, it is true that God has called particular men and women to a life of solitude. Some people through the ages have been called to live a life of contemplative solitude and prayer. And God continues to call a few select people to the hermitage or the desert or another place of solitude. But that is certainly not the norm.
There are several places in the New Testament that use the image of the body to describe Christians. Just as each part of the body has a part to play, so each member of the church has a part to play as well. In fact, when one part is missing, the rest of the body suffers.
Let me remind you what the Apostle Paul says in the book of Romans.
For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another (12-4-5).
There are a number of you in this congregation who remember the Great Depression. Unemployment had risen to about 25%. People were desperate for any sort of work they could find. So about 5,000 people moved to a tent city on the border of Arizona and Nevada where the United States was building a dam. The Hoover dam was at the time, the largest such project in the world. When it was completed in the autumn of 1935, it rose to a height of 725 feet, with a breadth of 1,244 feet, and a thickness of 660 feet. It took 4.4 million yards of concrete, which is enough to pave a highway from California to New York.
Who would have ever thought that one building project would have such lasting benefits? Because people were willing to come together and work for a common goal, they were able to change the entire landscape of the western United States. Not only was the flow of the river controlled so that there was a steady and consistent levels for sustained agriculture, but enough electricity was produced to power Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada. All of this happened because people were willing to put themselves whole heartedly into a common goal.
People wonder all the time why the local church isn’t as effective as it once was. Since I’m a guy, let me offer up a sports analogy. The Colorado Rockies are now playing in the World Series. This is the first time for that franchise and is a really big deal for the city of Denver and the whole Rocky Mountain West. I’m not sure anyone expected them to get this far. You see, unlike the New York Yankees and a few other teams, they didn’t spend a fortune to acquire the best players in baseball. What they did, was learn to play together as a team and use each other’s strengths to build a winning tradition.
And so it has gone throughout human history. Progress has never been made alone. Communities, tribes, civilizations, and empires have been established because human beings have learned that they need each other if they are going to get anything done. The great pyramids would never have been built, the Temple in Jerusalem would still be a dream, the oceans would remain uncrossed, and the moon would remain just a bright light in the night sky, if people had not learned to work together to accomplish necessary tasks.
God has given each one of us a gift or gifts. Those gifts are as varied as teaching, or preaching, or leading a youth group, or serving dinner, or baking pies for the bake sale, our coordinating the acolytes, or counting the offering, or knitting prayer shawls, or visiting shut-ins, or chairing a committee, or singing in the choir, or a thousand other things that go on around here.
Nobody has all the gifts. The pastor doesn’t have them all. The Administrative Council chair doesn’t have them all. The custodian doesn’t have them all. The nursery worker doesn’t have them all. The Girl Scout leader doesn’t have them all. The prayer warrior doesn’t have them all. The sound technician doesn’t have them all. The church secretary doesn’t have them all. The Study Connection volunteer doesn’t have them all.
But as we gather together, all of the gifts are present. All of the gifts are manifested in the gathered community.
Every single member of the family of God is important. That is why our presence is an important part of our stewardship. Our presence is our giving back to God what God has blessed us with in the first place; ourselves.
Our commitment has primed the pump so that we can draw on the river of grace flowing from the throne of God. Our prayer draws on all of that grace, and strength, and power that God offers. And our presence puts us in a community of faith where we have so much to give and so much to receive. We work together as a team. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate your witness when you show up at church to do the work of Christ in our midst.
