Before I begin, I do have some instructions for our ushers. Can I get the ushers to help us make sure we are truly ready for this experience?
First, gentlemen, please make sure all the windows are sealed tight. We don’t want any sound to seep out to the outside world.
And then will you please lock all the doors, so that no intruders get in? We don’t want to be discovered, so let’s lock all the doors.
Now, if you will, turn down the sound system, to make sure that not only do my words not get out, but also, just in case someone should voice a word of praise or utter as a syllable of thanksgiving, it would not be heard.
I would ask you to turn down the lights, but we never have too much light in here!
Don’t be alarmed. I am just helping us keep our little secret. If we secure the building, and then maybe hunker down in the pews, no one will ever know our awful secret.
For we do have a secret, you know. There is something of which we are a bit ashamed, and we’d rather not let it out. There is a secret we share, but if we’re just as careful as we’ve always been, our secret will be safe.
We can whisper it in here, however. We can at least acknowledge it inside these closed doors. The secret is .. we’re Christians. We’re Christians; or at least, fellow-travelers. We’ve gone to church today, in secret. Better be careful, lest somebody find out.
Why, if our business associates and fellow workers knew we were Christians, they would expect us to do business in a different way. If our neighbors knew we were Christians, they would expect us to work on community problems. If our tax accountants knew we were Christians, they’d figure out how much our tithes would be. If our fellow students at school even suspected we were Christians, they wouldn’t include us in the drinking parties and the girl watching or boy-baiting sessions. It’s important to keep it a secret that we are Christians.
So let’s rehearse far a moment the techniques we can use to keep the cat from being let out of the bag. Let’s remind ourselves how to keep the secret.
First, even though you may go to church, don’t carry a Bible, unless it is a very small one. If you drive to church, don’t you dare put any of those tacky Jesus bumper stickers on your car. Your secret will be safe.
And then, if it isn’t Sunday, and you are dressing to go out shopping, you want to wear something casual .. whatever you do, do not, do not wear a Takoma Park Baptist Church T-shirt. That just invites attention. If you’re in the grocery store and you see somebody else from the church .. never, never talk about the church, because someone might overhear. Never, never talk about God, Jesus, the Bible, Sunday School. In fact, I guess you’d do better not to say anything at all. Who are you and why are you greeting me?
And then when you get outside and somebody asks you if you can spare a little change, here’s what you do … let’s practice. You look over the other way at anything that catches your eye, and if you must speak, you just say "MMMMMMG". Come on now, let’s practice. Look somewhere, say, "MMMMMMG". You’ve got it! Your secret is still safe; they’ll never guess that you are a Christian.
All right. Are we ready now to continue to be secret Christians? Are we all prepared and equipped to make sure that, as one person has put it, if we were on trial for being Christians, there wouldn’t be enough evidence to convict us?
It’s kind of tough, to tell the truth. It’s not all that easy to be secret Christians, because there is something about the Christian faith that wants to come out. There is something that insists on being expressed. It’s hard to hide.
That something is thanksgiving. That something is gratitude. Because of what God does in our lives, we are dangerously likely to respond with thanks and praise. We are close, all the time, to a shout of joy and a song of praise.
I think that’s why Paul, in the short space of a half dozen verses in the Colossian letter, lets loose with a heart of thanks. Paul can hardly contain his own joy, and he really expects that, try as we might, under certain conditions, we are not going to be able to keep ourselves secret Christians. We are going to spill the beans.
Let’s find out what puts our secret in danger:
Under certain conditions we are going to be so grateful, we are going to be so thankful, that we will not be able to contain our joy or hide our allegiance. There will be no secret Christians.
I
For one thing, when we begin to receive from and give to a redemptive fellowship, our joy will spill over and our secret will out. When we experience the church as a community of care and love, redemption and empowerment, then we are going to be so grateful that it will be impossible to keep it a secret.
"As God’s chosen ones .. clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience .. Bear with one another .. forgive each other .. clothe yourselves with love .. let the peace of Christ rule ... to which you were called in the one body." And after all of this, Paul caps it, “And be thankful”. “Be thankful.
At its best, the Christian church is designed to be redemptive. Its task is to take people who are nobodies and turn them into somebodies. Its work is to bind up the broken-hearted, turn loose the captives, and free the oppressed. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is given the mandate to go into all the world, beginning in its own backyard but then extending everywhere, and bring good news to the impoverished.
But do you know what the best thing about that is? The best thing about that is that everybody needs it and everybody can get it! The great news is that there is no person on earth who is not in some measure broken or bound or captive or oppressed, but everyone can receive the gifts of God. And then those who receive them can then turn around and give them away. That brings joy! That brings praise! That brings thanksgiving, contagious, bubbling over.. and it’s pretty hard to keep that a secret.
I’m saying that when church is what it ought to be, receiving the good news and being the good news I’m saying that when church is what it ought to be, we’re not going to be ashamed of being Christians. We’re not going to want to hide in secret, because we’re going to be so glad of what has happened to us.
Now let me illustrate that negatively. Let me show you the unhappy side of that. I confess to you that there are lots of times when I am not especially pleased to be identified as a Baptist Christian, a Baptist church member. When the newspapers fill up with stories about one of our Baptist bodies and its history of a dozen or more years of politics, jealousy, ignorance, and even racism, I’m not keen on wearing that label. When one of our local Baptist churches gets into a divisive situation and a seminary dean has to comment that Baptists’ favorite way of doing missionary work is to get mad and fight and divide, I want to phone the nearest Episcopal bishop – except that they do it too. They just do it with more dignity!
Recently I got a Visa card from the American Baptist Credit Union; it’s a good deal, low annual fee, some of the profits go to missions. But I presented it to pay for something, and the clerk at the store took a long look at it and then said, "Baptist?! Ewww!" There are times we’d like to stay secret; the story of the church can be embarrassing.
But do you know what? That’s not the whole story. That’s not the whole story. As they say in the hills, "a-feudin’, a-fussin’, and a-fightin’" is not all there is. You and I know that we have experienced, within the body of Christ, the very things that Paul is asking for. We’ve known redemptive love, and we’ve known it because of the church.
Look again at the list: compassion... somebody who when we hurt, sat down and hurt with us; kindness ... people who knew exactly what we were like and what we had done, but who treated us with respect
anyway; forgiveness... great God, where else do they give you second chances and third chances and fourth chances and seventy times seven chances? Who else puts up with our meanness and our arguments? Who else but church folk keep on smiling and keep on hoping and keep on promising good things? Nobody, that’s who! Nobody but the church just keeps on loving the unlovable and forgiving the unforgivable.
I am grateful, aren’t you? Like Paul, I can say, “love ... and peace ... one body... be thankful." Be thankful. And it just comes tumbling out. No secret Christians when you discover what kinds of things they do for you in the body of Christ. When we begin to receive from and give to a redemptive fellowship, our joy will spill over. When we experience the church as a community of care and love, redemption and empowerment, then we are going to be so grateful that it will be impossible to keep it a secret. No secret Christians any more.
II
But there’s something else. There is another condition which makes it hard to keep our Christian commitment secret. There is something else that can happen to us to make us so grateful and so powerfully impressed that, if we are not careful, we are just likely to break out in thanks and praise.
And that is that when we become informed, we are likely to blow our covers. When we become knowledgeable, authentically informed, it’s going to be hard to keep that knowledge secret. We’re going to want to share it. We’re going to feel the need to tell somebody what we know. And doing that feels so good that, if you are not careful, you might even burst into song at just the wrong moment, and then the secret would be out.
Paul makes this point in what I think is an especially telling way: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and ... and.. .[then] ... with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God."
Oh my goodness. We can’t have that, now can we? Men, did you get the sound system? Did you shut the windows? Somebody might learn so much.. and might learn it in such a personal way.. and get so happy they just break into song! Think of that!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. Every commencement speaker in ten thousand graduation addresses has made that point. Knowledge is power. But notice that for the Scriptures, knowledge is personal power, it is interpersonal power. Paul speaks about teaching and admonishing one another. Knowledge, authentic knowledge, is what I learn rubbing elbows with you and batting ideas around with you and most of all having my ideas and my actions challenged by you. That’s exhilarating! That brings excitement! That puts a spring in your step and a song in your heart.
On more than one occasion I’ve gone to visit someone, and we’ve sat down to talk. The conversation turns something like this: "Pastor, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. Two Sundays ago you said..." And then here comes the question, here comes the probing. Sometimes the person I’m visiting will say, "Well, you may be right, but here’s what I think". And we’ll bat that concept back and forth, we may even argue a little. But when that visit is over, I go out of that house exhilarated. I go out of that visit ecstatic. Why?
The principle is right here in this passage: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another .. and then with gratitude sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs!" When we learn in a deep and interpersonal way, it’s hard to contain the excitement! When you know something, not just because you read it in a book, but because you interacted with a live human being, teaching and admonishing, there is a spontaneity and a joy about that knowledge. You have to get excited about that; you have to tell somebody.
No secret Christians. No secret Christians. When we become authentically knowledgeable, it’s going to be hard to keep that knowledge secret. We’re going to want to share it. We’re going to feel the need to tell somebody what we know. And doing that feels so good that, if you are not careful, you might even burst into song at just the wrong moment, and then the secret would be out. No secret Christians.
III
To tell the truth, it really is tough to keep your Christian commitment secret. You’d almost have to live in an isolation booth somewhere, because there is another situation in which it is hard to contain your thanks and praise. There is another circumstance in which the joy of being Christian will give away the secret.
This one is the business of living in the presence and power of Christ Himself. Living conscious of His involvement in every aspect of life. Living aware of His weaving Himself into the warp and woof of your life. When you discover that, as the old song puts it, “He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me I am His own” ... when you find that happening, you are so grateful that it’s difficult to keep it secret.
Paul describes it this way: "And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." .Whatever you do, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God.. "In the name of Jesus" means in the presence and power of Jesus. It means living and acting conscious that He is present in power, He is acting through you. It means knowing Him as a constant companion, as the one who never leaves your side. If you become aware of the constancy of His presence and the power of His person, then, despite yourself, you will find all kinds of reasons to be thankful. And the secret will come out. Whatever you do, do it in the name of Jesus, and you will find a God of surprises, worth shouting about.
A church member went to visit a sick friend in the hospital. His friend was very, very sick, and the church member wasn’t quite sure what he should do or could do, but went because he felt obligated to go. When he arrived, he and the sick friend made small talk, as people will do; they talked about the weather, they commiserated about the hospital food, they laughed about those embarrassing hospital gowns. The church member thought he’d just about fulfilled his obligation, and was getting ready to go, so he asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?", not really expecting an answer.
However, he got an answer. "Pray for me. Will you please pray for me?" Well, suddenly that visitor was very conscious of all the other people around. The other patient in the room; that other patient’s visitors; the orderly who had come in to do a little cleanup; the nurse waiting to take blood pressure. So his muffled reply was, “Sure, sure, I’ll be praying for you right along." But that wasn’t good enough. The patient reached out a bony hand and grasped the visitor and said, "No, I mean now. I want you to pray for me right now." Our visitor, our secret Christian, was caught. No way out of this trap. He was going to have to show his colors.
So there was a quick, mumbled something about, "If it be Thy will..." You know the customary routine. But when the "Amen" was pronounced, the patient blinked his eyes, sat up in bed, and announced, "Hey, I feel better. I do feel better, much better. In fact, I feel like getting out of this bed." And he proceeded to jump up and stride down the hall, testing every joint and flexing every muscle. Healed! Hallelujah!
Well, when our secret Christian visitor pushed his way through the crowd and got in the elevator to go home, there he raised his eyes up to heaven and snarled, "Don’t You EVER, EVER do that to me again!"
Oh, folks, when you live in the presence and power of Christ, the secret will be out. When you do whatever you do in the name of the Lord Jesus, you’d better watch out, because He just may take you over. He is a God of surprises. Your secret will be out. Because of His presence and power, there are no secret Christians.
So, ushers, you may as well unlock the doors. We have to let the secret out. You may as well unseal the windows. The truth will out. You may as well unleash the sound system and brighten the lights, if you can. God’s people are about to tell the truth. No secret Christians.
For we are part of a redemptive fellowship that has given us a new start and a second chance, and we are thankful for that. "What a fellowship, what a joy divine, .. what a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms". .No secret Christians!
And we are learning from each other, we are rubbing shoulders and gaining insights not only from exposure to God’s word but also from exposure to one another. "Oh how sweet to walk in the pilgrim way... Oh how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms." No secret Christians we!
And when it comes right down to it, we are living in the very presence and power of Christ, we are doing things we didn’t know they could do or even wanted to do, because Christ the hope of glory is with us. "What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms. I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms." No secret Christians any more.
Watch out! We just may break out in praise any moment now!
