Not everything in every sermon has to be communicated in words. Words and speech are only a part of the way you get a message across. A part of what you folks receive is not only what you hear, but also what you see. What you see and what you pick up just from being here is certainly a part of the total impression you take away. That's why it's tough to listen to a tape of a speech; if your eye has nothing to do, if you are not able to observe everything else that's happening, the words, the speech are barren. It's hard to concentrate on even the most effective speakers if the eye as well as the ear cannot be involved.
And so it was a number of years ago that in the church where my wife and family and I are members, the pastor, Jack Holt, walked into the pulpit one Sunday morning wearing a bright, glowing, shiny, glitzy red shirt -- a very berry red shirt. And he began his message by telling us that for as many years as he had been preaching he could not remember ever wearing anything but the formal and proper white shirt. Thirty years of white shirts and now suddenly a red, red shirt. Why?
The thrust of message was that it was time for a change, time for things to be done differently, time for a fresh outlook, time for new ways of seeing, new ways of understanding what it is to be church, time for a change. For him, for us in that church, the red shirt signaled that change was coming.
Now as it happened it was not many months after that that this very fine pastor left to take another church. In leaving us he simply said that he felt that his nineteen years at Luther Rice Memorial Baptist Church were more than enough and that it was time for him to make a personal change for the good of the church. I, for one, never did know the full dynamics behind that move, but would suspect that his announcement of impending change in the life of the church was a bit too much for some to take. The red shirt signaled change, yes, but the red shirt also signaled danger. Red is the color of danger, you know; red means stop at the corner, because traffic is coming the other way. Red, to the electrician means "Look out, this wire is hot, this wire is live, this is the one with the juice." Danger. And red signals danger, it creates danger, so I am told in the bullring, where there are rip-snorting animals to be faced.
They use red on fire trucks; it means danger. By the way, I can't stand yellow or white or green fire trucks; it's just not the same..
And so I too have chosen today to wear my sermon as well as to preach it. Although this robe obscures it, I too have a red shirt, a deep red, shiny, glitzy red shirt. And like the shirt sermon preached by my pastor years ago, it says to us all, "Change is coming." Change is coming, because you have called a pastor, a pastor who is humbly grateful for the opportunity set before him, a pastor who genuinely wants to serve you and to make a contribution to the Kingdom of God. But one thing you can be sure of, change is coming.
Do not hear that as a statement of arrogance, do not hear that as an announcement that some sort of iron fist is going to crash down and make things happen, force things to change. No, I'm not saying that; I am simply saying that under God we are arriving together soon at a new place and we will together do things in different ways, because new personalities and new gifts are in the mix. Change is surely coming.
But now we are not to forget that red signals danger. Just as surely as that red shirt that my pastor friend wore signaled not only his desire to change his style of ministry, so also that blazing blouse meant that he entered some dangerous territory. He met some resistance, he put his convictions on the line, he faced down some dangers.
You and I are going to enter some risky times together too. You and I are going to have to take risks together. I've said before that the relationship between pastor and people is like a marriage; sometimes you don't quite have what you thought you had. Sometimes you get home from the honeymoon and settle down to the hard work of making a home and you find out that that one who was the object of your hopes and dreams is not as good at the long hard grind of working together as you supposed. Sometimes you find out that curlers in the morning or five o’clock shadows in the evening are not terribly attractive. But you stick with it, you made a covenant, and you hang in there. It's risky to have a covenant together, but a covenant it is, and you work it out.
So my visible sermon, my red shirt, says change is coming. And its says there's some danger here. But it says more, much more.
I asked you to wear something red today because today is Pentecost Sunday, today is the day on which we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit for the early church. The Book of Acts records that all the believers had gathered to celebrate the Jewish festival of Pentecost, and, as the Scripture says, the Holy Spirit came to them as it were, as tongues of fire on their heads. The fire of the Spirit burned brightly that day and transformed disciples into apostles. The fire of the Spirit burned deep within that day and changed believers into missionaries. The fire of the Spirit … red is the color of the Spirit.
And so today it is not my shirt alone, but your shirts and your blouses, your ties and your dresses, maybe even your socks and your shoes that are red, and by this all of us witness to our awareness of the coming of the Spirit. Now when the Spirit comes, burning into our lives, He brings changes. Red, the color of the Spirit, is the color of change; for the Spirit will not let us remain passive and indifferent, comfortable. He brings change.
And when the Spirit comes, he brings danger, he brings risk. I am absolutely convinced … and the events of the past few days have only served to deepen this conviction … that we as Christians, seeking to follow the Spirit, are called to live risky lives, venturesome lives. He will not make it easy for us, this Holy Spirit. He calls us to riskiness. Red is the color of danger, but red is the color of the Spirit.
And so today we see as well as hear our sermon. What is the thrust of it all? What is it the Spirit would say to us? I guess you've been wondering if I would ever get to the Biblical text this morning. I am afraid I will not spend enough time on it, and it is a rich text; I suspect we will return to it again and again. But I do want to point out, just quickly, a few things about the Spirit and the church.
First, notice that what the Holy Spirit does for the church is to give us the gift of unity. In the midst of all the danger; in the midst of all the change, he gives us the gift of unity. We do not create unity, we do not manufacture unity. Unity is the gift of the Spirit, but we are stewards of it. We are to be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
You see, I take very seriously all these "ones" in this text. I think it is important that we sense the power of this given unity, this oneness that is not made by us. Listen again: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call: one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all."
What is all this saying to us? It is saying that God has already brought us together. God in His Holy Spirit has already brought us together, and He forges our unity around a common experience of Christ, He brings us together around the confession of Christ in our baptism, He calls us to live in loyalty to the one Lord Christ. He does not say, "You are one if you agree with one another in every point of theology; no, you are one already." He does not say, "You are one if you look alike, sound alike, smell alike; no you are one, you are united, because I have given you the gift of unity." And you maintain that unity around a common pilgrimage, a common faith.
I know churches and I know Christians for whom winning battles is more important than maintaining unity. I know plenty of folks who delight in putting down others with whom they disagree; they will rant and rave about the National Council of Churches or they will take off on seminary professors or they will scream about Catholics or Episcopalians or whoever, and for them it seems more important to score points than to maintain unity in the bonds of peace.
I know churches and I know Christians, and you do too, for whom unity, on the other hand, is so fragile and so scary a thing that they will pretend that differences don't exist. Oh, let's don't talk theology, let's don't deal with issues, let’s just have a nice time together in the Lord. But that's an illusion too, because, you see, the gift of the Spirit is a stronger gift than that. The gift of the Spirit, the unity the Spirit gives, can withstand some disagreement. It can live with some give and take; why? Because unity is a gift of the Holy Spirit and all we have to do is to handle it, just as this scripture says, with lowliness and meekness and patience; all we have to do is to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.
I am saying that once we understand that we are God's gifts to one another, then we can deal with anything that comes our way. Red shirts and all, we can handle it. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.
And then, in addition, look at the text again. The unity the spirit gives is based on the variety of gifts He has given us. The Spirit is wise, you see, and he knows that a church in which everybody is alike wou1d be a boring church, a stagnant church, and so He gives us a variety of gifts, but the unity is still there.
Read the text with me, look at the wide variety of gifts: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. And if Paul were writing today, I can well imagine he might say that the Spirit gifts some to be visitors and some to be organizers and some to be servers of meals and some to be planners of programs, and on and on. But listen: the Spirit gifts us all in different ways, why? Just for fun? Just to make life interesting?
No, not really. The spirit gifts us all in different ways for one purpose, we are united in the purpose of it all: to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building the body of Christ. To equip the saints for the work of ministry in order to build the body of Christ.
I tell you today that the unity of this church will be achieved not because we all learn to think alike; I expect that to happen somewhere out beyond Could Nine. The unity of this church will not be achieved because we all do all the same things at the same time; what an ungainly mess it would be in fact if we did. Can you imagine everybody trying to teach at the same time? Can you imagine everybody trying to lead, with nobody left to follow? Can you imagine us all chiefs and no Indians? No way! No, the unity of this church will be achieved when we come to understand our mission, when we come alive to purpose under God, and that is to know Christ and to make him known throughout this community and throughout the world.
His gifts are that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers, some choir members, some financial wizards, some committee members, some this and some that, but his gifts are given so that we may equip one another to do the work of ministry and build the body of Christ.
And so this day, red shirts, we signal change, yes; change is coming. And we signal danger, yes, for there is always a risk when you are faithful. But most of all, we signal that we are going to be the people of the Spirit, we are going to be those who are eager to maintain the unity God has given us. We are going to speak the truth, and when we do we are going to speak the truth in love, and the day will come when this city will say of Takoma Park Baptist Church, "Over there is a household of faith where everybody is different, but they have one mission; over there is a place of worship where there are lots of opinions and lots of ideas and a thousand gifts, but they use these things to build the body of Christ." "Over there," they will say, "they are black and white, and if God grants, brown and yellow, but most of all, they are proud to wear red. Red, for they are a people who know how to change, they are a people who live the adventure of their calling, they are a people in whom burns the very fire of the Spirit." Amen.
