You Need a Hospital, Not a Welcome Center
Good Morning. This morning, we are looking at the idea of what the church is supposed to be. Is it an organization which shows unconditional affirmation to everyone, now matter what they believe or want to do, or is it a people who, despite our weakness, seek to show the world God’s holiness. It can’t do both.
I think I had an idea of how I wanted to preach this the second I read the last verse of our Old Testament lesson. In those days ten men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’
That’s quite a prophecy. Zechariah was preaching to God’s people when they were Rebuilding Jerusalem and the Temple after returning from Captivity. The Temple, like the people, was to be a light of God’s Greatness to the world. They had fallen into captivity when instead of seeking God’s holiness, they sought to look like the World. Warning!!!
Zechariah’s promise begins in John’s Baptism, which is the first sign of this coming true. There you have all kinds of people, Jews, Gentiles, even Roman Soldiers, peoples of many nations, coming to the Jordan and asking this oddly dressed preacher how to find God.
Its clearest fulfillment is on Pentecost Sunday, when Peter preaches a sermon that people from all over the world hear in their own tongue. They are convicted in their hearts of their sin, and beg Peter to teach them how they can know and be made right with God, and are Baptized.
And, of course, It is fulfilled today when Christians share the Gospel, and hearts are moved and people ask us how they can find and follow God. And it is sad when Christians miss this message.
Many times people think they are being loving by giving a message from pulpits, and in books and studies of Affirmation. By that I mean telling people they are ok how they are. “You don’t need to change!” …
… When truthfully we need to confess sin, not just once, but daily.
There is an old saying that the Church is not a Museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners. We are here for healing from our sinful nature, the sin and pollution in our society, and that wants to even infect our church. And when we miss this message, our church dies.
One example of this is the UMC, which followed in the footsteps of the Episcopal Church. Over the past 3 years, it lost over 25% of it’s churches and probably half its members over the issue of Gay Marriage. Their leadership said that people need to accept the idea that the church welcomes and affirms everybody as they are, or get out of the church, which is why so many have gotten out. Catholic Church.
We see in Zechariah, and in John the Baptist, the message of the God’s people, Old and NT is to show people the true, holy and righteous God. So many in the modern church, instead of showing God, just want to show people a happy reflection of themselves.
I know what I look like, and I don’t need to come to church to know what I look like, or to hear someone say that I am fine, healthy, & AOK.
We come here for a doctor to help bind our wounds. We come here for His Word, Preached, and in the Sacrament, which both are meant to feed us what we need to get through the week and heal our souls.
The church itself has some imagery we take for granted which show us how we are a hospital meant for sinners, rather than a meeting place for people who just need to be patted on the back and shown acceptance.
In Mark 1, John, was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Baptism is a symbol of death and new life. The water symbolically covers us picturing dying to the old self, the old life, and we emerge to symbolize being born again. NOTE - In Bible times, the sea was the great enemy of all mankind. The sea symbolized death. People don’t die in the sea today like they did back then, but people back then feared the sea like many today fear airplanes or heights or closed spaces.
Because of this, we miss one of the most wonderful promises of God in Revelation. Chapter 21:1:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
It is a metaphor here, symbolic language, but the idea of there being no sea in the New Heaven and New Earth symbolizes no more death.
Here’s another symbol you may not have noticed. When you look up in most traditional churches, say usually 100 or more years old, you see the arches. They are over the part of the church the congregation sits in which is called the Nave. You know why? It’s an upside-down boat.
Kind of like Noah’s Ark really. Baptism tells us we are sinners in need of new life. The building pictures that we need protection from a world surrounding us which, like the Biblical image of the Sea, seeks to destroy us like the rain did in Noah’s time. The church protects and heals.
And we need healing. Even the most positive person struggles with personal sin, darkness and depression sometimes. We are all sinners. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.
Jesus makes clear he came for sinners when He was confronted about hanging out with the wrong crowd in Luke 5. After calling Matthew the tax collector to be a disciple, and eating at his house:
the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”
God calls sinners, not the righteous. Of course, that means not those who think they are righteousness, because we all fall short. We are all sinners. The Bible doesn’t hide the imperfections of those who followed God there. The men and women God used for His glory in the Old Testament could make up a list of “every kind of impurity.”
In the New Testament, we see the followers of Jesus lose their temper, argue with one another, become jealous of one another, and in general demonstrate all the human frailties that we find in any church.
This is the picture of the church as a hospital. It is a place where people come together to care for one another. We don’t pretend we are sinless, but we don’t pretend our sins are ok either. Instead, we support each other and pray for one another, not celebrating Sin with Pride, but treating it.
Again, Zechariah said, men from the nations of every tongue shall take hold of the robe of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.’
Let us be a people that when they see us, they don’t see a reflection of themselves, but someone who they believe can show them God, and take them to the hospital.
