As some of our youth discovered last week, it is not as easy
as it looks to preside over a worship service. It is not as
easy as it looks, because you have to read signals. You
start to do something, and someone in the back waves at
you. Meanwhile, someone else on the front pew is mouthing
hints, and the printed bulletin says something else. That’s
called “mixed signals”. You get mixed signals because there
are several people out there with agendas they want
honored: one wants to deliver Father’s Day carnations to the
men, another wants to gather the scholarship offering, and
still another is concerned about someone who did not speak
his piece. So pity the poor presider, who must make sense
of all these mixed signals!
But mixed signals in the conduct of a worship service is one
thing; mixed signals in being the church is quite another.
Being unsure what comes next during the hour of gathering
is one issue; being unsure of what it means to be the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ is a much larger issue. This
morning I want to think with you about mixed signals –
whether we have been watching the Lord, or whether we
have instead been pursuing our own agendas. Mixed
signals.
Now mixed signals can be the result of hearing the directions
wrong. Sometimes it’s not what we actually hear, but what
we think we hear, and so that sends us off in the wrong
direction. They tell the story about the little boy who was in a
wedding, and as he came down the aisle, he would take two
steps, stop, cup his hands as if they were claws, and roar!
All the way down the aisle: two steps, claws, roar; two steps,
claws, roar. When he got to the front, the best man asked
what in the world he was doing. His answer made perfect
sense; he said, “I am supposed to be the Ring Bear.” Hey,
there’s not much difference between “bear” and “bearer”, is
there? Enough for a mixed signal!
Or consider the four-year-old who prayed the Lord’s Prayer:
“Forgive us our trash baskets as we forgive those who put
trash in our baskets.” That’s not bad, is it? Or the other
child, in this computer-literate age, who can be forgiven the
way she heard the Lord’s Prayer: “Lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us some E-mail.”
Now, just a moment. This is church. You need to stop all
this laughter. You need to be quiet. Do you know what will
happen to you if you don’t quiet down? One little girl told her
younger brother, who was much too noisy in church, about
the men standing at the back. “See those men? They’re
hushers.”
Mixed signals. Sometimes they are the result of our just not
hearing, clearly. We hear what we think we hear. More
likely, we hear what we want to hear. Sometimes, on the
other hand, mixed signals result from bringing two things
together that make it feel as though something unloving is
intended. Sometimes we send mixed signals as a church
because we don’t see that what we do feels like a putdown.
Like the church bulletin that announced, “Weight Watchers
group meets after worship; please exit through the double
doors.” Or the pastor who intoned, “There will be a meeting
of the low self-esteem support group down in the basement
at the rear of the sanctuary.” Or my personal favorite, since
it actually happened here, several years ago, when the
Christmas bulletin said, “Today the children of the church will
offer a Christmas pageant; everyone is cautiously invited to
attend.”
Great day, if enough of that happens, you just want to close
the service and send everybody home. Brother Hart, maybe
we should stop right now and sing a closing song – probably
that one about the visually challenged forest animal? You
know it, don’t you? “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear”!
Mixed signals. Some of them result from not hearing the
Word of the Lord. And some of them come about because
we get crossways of one another and end up hurting one
another.
Two weeks ago, our Anniversary committee selected as the
theme, “Our God Is An Awesome God”. A wonderful theme.
Except that up here on the organ chamber they posted a
banner, which reads, big as life, “Our God Is An Owesome
God.” Owesome instead of awesome! My first reaction was
to scream and worry about what could be done, at the last
moment. The answer, of course, was that nothing could be
done. There was no time to make a substitute. I decided to
make some light comment about it and let it go. But Edgar
Sheppard, Jr. said, “I think you have a sermon there. Preach
about ‘mixed signals.’” Out of the mouths of babes – mighty
big babe you are, Edgar – that’s what I am doing. Preaching
about mixed signals – and how indeed it is easy for us to mix
our signals, as a church, because we do not hear the Word,
and because we send a message that is less than loving,
and is a putdown.
As a result of a banner that said “owesome” where we
intended it to say “awesome”, I offer this word from the Letter
to the Romans:
“Owe no one anything, except to love one another”
Owe no one anything, except to love one another. Brothers
and sisters, the word on our banner is owesome. And we do
owe some things. We owe some love to one another; we
owe some urgency to ourselves; and, most of all, we owe
some uncompromising loyalty to Jesus Christ.
I
First, we owe some love to one another. That’s where this
text begins. “Owe no one anything, except to love one
another.” If church means anything at all, it means a
fellowship of love. In fact, we have said that our mission as
a congregation is the ministry of reconciliation. That’s a
fancy word for love. Reconciliation.
That mission statement comes from Second Corinthians,
where it says that God was in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself, and has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.
That means we are to be witnesses to a basic truth about
human nature, that we have broken fellowship with God, and
that through Jesus Christ there is a way to reconcile that
brokenness. That’s what the Scripture means, at bottom.
But I am also aware that when that mission statement was
first used, it was during the 1960’s, when racism was the
principal issue, both in the nation and in the church. Those
who selected this as the watchword for our church did so
intending it to mean that we are to be a ministry of
reconciliation across the racial divide.
All of that is good. All of that is right. All of that still applies.
We still have as our principal task the proclamation of the
good news, that God is in Christ reconciling us to Himself.
And we still have as our flagship identity the breadth of the
gospel, that whosoever will may come – not just white folks,
nor just black folks; not just Americans, not just middle class
or educated folks – but whosoever will. None of that has
changed. All of that is important.
But I have come to feel recently that our greatest challenge
is to love one another, right here in the household of God. I
have come to see that the toughest task we have is caring
for one another. If we do not get that right, we send a mixed
signal. The world cannot hear us, because instead it hears
our conflict. The world cannot see our savior, because
instead it perceives our pettiness. The banner says our God
is an owesome God. Yes, we owe some love to other
another.
Not long ago I sat down for a farewell visit with a member
who was moving away. She had invested many years in the
life of this church. I asked her to evaluate for me what had
happened in her spiritual life during those years. She spoke
about how much she had learned and what she had gained
from opportunities for service. But then tears came to her
eyes, as she spoke about painful conflicts that had occurred
some twenty years ago, and how she had never really gotten
past what she had felt during those days. That may sound
extreme to you; it may sound foolish to be holding on to
feelings for twenty years. But I tell you it happens all the
time. The human heart is a delicate thing, and once it is
crushed, it never quite recovers.
Owesome? Yes. We owe some love to one another. We
owe some respect to one another’s views. We owe some
latitude to one another’s failings. We owe some room to one
another, so that there can be growth. We owe something to
one another if we are going to be the church. “Owe no one
anything, except to love one another.”
Not long ago I received a letter, and, among other things, the
writer said that I had failed to visit him while he was in the
hospital. He wondered, not only because of that but also
because of some other things he felt I ought to have done,
whether he even mattered to his pastor. My first instinct was
to be defensive; but my second was to be grateful. The fact
is that I had not known of his hospital stay. But I had to
thank this brother for calling attention to my shortcoming.
Obviously I had sent a mixed signal. And yet, he knew that
he owed me something, didn’t he? He owed me some love,
for it is an act of love to complain when you feel you are
being put down. It is far more an act of love to speak your
mind and open your heart than it is to sulk in the corner and
send out a negative signal.
Brothers and sisters, if we are to be the church, we owe
some love to one another. Our God is an owesome God!
II
But it is also true, that we owe some urgency to ourselves.
The banner says owesome? We owe some urgency to
ourselves. We need to get a healthy anxiety about what we
are doing, and get a move on. Paul says to the Roman
Christians:
“You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to
wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we
became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”
You know what time it is. If Yolanda Sampson were
preaching this morning, she would shout out the name of her
first PuppeTainment video: “What time is it?” There is no
more important question for anyone to ask. What time is it in
your life?
This week in the Vacation Bible School adult class we are
going to study life stages. We are going to follow the
thinking of some theorists in order to arrive at a clearer
understanding of ourselves and of what time it is in our lives.
Consider that a shameless plug for you to participate in
these nightly sessions! You may know how old you are in
years, but you may not know what time it is in your life!
So if we did know what time it is in our lives, what might that
do for us? It might make us get up from our blessed
assurances and accomplish the urgent tasks that are before
us. Brothers and sisters, if we are to be the church of God,
the time is now for us to do what we have been called to do.
The time is now for to achieve what the Lord wants us to do,
without waiting for somebody else to do it.
What do you feel urgent about? One of our members feels
its urgent to do more for our children, and has started a new
project to help our children grow through reading and writing.
She didn’t complain, “Why doesn’t somebody do
something?” She owed some urgency to the children of the
church, and put this project together.
Another of our members has seen the need to reinforce our
scholarship program, and shortly we will have an
announcement to make about that. She thinks she owes
some action now to the young people of our church, and she
is going to make it happen.
Still another person has discovered in himself an urgent call
to move forward to reshape this building and all our
properties. His pen has been busy drawing proposals. We
owe some urgency to the Kingdom; we owe some urgency
to ourselves.
I am convinced, you see, that the Kingdom moves forward
only when Christians feel deep down in their own hearts a
very personal, powerful, direct to get on with their own lives.
They owe something to themselves! Oh, yes, of course,
effective Christians owe something to God. But they also
owe something to themselves, and feel that if they do not
accomplish something significant for the Kingdom, they will
not have been true to themselves.
On Monday of this week an era came to an end. Dr. T. J.
Baltimore, founder and pastor of the People’s Community
Baptist Church, passed away. Many of you heard him
preach, some of you knew him personally. For several of
you, he was your pastor. I remember when he first came to
this area, commissioned to begin a new church in
Montgomery County. T.J. began with a very personal vision
of what this new church ought to be like. You can say it was
a vision from the Lord, and that would be true. You can say
that it was a mandate from American Baptists, and that too
would be correct. But People’s Community Baptist Church
was also the intensely personal, uniquely special vision of
T.J. Baltimore, a vision which he pursued for twenty-five
years with every fiber of his being. He knew who he was, he
knew what time it was in his life, and he owed something to
himself! I believe that this past Monday, Pastor Baltimore
died with not only the Lord’s “well done” in his heart, but with
his own “well done” also. Owesome! He owed some
urgency to himself.
What time is it in your life? Is there something burning down
deep in your heart that must be done for the Kingdom? And
it must be done soon, or else you will wither unfulfilled, the
promise dried up, like a raisin in the sun? “You know what
time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from
sleep .. the night is far gone.”
Our God is an owesome God. Yes, indeed. We owe some
urgency to ourselves.
III
But most of all, we owe some uncompromising loyalty to
Jesus Christ, who is Lord of the church, and who has paid
the price for us and our salvation. Our God is an owesome
God. To Him we owe a debt that can never be paid. The
hymn writer says it, “Jesus paid it all; all to Him I owe. Sin
had left a crimson stain; He washed it white as snow.”
And Paul says it too:
“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh,
to gratify its desires.”
Oh, today, let us become a church whose signals are not
mixed, but are clear. A church whose leaders and members
know where we are going, and why; who have heard this
lively Word in all its richness. A church whose members are
careful that all that we say and do is shaped by love for one
another. A church where we are able to stand up to one
another and confront one another, in love, to make certain
that there be no mixed signals, no confusion, no uncertainty.
Let us, most of all, capture a vision of a church which is
uncompromisingly committed to Jesus Christ as Lord. Let
us love Him with all that we are. Let us bore down deep into
our values and worship Him in spirit and in truth, no longer
worrying about peripheral things. Let’s not focus on when a
worship service gets a little long or a little loud, as long as
somebody is meeting the Lord. Let’s not fret when the
preacher fails to ascend an oratorical Mount Olympus or the
choir owes more to Mozart than to Motown. Let’s be
concerned only that throughout this place, Christ is
preached, and the Bible is taught honestly, and Christian
living is presented lovingly, and we are trained for effective
service out in the world. Let’s not worry about side issues;
let’s forget about ourselves, and concentrate on Him, and
worship Him. For our God is an owesome God; we owe
some loyalty to Christ.
Brothers and sisters, we are not here for ourselves alone.
Mixed signals come when each of us has our own agenda
and we do not know where we are going. We are not
having church just for us to enjoy. We are not giving a tenth
of our incomes just to build up reserves. We are not
investing untold hours in planning and teaching and meeting
just to maintain an organization. We do what we are do
because of Jesus Christ, His cross, His sacrifice, and
because the love of Christ constrains us. We owe some
loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. For there is no other name
under heaven whereby we must be saved.
My message today is for every one here, without exception.
If you lead a committee, commit! If you coordinate a
ministry, pursue it! If you are a teacher, teach with all your
heart. If you are a deacon, deac! If you have a desire to
move forward, then move. Make that call. Ring that
doorbell. Organize that ministry. Join that group. Give that
gift. Don’t wait for “them” to do it. Don’t wait until you have
to say to the Lord, “I’m sorry I didn’t .” For, “ ... drops of grief
can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe; here Lord, I give
myself away. ‘Tis all that I can do.”
The banner is right. Our God is an owesome God. Yes, we
owe some all right. We owe some love to one another. We
owe some urgency to ourselves. And we owe some loyalty
to the Lord Jesus Christ. And I will tell you, with no worry
about mixed signals – that when you live that way, you will
find out, clearly, that our God is also an AWESOME God.
[Pull thread to reveal “Awe” panel at banner].
