Dealing with people is always messy. There is no way you can work with human beings and have everything neat and clean. When you deal with people, you get a mess. They misunderstand, they misinterpret, they make mistakes, they get it wrong. And that’s just on Sundays! The rest of the week is even worse. Mess is just a part of life.
Some of you have been involved in mess-cleaning around this church building in recent weeks. You have removed mildewed hymnals from the basement. You have uncovered long-forgotten pageant costumes tucked in a closet. You have carted to the dumpster boxes of food that is no longer edible to anyone other than Mickey and his friends. You know, Mickey – not Mickey-D but Mickey Mouse! We’ve been dealing with mess in this church building, and it’s a chore to deal with a mess.
But I will tell you in a hot minute it’s a whole lot better than the alternative, because mess means that there is life here. When something is ultra-neat, it suggests that there is no life there. A couple of years ago the trustees of Leland seminary took a tour of a church building we were considering as a place to house our classes. We went through several rooms designed for children. These rooms were clean and bright and airy. Toys were neatly stacked on shelves. Books were carefully placed in bookcases. These were facilities I would have gladly jacked up and moved to the corner of Piney Branch and Aspen. A beautiful suite of children’s rooms, all neat and clean. But do you know why they were so neat and clean? Can you guess why this church had no mess in its children’s rooms? Because they had no children! Because there hadn’t been anybody under the age of forty in that church for years! Children make a mess. People make a mess. So praise the Lord for the mess! When you deal with people, it will always be messy.
The church of the Lord Jesus Christ gladly lives with the mess. We are not sweet and antiseptic. We are not squeaky clean. We are a laboratory of love, learning to love one another through the mess. That’s what fellowship is about. Working with the mess.
You see, sometimes we get our notion of fellowship all wrong. Sometimes we get our idea about church all out of whack. We think the church is supposed to be a perfect place, where everybody lives in some sort of heavenly glow, speaks with “thee” and “thou” language, and never makes any mistake. If you find a church like that, hey, go and join it. You know what will happen then? If you or I join that perfect church, it won’t be perfect any more! I had a friend who was on a church staff. He would gripe and groan and complain about everything from the pastor (he wasn’t a good enough preacher), to the salary (it wasn’t large enough), to the location of his office (it wasn’t prominent enough). Gripe, gripe, gripe, this church is a mess, he used to say. Then one day he told me he was leaving. “I’ve got a call to another church. It’s a perfect church. Not a problem in it. No issues at all. A perfect church.” You know what I thought, but did not say? Oh, I bit my tongue on this one. I so much wanted to say, “Well, John, as soon as you get there, it will be a mess, just like this church.”
So let’s begin this morning by acknowledging that we are a mess. We are a mess because we are alive. Takoma Park Baptist Church is a mess because we work at the business of being church, with real people who have real needs and who are not perfect. But that is not so much an issue as it is an opportunity! That is not so much a problem as it is an occasion for grace. God bless this mess, because in the midst of the mess, we are going to find out something profound about what Christ has done for us.
I want to focus on one word this morning – the word, “especially”. “Especially” This word suggests that there is something extra about the fellowship of faith, something unique about being church. You find the word three times in the New Testament, and I am going to direct your attention to the three passages in which it appears. God bless this mess, especially our very own mess here at Takoma.
I
First, the apostle Paul, writing to the church in Galatia, says, “Whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” This tells us to be intentional and purposeful. This tells us to reach out and do something for one another. It tells us not to live in isolation, but to connect to one another, specific, on purpose.
Do you know anybody who says, “I love everybody”? I have heard people say things like, “Oh, I just love everybody. I don’t have any fights with anyone. I just love everybody.” Well, let me tell you, it’s one thing to love everybody, but it’s another thing entirely to get down and dirty with specific people. I find that when you get specific, it’s not quite like that. The folks who say they love everybody, when you ask them if they will help so-and-so with his problem, will say, “Well, pastor, I’d like to, but not him. Not her. Can’t deal with THOSE people.”
Many of us love the human race, as an abstraction, but find it tough to deal with actual persons. I think it was Lucy in “Peanuts” who once announced, “I love humanity; it’s people I can’t stand.”
But it’s not about whether the other people are nice or not. We already know the answer to that. We already know they are a mess! It’s not about others; it’s about us. It’s about our attitudes. It’s about our hearts. Whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all – especially for the family of faith. Fellowship means intentional care for one another, in the church.
I have a confession to make. I confess I could have been such a great pastor if I hadn’t had to deal with people! I could have written such glowing and eloquent sermons if I hadn’t had to consider the messy people who would be listening! I could have taught such elegant Bible lessons if I hadn’t had to struggle with real people! I could have been such a great ivory tower pastor! But ... years ago I heard the prominent activist, Malcolm Boyd, say that in all his years of pastoring, no one had ever come in to say to him, “Father Boyd, I’m having trouble with the doctrine of the Trinity. I don’t get it about transubstantiation.” No, said Boyd, they come in and say things like, “Pastor, I’m having trouble in my marriage. I’m having trouble with an addiction. I’m having trouble with my job.” Messy people, messy problems, that is what we are called to deal with. Some of us may prefer to mull over abstractions and worry ourselves with how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But Paul won’t have it that way. Paul insists that if you are going to be the Body of Christ, you look for ways to serve one another. You work at finding out how you can help somebody. Opportunity, intentional ministry
Calling up to say, “Do you need me to drive you to your medical appointments?”. Going around the corner to offer, “I’m here to help you with the yard work, since you’ve been sick lately.” Running down to the bus station to pick up a brother who is getting out of the Correctional Institution to take him to a halfway house and then ferry him around for job interviews, not because you condone what he has done, but because, mess and all, he is a brother! He is a part of this body of Christ and the word of the Lord is, “whenever we have an opportunity” – did you hear that word? Not, “whenever we cannot avoid it”. Not, “whenever we just absolutely have to.” And certainly not, “whenever the pastor harangues us about it to where I will do it just to shut him up!” But “whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially – especially – for those of the family of faith.”
Thank you, Paul, for reminding us that we need to be intentional and purposeful and go out of our way to help one another, in this church. That is fellowship. God bless this mess.
II
But now Paul leads us to discover a little more about our special mess when we turn to his First Letter to Timothy. In this passage, Paul is dealing with church policy. Oh, he would feel right at home at Takoma! We love to tinker with policy. We have a Constitution and we have Bylaws. We have policies and we have procedures. It’s all in the book. Not necessarily this Book; that book, the policy manual. We’re in good company, because Paul found it necessary, in the earliest church, to advise them about policy.
So in this passage, Paul speaks about figuring out who is really a widow in need, and how if a needy widow has children or grandchildren, they need to be prompted to help her. The church is not here, says Paul, to take the place of family, but to strengthen family. Discern who needs help, who needs confrontation, and who needs to be budged about their own families. Then here is word, “especially” again: “Whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
What is Paul telling us here? He is arguing that if we are going to be a real fellowship, we must deal with the mess of family life, and we must handle it forthrightly. If we are to be the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to recognize that, of all our responsibilities, we especially have a responsibility to families. We especially need to prompt people how to live in their homes. “Whoever does not provide ... especially for family members, has denied the faith.” That is pretty strong language.
My eye was really caught by that warning. That gets my attention, because I can see that our church has violated that. Let me hone in just quickly on two or three aspects of this thing – “provide especially for family members.”
First, you must help the next pastor provide especially for his own family members. In fact you must encourage all the church’s leadership to take care of their own families, because no one else will do that for them. I have often said that I am glad that my own children were in their early twenties when I first came here. They did not need the same kind of attention young children need. If I had come here with young children, and had worked several nights a week, as Rev. Wilson and Mr. Hart and I do now, I am not sure we could have survived. Friends, rethink your expectations. Rethink the calendar of activities. Back off from the expectation that at least one pastor be present at everything’ and back way, way off feeling hurt if both of us are not present for your thing. Be conscious of the needs of your next pastor’s family, whether that pastor be single or have grown children, or have young children. Help your next pastor to provide especially for his or her own family members.
Second, I want to share a regret with you. My regret is that this church was able to deal effectively with all the family crises that have happened in these past two decades. We have not done what we should have done with family life crisis, especially in the family of faith. We do well enough welcoming infants into the world; we do a creditable job of putting on weddings; and we do a better job than most of saying farewell at the end of life. But we have not successfully intervened to stop divorces. We have not prevented cohabitation or children born outside of marriage. We have not always tempered adolescent rebellion or helped frantic parents with knowledge or gathered senior citizens into safe havens. We have not done for family life all that should have been done. I urge that we keep family life ministry a high priority, and no longer back off because it seems intrusive or expensive. If we do not as a church teach the solitary to live in families, we will have failed. The Bible is very harsh on this point; it says that whoever does not provide ... especially for his family ... has abandoned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. That is not something we want on our conscience.
In repentance myself, and as a statement born out of both conviction and frustration, I urge you to create in this church the ability to intervene in family life, especially in our own church’s families, and to bear witness to Christ’s redeeming power. Praise God for the mess in the home, because that does remind us of our most significant responsibility.
III
But finally Paul has one more “especially” for us, and this one is so powerful, this one is so strategic, that I must not omit it. I must focus on this “especially” with all the passion at my command. For, you see, we can go out of our way to take care of one another, as Paul said in Galatians – whenever we have opportunity, let us do good to one another, especially to the household of faith. And we can work on giving priority attention to family life in our church, as he has told us in First Timothy 5 – provide especially for family members. But I must also say that none of this will matter much, in the long term, unless we get it right about our message of salvation. None of this will matter beyond next month or next year, unless we understand that beyond what we do in service, beyond what we do in strengthening families, we must pay attention to Christ, to His cross, and to what He wants to do for everyone, especially – here it is again – especially through His church.
Let me permit Paul to say it, in First Timothy 4: “To this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” The living God, the Savior of all, especially of those who believe.
Men and women, it is special to be the church of the living Christ. We are not a fraternity, hail fellow well met. That’s not fellowship, that’s a club. We are not just a service organization or a charity; we are not here just to solve today’s problems and hope they don’t pop up again tomorrow. That’s not fellowship either. We are here to redeem lives, we are here to proclaim the Good News, we are here to prepare people for eternity. I cannot improve on how Paul said it, “To this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”
This past Sunday we experienced a wonderful fellowship moment in our worship service. If you were here, you will never forget it. If you missed it, I am sorry for you; it was unique. We witnessed a wife, a daughter, and a grandson standing in for their husband, father, and grandfather, who lies gravely ill in his bed, but who wanted to be enrolled as a member of this church. It was a powerful moment, made even more powerful this past Thursday as several of us gathered around that bedside and performed a private baptism. What was that for, what was that all about? Was that really worth the time and energy of the pastor, two deacons, and a former member?
It was. Eminently it was. Because when life is in a mess, and there are no other alternatives, still there is Christ. When life is a mess, still there is salvation. When life is a mess, still there is eternity. And still there is the church as the family of faith. I believe that this past week we have set this man’ hope and the hope of his family on the living God, the Savior of all people, especially his savior. We are here to be family for one another until death us do part. We are here to proclaim a Savior for all people, especially of those who believe.
Oh, I beg you, keep this fellowship strong. Nurture one another. Care for one another. Pursue one another – there ought not to be scores of people on our rolls whom we never even approach, for though their lives may be in a mess, God bless this mess. Eternity is involved, and we must work with these folks to point them again to their hope in Christ Jesus.
Reach out beyond the comfort zone to embrace children and teenagers, young adults and thirty-somethings – groups with whom we do not at present have the kind of ministry we ought to have. Reach out, not to save the church, but to save their souls. It’s not about building this institution; it’s about building the Kingdom. It’s not about generating statistics look good or paying our bills. Those things will come if we keep the main thing the main thing. We must be a fellowship that seeks to save every special soul that comes our way. Because we have our hope set on the living God, who [wants to be] the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
God bless this mess. God bless the holy mess that is Takoma Park Baptist Church. God bless this mess, for I can assure you that at the cross there was a mess, a horrible mess. I can tell you that at Calvary there was one who flung Himself into the battle, for us and for our salvation, wearing a crown of thorns, permitting His flesh to be torn and His blood to be shed, for us. I can witness that from the tree of His suffering He looked down and felt for them especially. “Father, forgive, for they know not what they do.” I can attest that even in His deepest pain He reached out especially to those whose lives had been a horrendous mess, and said to a repentant thief, “Today you will be with me.” I can remember that at that moment when you would have expected Him to focus only on His own plight, His eyes rested especially on His family, His mother and His beloved friend, and brought them together. O Lord Jesus, this mess, this terrible mess, this mess of blood and seared flesh, this mess of death! Who will deliver us from this body of death?!
We have our hope set on the living God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Especially of the fellowship, the church. Especially us. God bless this mess. Especially.
