Involved Responsibly

Text: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Theme: “Involved Responsibly”
1st Sunday of Advent
November 27, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau

IN THE NAME OF JESUS

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— 6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

A little over eleven hours ago, at the stroke of midnight, the old church year came to a close and a new one began. Thus, we are gathered on the First Sunday of Advent -- “New Year’s Day” for the church year. The decorations are up; the wreath is in the place and the first candle lit; the liturgical color is purple which has the ring of royalty and repentance to it. We are mindful – or ought to be -- of the traditional antiphon for the First Sunday of Advent which comes from Zechariah the prophet. We read, in chapter 9:9b: “See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation.” As such, in the setting of the church year, it’s not about us having our little advents or our “come to Jesus” moments. Rather, it’s about Jesus having “come to us” moments. He does that with His Word – read, proclaimed, and sacramentally enacted. It’s all powered by His Holy Spirit. The best way for this advent to happen is not through social networking but through Lord’s Day worship.

Advent means “coming.” Who is coming? The King who, we are told, is “righteous and having salvation.” That’s a good thing because we are not, in and of ourselves, righteous, and we do not, in and of ourselves, have salvation. The righteousness and salvation have to come from outside of ourselves – in other words, as gifts.

Just what sort of situation, here in 2011, is Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, coming to? Well, the smell of turkey and pumpkin pie, wafting through countless homes on Thursday, gave way to the mania of “Black Friday” with the media report of one frantic shopper/bargain hunter pepper spraying others to keep his or her place in line. More locally, there were reports of Salvation Army kettles being stolen right there in front of the grocery or superstore. Never mind the injunction to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Forget about “Thou shalt not steal.” There is an element out there that thinks that “He who dies with the most toys wins” – and the ends justify the means to accomplish it. It’s even better when you can get a bargain and do it on the cheap.

God isn’t into getting. Everything is God’s to begin with. God, rather, is into giving. St. Paul’s opening remarks to the Corinthian church illustrate this. He thanked God for the “grace given in Jesus Christ” to his brothers and sisters there. He has the audacity to assert that his friends in Corinth were “enriched in every way”. Lest there be any doubt, he makes the startling claim that these Christians do “not lack any spiritual gift” as they wait for the advent of Christ. And, apparently, God is not a “drive-by” giver, something akin to a cosmic Santa Claus, who shows up once a year to deliver goodies at bargain basement prices, and then just as quickly disappears. Rather, God just keeps on giving. The apostle says that God “will keep you firm to the end; God is faithful.”

Lord’s day worship in the church year gets our attention focused, or re-focused, on God the gift-giver! It puts us on the receiving end of His Word and precious sacraments. It strengthens us not like a spiritual narcotic with its subsequent spiritual hangover, but more like a vitamin. Worship in Word and Sacrament – and our own, individual meditation on the Word and Sacrament – gives us the divine nutrients that sustain our lives in Christ. A stanza from one of the great Advent hymns has it entirely right: “For Thou art our Salvation, Lord, our Refuge, and our great Reward. Without Thy grace our souls must fade and wither like a flow’r decayed.”

Following up on the grace and faithfulness of our God, the First Sunday of Advent is prime time to ask ourselves, as a body of believers, what our response will be to God’s faithfulness. On a number of occasions throughout the year and a half I’ve been among you, certain individuals – with inquiring minds! – have asked me what the “requirements” of church membership are. More than once, they’ve asked: “What are the expectations?” I’d like to take my remaining minutes to address these questions.

I’ve heard it said that here in America we are a nation of joiners. We sign up and we suit up for the causes we hold dear, and we become card carrying, flag waving members. I’m not so sure this is completely true anymore. I suspect that our society is trending more toward individualism. I’m getting the idea that people are increasingly skeptical about membership in this or that group because they somehow realize that membership is going to require commitment. And commitment is going to require time. And time is something we just don’t have enough of. Even worse, we might even be asked to serve on a committee!

The thing about time is really pretty simple. The issue does not revolve around having too little of it or too much of it. The last time I checked, we all get the same amount. Instead, it’s a matter of how we prioritize it.

Because we have convinced ourselves that we lead such busy lives, the idea of membership is not greeted with something like universal enthusiasm. We’ll consider membership. But it will be on our terms. We’ll think about what we can get out of membership more than about what we can put in. People aren’t necessarily comfortable with this either; it sounds rather selfish, so the buzzword now is “affiliation” – as in, “No, I’m not formally a member of this group, but I’m kind of loosely ‘affiliated’ with it.”

Return with me to our biblical text, 1 Corinthians 1:3-9. It does not say that God is “loosely affiliated” with us. It says that God is faithful. In fact, when you get right down to it, the “true meaning” of Christmas, if you will, is not that God became “loosely affiliated” with the human race. Quite to the contrary, God joined up! He became part of it. God became one of us “Oh Come, Oh Come Immanuel”, we sing. Immanuel means “God with us”!

Someone says: “Okay, Pastor. This is great! I’m a member of the church; I’ve confessed my faith publicly; I’ve been baptized and confirmed. Good things are happening here at FPC. I’m rip, roarin’, and ready to go! What now? What are the expectations and requirements?”

In that marvelous courtroom scene from A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson says: “You want answers.” Tom Cruise replies: “I think I’m entitled; I want the truth!” Nicholson replies: “You can’t handle the truth!”

The truth about membership, at least in the Presbyterian Church, is that we don’t talk about expectations and requirements for this reason: Expectations and requirements are the language of the Law, and the Law has absolutely no power to strengthen your spiritual life. All the Law does is expose, accuse, and curse. Ultimately, the expectation and requirement of the Law of God is one hundred percent perfection one hundred percent of the time. Earlier in this service, as in every Lord’s day worship, we confessed that we have not met the expectation or fulfilled the requirement of perfection. But then, just moments after that, we heard the startling and amazing news that God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We learned of our sins forgiveness. We heard that the just requirement of the Law was met for us by Jesus Christ who was crucified for our sins and raised again for our justification!

The first part of the truth is that the Presbyterian Church doesn’t talk about expectations and requirements once a person becomes a member. The second part of the truth is that the Presbyterian Church does talk about being involved responsibly in the life of the congregation. With God being the gift giving God that God is, who wouldn’t want to be responsibly involved in God’s mission? This is the real question: what does responsible involvement in a Christian congregation look like?

The Presbyterian Church, in its Book of Order, puts forth a short list of what responsible involvement includes. In a section entitled “Membership as Ministry”, our church declares thus:

A faithful member accepts Christ’s call to be involved responsibly in the ministry of his church. Such involvement includes:
a. proclaiming the good news
b. taking part in the common life and worship of a particular church,
c. praying and studying Scripture and the faith of the Christian Church,
d. supporting the work of the church through the giving of money, time, and talents,
e. participating in the governing responsibilities of the church,
f. demonstrating a new quality of life within and through the church,
g. responding to God’s activity in the world through service to others,
h. living responsibly in the personal, family, vocational, political, cultural,
and social relationships of life,
i. working in the world for peace, justice, freedom, and human fulfillment.

Now, if I look at these components of responsible involvement in the ministry of the Church in a Law way, all it will tell me is that I’ve not been very involved and I’ve not been very responsible.

But we are people of the Gospel! We want to look at these components in a Gospel way. And if we do, we don’t see a list of expectations and requirements. We see, rather, a list of opportunities.

I close with a question: What would motivate you the best – a rule imposed on you that you are required to keep, or an opportunity freely given to you to serve?
Happy New Year to the Church, and a blessed Advent season to us all!

Amen.