Sermon delivered by Rev. Don Van Antwerpen remotely at Yokohama Union Church on July 17th, 2022
There is a feeling, one that we’re all familiar with, one which we all have experienced - probably one which we all are experiencing now to some degree or another. A feeling which is universal to almost all of us but, despite that universality of experience, it’s also a feeling that we never really want to talk about, a feeling that we all very much want to pretend that we never, ever have experienced.
Desperation.
On its own, desperation is one of the most difficult emotions to struggle with but, when it effects an entire community, it can become downright terrifying. Now, I know the immediate reaction that jumps to mind when we even just hear that word - we don’t want to admit that we’re feeling desperate, don’t want to admit that our hearts have slipped, even for a moment, into that place of abject terror, confusion, and fear.
But, if we’re being honest with ourselves, every church-going person, every church community is, to some degree or another, sitting in places of quiet desperation these days.
We look around ourselves at great and beautiful buildings standing empty 6 out of 7 days of the week, pews sitting unfilled every Sunday morning where once there were children, families, and an entire community of God’s people come together in unified purpose. We look at declining membership numbers, shrinking budgets, and a world that no longer seems to have any use for the church as the center of our social environment. We see the end of everything we know, everything we understand, everything we have experienced for our entire lives as church just looming over that horizon… we see all of that and we get desperate. We get scared.
So we start looking for anything, anyone, any idea that can help us get back on track, to help pull the world back to a place where things make sense again, where everyone comes to worship again, where we’re sitting comfortably at the center of the social, financial, and political reality of our world - the church becoming once again the place where all lines of privilege, power, safety, security intersect. We start looking for a book, a pamphlet, a charismatic leader, a YouTube video - something, some guide, plan, program, trick, or technique that will make things what they used to be.
We get desperate.
Desperate for people. Desperate for money. Desperate for resources.
Desperate for anything that can get us home again, to the shining church on the hill that we remember being once, so long ago.
A number of years ago, I was having a conversation with the head of my church’s leadership team on this exact issue. Now, this guy was absolutely convinced that he had the plan, that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt exactly what had to be done in order to bring the church back to what were, in his words, it’s “glory days.” And while his plan was perhaps well-intentioned, the details of it spoke to an almost cruel intentionality - cutting off any and all benevolences that the church was making to the poorest in the community, and refocusing the church’s efforts and expenses on the richest 10% of the community. To his mind, in order to survive, the church had to focus on those individuals who could best reciprocate; who could provide the “best value” for the church.
Well, one thing about me that does occasionally get me into trouble is that, sometimes, I can be a bit of a firebrand. And, even with the best of intentions, if you’re a church leader advocating for chucking the poor out the window so you can focus your efforts on the rich, you can bet I’m gonna have words. And, being a younger and far less seasoned minister at the time, those words I had were perhaps a bit sharper than they needed to be, so the conversation that he and I had on this topic very quickly turned into an argument. And while I may have been on solid Biblical footing in insisting that it was wildly immoral to abandon the least of these in the hopes of getting more money for the church, I probably wasn’t as kind as I ought to have been. But even still, I was surprised to discover how vehemently this man continued to argue for his objectively a-Christian position.
Finally, after going back and forth for a time, arguing like his life depended upon it, he just gave up and yelled at me, saying “I am the head of this church, so the decision is MINE!”
It wasn’t long after this encounter that this church and I parted ways - I did not yet have the patience or experience to deal with this situation as perhaps I should have - but what stuck with me in the end wasn’t so much the argument itself, the yelling, my own failings, or even the breakdown of what had until that point been an otherwise amicable relationship.
What stuck with me was that he had said, “I am the head of the church,” and the slight but unmistakable desperation that tinged his voice as he said it.
I had been too caught up in the fight at the time to realize of course, but here was a man so afraid of what was coming for the church, so terrified of the change that was coming upon the community, that he had completely forgotten who he was supposed to be listening to in the first place.
One of perhaps the most underrated verses in the entire Bible is Colossians 1:18 “He [that is, Jesus Christ] is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.” To a lot of us, this can seem like a bit of a throwaway line - of course we gotta put Jesus first in stuff, that’s what it means to follow Jesus, right?
But have we ever stopped, really stopped, and taken the time to think about what it means for Christ to be the head of the body, for Christ to be the head of our church? Not the pastor, not the head of the consistory or the council or whatever, not the rich guy sitting seven pews back waiting with checkbook in hand to see if the sermon is to his liking this week or not - not any of them, but Jesus?
What does it really look like when a church steps back, and lets Jesus be at the head of the body?
Though it happened long before the advent of Christ as we know him today, I tend to think that Abraham had the right of it, in his encounter with the Lord near the oaks of Mamre.
Abraham is sitting one day by the entrance of his tent, not doing much, when he spies a couple of travelers nearby. Now, the scripture gives us the helpful leading line to tell us that this is the Lord appearing to Abraham but, crucially, there is no indication that Abraham himself had any idea that these three men were anything other than just…three guys, out for a bit of a wander, who happened to pass by Abraham and his encampment.
That’s it.
(As a fun side-note for those us of us reading the story who know these men are the Lord, it’s worth noting that our Triune God appeared to Abraham as three men, rather than one. It’s a bit of epic foreshadowing of the revelations to come!)
But when Abraham takes notice of these guys, he doesn’t react with hostility or defensiveness, he reacts with hospitality and care. These are three guys walking alone through the hot and dusty desert in the middle of the day - which, as anyone who has ever moved through a desert can tell you, is not a safe time to be walking around! So, seeing these guys just…show up, Abraham immediately calls for water so they can wash their feet, and sets them up under a nice tree to get some shade, figuring that no matter the reason for them walking about during the day, they have got to be tired, thirsty, and hot.
He then goes beyond even that, and gets for them some bread, some milk, and has a servant prepare a whole calf from his flock - which would provide them not only with food in the moment, but something to take with them along the journey as well. And Abraham himself, the patriarch of the clan, sits with them while they relax to keep them company.
At no point, does Abraham even remotely stress about the resource cost - he simply sees people who he perceives as in need, and he takes care of that need as fully, completely, and lovingly as he possibly can.
Now, you might expect Abraham to have some concerns about resources. Not only was Abraham and his “family” moving nomadically through the desert at the time, but in the passage just before this one, God had told Abraham that not only would his son Ishmael give rise to a great nation, but that Abraham and Sarah would bear a son, Isaac, who would give rise to many nations.
Now I don’t know about you, but, as a parent of multiple kids, the first thing that sounds like to me is a whole lot of mouths to feed!
So Abraham, having just gotten all this information, would probably feel inclined to be extra conservative about resources, looking ahead to the future and knowing objectively that the resources he had were not equal to the expenses he was to incur going forward.
Maybe he’d even be feeling a bit…desperate.
So when three freeloaders rock up to his tent fresh off the dusty trail, clearly having wandered in during the hottest part of the day when no sane person would ever be moving about under the sun, it would make perfect sense for Abraham to hold back, and not waste his resources on a handful of guys who clearly weren’t prepared for this in the first place. It would make sense for Abraham to save his milk, his bread, and his meat so that he could entertain guests of prestige, powerful people whose resources and connections could help him grow his small community into the nations that God had promised it would become.
Faced with this choice though, Abraham doesn’t even blink. He throws everything at the three random guys who wandered in out of the heat.
Because they needed it.
You see, this is what listening to God actually looks like in practice. As humans, we want to think that listening to God involves God telling us where to go, and then us doing everything in our power to make the journey happen. But Abraham here takes a very different approach. In the previous chapter, he heard from God directly that he and his family were bound for growth, prosperity, and eventual greatness, but instead of taking that as a command to build that greatness himself, through careful conservation of resources and faithful long-term planning, Abraham took the unalterable truth of God’s promise at face value. Knowing full well that if God has ordained the destination, there’s nothing he could do to knock it off course, Abraham chooses instead to give freely and unreservedly in the moment, rather than holding on tight to save up for an unseen future he’s been promised.
He listens to God, rather than his own fear, and so leaves the future to God and takes the present into his own hands, showing love and hospitality in the moment without reservation.
It’s no accident that the very next passage in Genesis is the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible loves to put things next to each other to establish contrast, to place righteousness and unrighteousness side-by-side so we, the reader, can observe the consequences of both. And while Abraham extends hospitality and care unreservedly, listening to God’s promises and abandoning his perfectly understandable fears and concerns about the future, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah do the opposite. As the prophet Ezekiel said of them, "This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy”
They had everything, but they held on to it. Abraham had little, but he let it go.
One of them listed to God and prospered. The others listened to themselves, to their fears and desires, and they were destroyed.
Listening to God, really listening to God, can be a hard thing to do. And, if we’re being honest, it doesn’t always lead to immediate prosperity either. Abraham didn’t live to see the nations that were raised up from him, Hagar, and Sarah. And in Colossians, we have Paul insisting that the church in Colossae do the same, rejoicing in his own sufferings knowing that what happens to him is irrelevant, so long as the ministry of Christ is fulfilled in him.
One of the real challenges of being a guest preacher is that you don’t really know what things the church you’re speaking to are struggling with. Though I have visited with you all before, I have to admit that I do not know exactly where you are as a community on your journey with Christ. But, from what I can see, I know that this is a time of great transition for YUC, much as it is for many churches in the world today. And I know that, in times like these, it can be awfully tempting to listen to the voices of our own darker natures; voices telling us to hold on tight to what was, to grasp with trembling fingers every red cent that comes through our coffers, to withhold our resources to ensure future security, spending only on those things which promise a suitable return on investment.
But let us not forget who it is that we are meant to listen to.
Let us not forget the unreserved generosity of Abraham, from whom entire nations were made because he listened to God, trusted in God, and abandoned all fear of what might go wrong in the future so that he could pursue what can go right in the present.
Let us not forget the sacrificial love shown by Paul, who even suffering in prison still made sure to remind the churches in Colossae, and beyond, that it was not the leaders of their community calling for conservatism and restraint who were the head of the body, but Christ Jesus who said that “if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give your coat as well, and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”
Times are tough for churches these days, and the truth is that there is nothing we can do to make our future resemble the past. We cannot go back to the way things used to be, we cannot forge a future where these pews are full in the same way they used to be, where all we have to do is build our chapel up on a hill, throw open the doors and watch as people come to us, filling our pews and our offering plates with abundance just because we are the church.
We can’t go back to that because we were never supposed to be like that in the first place.
Abraham doesn’t sit at the entrance of his tent and wait for his suspiciously triune guests to wander up to him. It says right in verse 2, “When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them and bowed down to the ground.”
Paul didn’t build churches throughout the Mediterranean by sitting comfortably in his home in Jerusalem and writing letters to wealthy folk, asking them to donate to the cause. He left his place of comfort, and went to where he was needed, putting himself at risk and even winding up in prison for his efforts.
As Christians, we don’t serve a God who calls us to sit in comfort, quietly placating the wealthy and the powerful so that we can ensure we’ll have enough money to make it through the day. We don’t serve a God who calls us to sit in stone chapels asking the poor, the suffering, the wounded, and the hurting to make their way to us.
We serve a God who insists that we go out, who calls us to go where the need is, and who demands that we show our care not only unreservedly, but to excess.
Because in the end, whether we find that God’s plan is for us to grow again into nations both great and prosperous, or for us to fade into memory while something new and vibrant takes our place at the forefront of God’s ministry on earth, the world will always know that we are Christians by the unreserved nature of our love, by the unrestrained nature of our generosity, and by the uncompromising way in which we listen not to the dark voices of fear and desperation that well up within all of us from time to time, but to that quiet-yet-insistent voice of the Creator who calls out to us with hope, encourages us with love, and who pulls us out from the darkness with the imperative to do justice, love kindness, and listen humbly to our God.
Amen.
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