Sermon from Romans 8:1-11 for April 8, 2018

So…

How alive do you feel?

Some days a bit more, other days a bit less?

Paul seems to think as he writes here to the Romans, that is the community of people who had become followers of the way of Jesus who lived in Rome, that if you belonged to Jesus, you should be more alive than all the folks around you.

So, I want you to turn to someone in a nearby pew and ask them, “Are you more alive than the other people you know?”

One of the consistent criticisms of the church is that we are dead!

That we, as a community of faith, are simply a place where crotchety, old, hypocrites gather to rehearse dead old hymns, dead old ideas, and dead old practices!

And while it would be easy to simply dismiss these criticisms as just a bunch of sour lemons, we would do so at our own peril. These criticisms are an outsider’s view of us, and as such, give us about as honest an appraisal of the church as we are likely to get.

They have seen and/or experienced the church and been hurt by it, left out by it, or been abandoned by it, or have never, ever  been touched by God’s love through any community of faith.

It is not an insider’s view, the view we often take when trying to shape the church. Nor is it the view of those individuals whose interactions with the church have been remarkable, nourishing, and very much alive.

Rather, it is the generic view of folks outside the church who have never had a life changing encounter with the people of God!

And whose fault is that? The correct answer is – ours!

The easy defense would be that they have never come to worship, or have never been part of a small group, or have never been to a church event. But of course, that has everything all backwards and upside down.

The great commandment and the great commission were not given to the world – hey you folks out there, Jesus says you must love each other and become disciples.

No - the great commandment was given to us, the followers of Jesus to love each other and go into all the world and make disciples.

This is really scary stuff! Love, Go, Make!

Because, um; when was the last time you loved some of the goofballs around here!

Some of these people are really hard to love – I’m just saying. They have issues. And love is hard, because loving other people requires you to be self-sacrificial in helping them become holy and whole.

Let me make this as clear as I can: We are to love each other! Oh (insert expletive)! It is not a suggestion! It is not just an opportunity! It is a command! A command given to all of Jesus disciples: you and I; we are to love each other.

And… love is hard, because loving each other requires us to be self-sacrificial in helping others become holy and whole.

And that is only the great commandment. It gets worse!

Because the great commission says, we are to go and make.

I don’t know if you see the problem here, but somehow, someway, we always get this backwards!

They are not supposed to come, we are supposed to go. Go and make disciples. Figure out how to share our life in Jesus with them. Not get them to come here -  but get up out of our comfortability and take our aliveness to communities that need life.

All those folks untouched by the good news of the gospel are not just supposed to wader in, show up here for their introduction to the faith. No. They are to experience the faith out in the world in such a remarkable fashion that they then start looking for more and decide that here is a place more can be found.

A friend last Sunday watched the live presentation of Jesus Christ Superstar, and wondered, if a person decided that they wanted to know about where that story came from and what it meant, where would they think to start looking?

Would any of them think, “…well I could go to a church and ask”? I seems to me that is unlikely!

But they might think, “…you know, Kim and Paul often have little conversations about their faith and about Jesus, I wonder if I could ask them what they thought about the show”?

Out in the world, loving, going, making!

A church I recently read about raised enough money to pay off all the medical bills of everyone in their impoverished community that was facing bankruptcy. Imagine the community conversations about that?

Another opened a second church meeting space next door to a coffeeshop in the center of town. It turns out a lot of church people stop by the coffeeshop and then wander in to the church space and so do a lot of regular town folk. All kinds of conversations start their, including about how to help their neighbors.

If our call is to love and to go and to make, what could we do that would wake up our community to the amazing presence of a loving and caring group of followers of Jesus, right here, right now, who aren’t old, stogy, hypocrites who only sing old hymns, have tired ideas, and do nothing new that interfaces with the world as it really is.

According to Paul, the Holy Spirit makes us alive, alive enough to live out God’s call in our community to the glory of God. Don’t be afraid, we can do this!

For he is risen. He is risen indeed.

Amen.