Ro 15:4-13

9 December 2007

2nd Sunday of Advent

“Great Expectations”

            I started reading an autobiography a week or two ago.  At the rate I’m going, it will take me quite a while.  Lately, I’ve been attempting to get my head around stuff by mathematicians and physicists.  (I do stress “attempting”—and these are books written for people who are non-scientists!)

            But this most recent book is Jürgen Moltmann’s life story, A Broad Place.[1]  I’ve mentioned him from time to time.  He’s one of my heroes—if a theologian can be called a hero!  (I think so!)  He made his mark with a book published in the 1960s, called Theology of Hope.  I’ll be saying more about hope in just a few moments.

            I must admit, though, I sometimes have mixed feelings when I consider people like Moltmann, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Henri Nouwen, or even last weekend’s guest, Phyllis Tickle.  Sometimes I feel humbled, even kind of guilty, when I read books by and about people like Jürgen Moltmann.

            I find myself asking questions like:  what have I done with what I’ve been given?  Am I making the most of my opportunities?  Do I fully redeem the time?  Am I the only one who asks these questions?  Probably not, but that still doesn’t matter.  (Incidentally, by asking these questions, I’m not fishing for a compliment—just in case anyone thinks I’m that desperate!)

            Understand, it’s not like I beat myself up.  I’m not a perfectionist.  I try to allow room for grace.  I understand that Jesus loves me—just as I am.  But it’s precisely because he loves me, because he accepts me, that I know I fall short.  And I also know that he doesn’t want me to stay where I am.

            One day this past week, on the Sacred Space website, there appeared a prayerful reflection on Matthew 15.[2]  It deals with Jesus feeding the multitude.

“You felt compassion, which carries a weight of meaning.  It was more than a warm feeling; it meant that you did something about it.  Save me from warm feelings that are a substitute for effective action.  You did not fetch goodies from the sky like a magician.  You started with what the apostles already had…seven loaves and a few small fish.  Teach me, Lord, to use everything I am given.”

Amazingly enough, this provides a nice segue to our epistle reading in Romans!

Prior to our text, the apostle Paul has been talking about helping each other out in the faith.  Specifically, he speaks of passing judgment on our brothers and sisters.  He refers to “the strong” (to whom he belongs), who say they’re no longer bound by the old rules and regulations.  Paul also speaks of “the weak,” who feel that the others are dismissing something dear and precious.

His conclusion:  “Each of us must please our neighbor for the good purpose of building up the neighbor” (v. 2).  Or as Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts it:  “Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, ‘How can I help?’”

How can I help?  In order for us to carry on our journey of forming Christian community, that’s a question we need to continually ask ourselves.  Church isn’t a spectator sport.  How we answer that question about helping is as varied as there are people.

I mentioned how I’ve started reading Jürgen Moltmann’s autobiography.  Elsewhere, he speaks of a letter he once received from a husband and wife.  After moving to a certain town, they “felt the need to make contact with [their] local church.  We hoped to make new friends,” the letter said.[3]

“When we went to church we heard good sermons, on which the minister had expended a great deal of time and trouble, and which gave us something to think about.  But our hope that we would make real contact with our fellow Christians in the same pew came to nothing.  We left church as solitary as we were when we entered it.”

Does that sound like us?  I don’t think so—I really don’t—but there’s always the temptation to get too comfortable…too settled.  There’s always the temptation to decide that things are cool just the way they are!  Who needs people coming in and messing with the way we do stuff?

I’ve spent some time on all this because it deals with a key aspect of our scripture text, which is creating community.  And not only does it deal with that, it deals with an expectation.  Expectation is a central theme of Advent.  We’re looking at the expectation of hope.  And as I’ve tried to point out in the past, Biblical hope isn’t wishful thinking.  It isn’t a warm fuzzy.  Hope is something we build.  It’s something we build with God.

Our passage is bookended, so to speak, with hope.  Verse 4 tells us that the scriptures are meant to give us hope.  Verse 13 is a benediction:  “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  In the New Jerusalem Bible, that last part reads, “so that in the power of the Holy Spirit you may be rich in hope.”  Hope is something that’s almost tangible.

How do we employ this very solid hope in Christ?  How do we use it to transform a stagnant church into one that is alive and vital?  The apostle says in verse 7, “Welcome one another.”  Welcome one another.  I’m sure you realize that this means more than imitating our old friend, Mr. Glad Hand:  “Hey there!  How ya doin’?”

Paul clarifies his instruction to “welcome one another” by adding, “just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”  Okay, does that clear things up?  If so, please tell me, just how has Christ welcomed us?  It’s been said, “All whom Christ has received [has welcomed] should, without any distinction, be accepted into His Church.”  This means we are “to receive and admit those who differ from [us].”[4]

            Well then, you might say, what does that mean?  If Christ welcomes all, then does that mean anything goes?

            I think we’re getting into something that Phyllis Tickle spoke about last Saturday.  It’s the question of authority.  By that I mean:  how do we orient our lives?  What is our guiding light?  For Paul, love is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge matters, but its danger is pride.  Love has its source in Christ.

            Phyllis Tickle uses a diagram that she’s adapted from other sources, which she calls the Christian rose.[5]  I’ll do her a huge disservice by quickly summing up the way she sees the church.  She’s careful to say that this represents the church in North America.  It would not be helpful for the church worldwide.

            In the top left quadrant is the group known as, for lack of a better term, the “liturgicals.”  In the top right is the mainline Protestant / social justice group.  Presbyterians are located here.  In the bottom right are the evangelicals.  And in the bottom left are the Pentecostals and charismatics.  Each group has listed with it items that especially characterize it.  Obviously, this isn’t the only way one can look at the church, but it’s probably as good as any other.

            She sees the emerging church as coming from all directions toward the middle.  She’s not exactly sure how to describe what that center area is.  No one truly knows what that glorious thing looks like!

            I won’t try to reproduce Phyllis’ presentation; she made so many different points.  Her key theme was that the church is beginning to experience a Great Emergence.  People of all traditions increasingly feel a tension between how the faith has been and how the faith is evolving.  It’s both exciting and alarming.

            When she was looking at different aspects of this, I thought of the quote from our Book of Order which is today’s affirmation of faith.  In part, it states that the “Church of Jesus Christ is the provisional demonstration of what God intends for all of humanity” (G-3.0200).  A key word here is “provisional.”  That means that the church never arrives.  We never completely get our act together!

A dramatic example of this is the recent declaration by Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church that they’ve gotten it wrong.[6]  He admits that they’ve paid too much attention to programs—and too little attention to teaching people to read the Bible for themselves.  They haven’t stressed spiritual disciplines.  All this comes from a church leader who’s not only one of the biggest success stories, numerically, in the whole country, but he’s thirty years into his ministry.  If only our political leaders had the courage to admit their mistakes!

Another part of the quote is that the “Church is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its life” (G-3.0400).  I can assure you:  that wasn’t written by a believer in prosperity theology!  In many parts of the world, members of the body of Christ are literally being killed.  In this country, the fear tends to be that of institutional death, loss of power in society.  Some even felt like this congregation had died when we moved from Jamestown to Lakewood.

I said earlier that one of the central themes of Advent is expectation—specifically, the expectation of hope.  What is the basis of our hope?  What (or who) is it that we’re hoping in?  Do we even dare to hope?  Do we have great expectations?

We all have gifts to serve and to learn more about God.  Last Sunday marked the beginning of the church year.  So in the coming year, how can we use both our strengths and our weaknesses to build this church community for the world?  If we listen to what Paul is telling us in Romans 15, we’ll pay attention to both our strengths and our weaknesses.  Both of them matter!  (I wonder if that includes those who sometimes feel humbled and guilty at the exploits of others.)

Are we each willing to contribute to building hope?  I think what’s more important than an emerging church is an emerging Christ.  If we have that Advent expectation, that rock solid hope of and in Christ, then we’ll find our way to the center with Christ.  To be sure, we’ll continue to stumble around, but we’ll abound in hope by the power of the Spirit.

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