“The Gospel in Peanuts: The Gospel in Peanuts: The Hound of Heaven” Matt 15: 21-28 Romans 8: 26-39

There is a famous poem by Francis Thompson called “The Hound of Heaven”. The poem, which is striking from its very first line, which starts off by saying “I fled him”, tells the story of one who tried to flee from God, but who was pursued by the relentless love of God. The love that would go anywhere to find us. The love that would not fail and would not give up. 

It is that type of love that our Savior has for each and every person, friends. And it also that love which enables our grief over sin to transform us. It is that love that makes light break into the darkness of our life. It is that love that invites us into a different way of living. 

We are now in our final week of the sermon series of finding Gospel truths around us, specifically in this sermon series in the Peanuts cartoon strip found in many of our newspapers. Often the character in Peanuts that we find doing the most surprising things, is the one who has no spoken lines himself. The ones where we only get to see his actions and sometimes become privy to his thoughts - the hound, Snoopy. 

In one particular cartoon strip, Charlie Brown has fallen flat on his back on the ice and he can’t get up. He starts to bemoan that he was going to be left there forever, until Snoopy comes and starts to push him home. 

When I saw this particular strip I found myself thinking about the absolute love of God. The Love of God that will not leave us alone and that would do so much more for us then we can even begin to grasp in our hearts and minds. 

But it also reminded me in scripture of a story in the Gospels where dogs are mentioned - a scripture that we don’t preach from very often because it sometimes makes us uncomfortable - it sometimes embarrasses us. 

Jesus was traveling, when a Canaanite woman started shouting out a plea that was a prayer, “Show me mercy! My daughter is suffering! Help her!” But oddly Jesus didn’t respond. His disciples took the silence as permission to keep her away from Jesus so they demanded that she be sent away. But she continued, “Help me.” And Jesus continues the oddness of this story by giving a reply that wasn’t characteristic of him at all-  telling her that he didn’t come for her people, but for the lost sheet of Israel. And then he essentially compared this pleading, grieving woman with a dog - telling her that it wouldn’t be good to take the bread intended for the children (i.e. Israel) and give it to the dogs (i.e. her). 

But the woman boldly made the proclamation, “But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall off their masters’ table.” And Jesus finally responded - that her faith had made the child well. 

In this story we don’t see Jesus being the one we know him to be - the one marked by compassion. That hound of heaven pursuing with relentless love. We don’t see him as the one extending the healing hand. Or embracing the lost. At least not at first. 

This particular story is so difficult because it seems to be asking exactly who did Jesus come for. What is the scope of Jesus’s ministry and message? And at first he acts as if this woman isn’t one - she isn’t one that he has come for. Isn’t one who will receive his healing. In fact, if anything he acts like she is an inconvenience - an interruption to his day. He tries to brush her aside with harsh words and she just keeps persisting in prayer. Persisting in the cries for her daughter’s healing. Until finally Jesus offers he exactly what she was asking for - as if saying that now, now the Kingdom of God is for all who desire it within their hearts. 

I think I squirm at this particular passage because it makes me examine my own heart and actions. From time to time do I act like Jesus when he isn’t reaching out in compassion? Do I act like some people are beyond the reach of the Gospel message as if that would be an excuse for my own behavior? Its as if, even when we know that no one beyond the love of the hound of heaven in our heads, our hearts sometimes miss out on that message, and we start to judge who really is worthy of the love of God chasing after them. Who is really worthy of being saved. 

Which brings us to this beautiful passage from Romans. Who will separate us from the love of God? No one. Nothing. We love to boldly proclaim those words, especially when we are struggling, but sometimes our attitudes and actions don’t line up with what we believe. 

Paul is standing with a church who is being persecuted, as a persecuted man himself and is asking - will any of these things weighing us down have the last word over us? By no means. These things - they cannot prevail. Instead hope and faith and love will break through. 

The woman in the gospel of Matthew had hope and faith - she had it even with the circumstances didn’t seem to warrant it. She had it even in the face of harsh words. She had it because she believed with all of her heart that Jesus could change the circumstances for her daughter. 

The apostle Paul puts it this way - Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, or distress, or harassment, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? No. Because we have a hope in things not yet seen. We have hope in the one who has the ultimate strength and who changed the whole story through his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave - Jesus Christ. It is he who we put our hope in. He is the one our faith is rooted in. And he is the one we testify to, no matter what we may face. 

Does that mean that life will not be hard at times? No. Does that mean that we will not face pain and heartache? No. But it means that the hound of heaven, the love of God, will be right there with us. Because nothing can separate us from the love of God. 

We see the relentlessly persistent love of God in Jesus Christ - the one who pursued us even to the point of giving his own life on the cross. The cartoon I talked about earlier? The one where Charlie Brown had fallen and snoopy was helping him? There was another frame where Charlie Brown was complaining about how embarrassed he was. Even though Snoopy was going out of his way to show his love and devotion to Charlie Brown - that wasn’t how Charlie saw it. There was another strip where Snoopy is trying to lick folks, and they kept yelling at him to stop. To which he replies - “they resent me because I’m so devoted”. I think that’s how we unfortunately treat Christ from time to time, even as those who love him. We take for grant it his love of us. We try to push aside the lavishness of his grace, instead of testifying to Christ and the cross. But even then, the love of God does not give us, friends. 

This love of God that pursues us, Paul describes it this way - But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us. I’m convinced that nothing can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death or life, not angels or rulers, not present things or future things, not powers or height or depth, or any other thing that is created. That is how much God loves you Church! Now are you willing to go and share that powerful love with others?

A few months ago my family and I went to see Jesus at Sight and Sound. I talked about one song last week, but there was another that deeply touched my soul. After Jesus healed the man who was possessed by demons, which he put into a heard of pigs who fell into the sea, the disciples each start to sing about how Christ calling them by name changed them - healed them, freed them. And there was a striking line, where one of the disciples essentially says that when we become fearful to go it is because we have forgotten how we have been changed by that call. Because if we would remember we would want to share that with the whole world. 

Friends, if you have been transformed by the love of God, then you want to share it. Not just when it is safe. Not just when it is comfortable. But to everyone who has ears to hear. Now that doesn’t mean our witness will always be received or understood, but it does mean that we along with Paul, are glorying the love of the one who will not let us go. The hound of heaven. Amen. 

“The Gospel in Peanuts: Good Grief” Romans 6: 12-23

Charlie Brown is known for many things, one of which is the phrase “Good Grief!” Often exclaimed when he is frustrated, annoyed, or when things aren’t going his way. It’s an interesting phrase isn’t it “Good grief”. Is there such a thing as good grief or bad grief? And if so, what is the determining factor?

The truth is - we are a culture that doesn’t like to talk about grief in particular. There is a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is telling Charlie Brown that sometimes she gets discouraged, to which Charlie Brown says that life has ups and downs. Then for the next several panels, Lucy cries in a loud voice that she only want the ups of life. In fact she says the Ups and Ups and Ups, while Charlie Brown can’t do anything but shake his head. 

Yet, how true is this particular cartoon in our life? We seem to be a society of niceties - we only want to have brief conversations and only talk about good and uplifting things - yet, we certainly know in our heart of hearts this isn’t how things are. 

A few months ago I took a class called Shared Sorrow: A Faith Community’s Response to Grief and Mourning. Now this class was talking about very particular grief that follows the death of a loved one, but it stirred up with me all the things that I struggle with as a pastor around grief in our culture. Have you noticed that most jobs only give a very limited time off to grieve - as if our grief is regulated to those particular days? Or that you only get bereavement leave for certain types of relationships you have, no matter how deeply you loved that person? Further, because our culture tries to relegate grief is certain time frames and certain places, often we, even as a faith community, can respond in harmful ways, saying things such as “Don’t cry” or “You need to put the past behind you”. 

Grief is hard work. But the type of grief that Charlie Brown is talking about, and the type of grief that we find in Romans chapter 6 - is a different type. Grief over sin. When we are talking about the death of a loved one, grief is the internal thoughts and feelings that we have when someone we love dies, and mourning is the outward expression of that grief. I think those definitions hold up when we are talking about sin as well, brothers and sisters. 

Good grief, in terms of our sin, is that which leas us to confession and a change of heart. In Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, he describes it this way, “Godly sadness produces a changed heart and life that leads to salvation and leaves no regrets, but sorrow under the influence of the world produces death.” Paul is essentially contrasting different types of grief, that which leads to repent, and the grief the world produces which leads only to regrets, or wanting to rewrite the story in our minds, and no real change. 

Once again, it is so hard to separate what Paul is talking about here, from our own culture around the word grief, which often tries to talk about grief only around death, but grief is so much more than that. There is a grief that can be deeply felt around sin in our life, but when we confess that grief and embrace the love of God, we can find new life. 

Paul in his letter to the Romans is essentially asking if our hearts are deeply grieved enough by sin to want to change, to want the new life that Christ offers. Because unchecked, sin can rule over our minds and bodies, in ways that we may not even notice for a while. But we are invited, through the cross, to a place where sin no longer has that hold over us. 

Around Easter time I went with my parents to Sight and Sound to see Jesus. With those of you who are familiar with Sight and Sound they do a wonderful job bringing the Biblical stories to life through songs. They are clear that every detail may not be absolutely Biblical, but open up imagination and heart to receive the Biblical narrative by what they do. 

In the production of Jesus, they had Mary Magedaline sing a song about how she used to be a prostitute, posing that it was her that Jesus saved when the religious leaders wanted to stone a woman caught in the act of adultery. While the details may have been a bit off, the power of the song rang true. Healing came to heart when Jesus rescued her and her life has never been the same since - there is no going back. 

Yet, what Paul is warning of here is that it is so easy to slip back into sin. So easy to be where we were before we met Jesus and Jesus’s grace sank into our heart. I was talking to a Bible Study group about this recently. I think that we ask people to give up such large pieces of their lives when they come to Christ, but as the church, sometimes we fail to support them in this change. We say in baptism liturgies and in membership vows that we will support these folks on their Christian journeys, yet not a week later we act like they are all on their own - that it is just that person and Jesus, and not us surrounding them and supporting them as the family of God. 

Instead, together, we are called to be obedient salves to Christ. Now I am the first to admit that this language can be troubling in Scripture and that scriptures about slavery have been misused in many harmful ways in this country. When you hear the word slave in this passage think of it in the way that Paul intended it, not in the way we have abused it. A slave is one who is loyal, obedient, and a servant of ultimate allegiance to Christ. Paul is essentially saying - has the love of Jesus truly changed your life? Have you experienced that good grief that leads to repentance? You will know by looking at who you serve. 

Because the truth is that we all serve someone or something. And when our hearts our changed we should see a living faith - not just talking the talk, but truly walking the walk. And this is where I think we can sometimes falter church. We want to change, but the temptation to just keep things the way that it is - is so strong. Instead of serving Jesus with all of our lives, we want to do it only when it is convient. Instead of allowing Jesus be the bread of life, we want him just to be the icing or decoration on our cake. Instead of living a life of praise, service, and witness, we want to relegate Jesus to one part of the week. We want to have a Savior who we don’t have to follow, but instead one who blesses what we are already doing, as we worship at the idol of personal independence 

The truth is that the way of Christ is the way of the cross - both his cross, but also the cross that we pick up when we follow him. But instead of seeing that cross as a burden, we are invited to see it as the source of freedom. In fact, a double-fold freedom. The freedom from sin - the freedom from the destruction in life. Freedom from that which you want to leave behind and half-broken habits.  But brothers and sisters, it is also freedom for. Freedom from our sin is the first step, but alone it doesn’t lead to flourishing life. Additionally, we need a freedom for - a freedom that points out the direction in our life moving forward. A freedom to serve and love our Savior. A freedom to follow the call of Christ with our entire being. We call that sanctification - the freedom to grow in holiness. 

Friends, have you experienced that good grief that leads to change in life? That good grief that calls you from being list to being found? Has it lead to a total change in you life that is marked by freedom? Will you not go forth and share? Amen. 

“The Gospel in Peanuts: The Wages of Sin are ‘Agggh’” Romans 6: 1-11

Perhaps what makes Charles Schultz, author of Peanuts, one of the most well known cartoonists of the time, is his ability to see cartoons as allegories. An allegory is a story with deep symbolic meaning. Isn’t that why many of us kept coming back to Peanuts week after week? To be sure, its funny, however, what makes it funny is the fact that we can see ourselves and our world in the characters as they interact with one another. There is a deep spiritual meaning rooted behind the words of the Peanuts children. 

There is a Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown is reading the paper and says to Lucy that the newspaper is reporting that people today don’t believe in any real causes. Lucy responds by going on for three frames about how she, of course, believes in causes. She believes in herself and she is her own cause. 

We see the allegory, right? On the surface, Lucy’s self-centeredness is funny because of how much she drags in out. But it also has some truth that rings through it, does it not?

In spiritual terms, Lucy has made her own self into an idol. As humans, our hearts are often drawn to such idols. In fact, Martin Luther described it in this way, “Whatever then thy heats clings to and relies upon, that is properly thy God”. It’s really similar to the idea we find Jesus teaching throughout the Gospels - if we look for where our treasure is, we will find where our heart is centered. In other words, what is our true, ultimate concern? For Lucy, it was herself. And while we may laugh at her brashness, for how many of us would that be the honest answer as well?

So what makes our hearts be drawn to idols - whatever they may be? Sin. Sin is not a popular word today. Certainly you will find church folks pointing out the sins of others, but how many times in the Church do we talk about our own sin, be it as individuals or as the collective body? As the church, we seem to realize that sin, which we talked about last week, is part of our story, but that doesn’t make us any more prone to talk about it in our own lives. Its always a problem out there, with “those people”, instead of at the root of our own wayward hearts. 

Enter Paul. Paul in the sixth chapter of Romans is writing to a group of people who are struggling with the connection between sin and grace. He begins by asking a really powerful question, that is supposed to be rhetorical, with the answer already obvious, only for some that isn’t the case. Paul asks - should we continue to sin so grace will multiply? By no means!

Friends, grace is also an intrugial part of our story as those who have claimed Christ as Lord and Savior. Grace is the gift of Jesus Christ, freely given to us. Its a gift of freedom and forgiveness. The gift that we see magnified in the cross. Paul wants to boldly proclaim that yes, Jesus came, while we were yet sinners and offered this most precious gift of grace. But we don’t need to continue to sin just so we can continue to receive grace. That’s not how it works. It is grace that has invited us into a new life in Jesus Christ, but the truth is that new life should change us. 

But sometimes we miss that point. Sometimes we miss that Paul wants to cut off any misunderstandings about the connection between sin and grace. Instead, Paul wants to point us to the change that our baptism should signify. We have died to sin! Praise be to God! 

This week I was reading a book about spiritual formation that gave one of the best descriptions of baptism I have ever read. From Brent D. Peterson, “The sacrament of baptism is a communal act of initiation whereby God offers healing and forgiving grace.” Did you catch that church, baptism offers healing. Healing from what? Our sinful nature. Peterson continues “Baptism should not be understood as what ‘God has already done in my life’ - a testimony of God’s past activity - instead it is the entrance into the community of faith, where we celebrate that it is God who continues to bless, heal, and sustain. Baptism is a celebration that a person finds life only by dying to a life of sin and selfishness.”

Because of Christ’s gift of grace, which we celebrate in baptism, who we once where is not who we are. The persistence and power of grace changes our life to the very core. Through baptism, we as Christians are united with Christ, both in his abundant life and in his defeat of death. 

Yet, for so many of us, do we truly claim the power of baptism in our lives? Are our lives transformed because of Jesus? Or do we still allow sin and idols to have dominion over us? Paul keeps talking about needing to be dead to sin - because honestly we don’t get it. Because the truth is church, either we need to be dead to sin, or sin is going to kill us. Maybe not physically. But sin kills our very souls. Thats why we say that the wages of sin are death - both because of what Jesus suffered and the fact that sin kills our souls. We need to experience a spiritual death in order to be brought back to new life in Christ. Being dead to sin in order to be alive to God. 

In baptism we proclaim with all we have and all we are that 1.) our identity is now in Christ Jesus and 2.) as a church we are going to support people on that journey. That we are going to support people who walk with Christ. Not just think about Christ or believe in Christ, though that is certainly important. But we are going to walk with each other on this journey of discipleship. Because what we believe should shape the way that we live. 

Too many folks claim to be dead to their sins, but really their lives are still chalk full of idols that they haven’t even realized. They claim to love Christ, but they don’t want to give up the security of the sin that they hold onto in their lives. 

Where are you today, Church? What is blocking you from maturing in your relationship with Jesus? Maybe you are still dead in your trespasses and have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Today would be a wonderful day to come to him and confess your sins and find that healing balm and forgiveness that is grace. Maybe you’ve accepted Christ but you are still an infant in the faith. You believe in Jesus, but the walk isn’t quite there yet. Maybe speak with another disciple today about how we can support you in your journey. Or maybe you are growing with God, but often your own preferences and expectations have become idols - and as a result, it feels like your stuck. Or maybe you’re on fire for Jesus Christ, but aren’t quite sure what to do with all of that zeal and passion. Would you speak to someone today about that as well? May we be people who stop saying, as Lucy did, that it is all about me, but instead join Paul in proclaiming that it is all about Jesus Christ. 

“The Gospel in Peanuts: “The Whole Trouble”: Original Sin” Romans 7:15-25 Mark 7: 1-8,14-15, 21-23

07/08/18 “The Gospel in Peanuts: “The Whole Trouble”: Original Sin”

The Church of the Resurrection, the largest United Methodist Church in the United States, has a compelling purpose - to build a Christian community where non-religious and nominally religious people are becoming deeply committed Christians. At first it seems like a purpose that we should all have as the Church, right? To reach out to non-religious and people who are seeking to know about Jesus but just aren’t sure yet. But I have to wonder how many of us do this well? How many of us put ourselves in a position to be used by God in a way that deeply connects with people who may not yet speak the Christian language or know much, if anything, about Jesus? How many of us would rather default to making people come to us and speak like us before we share the Good News?

We are now the second week of our sermon series focused on using things in the world around us as a connecting point to share the message of Jesus. In other words how we use things of this world to proclaim the power and glory of God. This year, our sermon series is focusing on the comic strip Peanuts, which ran for over 50 years. Perhaps what makes Peanuts so relatable is that it talked simply and honestly about life. How many of us could connect with at least one character from the comic strip - whether it was Charlie Brown, Linus, or Lucy?

What the creator of Peanuts, Charles Schulz realized was that art could reflect deep truths about life that we aren’t able to always grasp or put words around. Jesus understood this too - its why he told parables. Parables were stories that used common things that people would understand to talk about difficult things. While parables didn’t give easy answers, and in fact often led to more questions, it led people to think deeply about spiritual truths. How many people could look at a mustard seed after Jesus’s teaching and not hear his words about faith echoing through their minds? 

This week we are talking about a word that we hear a lot, but perhaps one that hasn’t sunk in for us yet - sin. There are a lot of definitions of sin, but the one that I keep returning to is missing the mark. In Genesis 3, we find sin entering the human story, as Adam and Eve chose to defy God and eat from the one tree they were forbidden from - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As they ate, their eyes were opened and they ran and hid from God. The result of this choice are long lasting, effecting all of human history.

This teaching about sin is often called original sin - or the belief that Adam and Eve’s choice led to their fall, which has effected all of human history since. In other words, as children of Adam and Eve, we have a bent towards sinning. It seems to be in our human disposition to choose to miss the mark, to choose to stay and hide from God. In our doctrine as United Methodists we put it this way: is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually. A lot of words, that if we summed it up would means that part of being human is having our will bent towards sinning. 

We understand that part about sin, at least in our minds. But often we stop there. We talk about sin as an abstract concept instead of something that deeply effects each of us today. The Apostle Paul puts it this way:  I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. That even though the desire to do good is inside of me - I don’t do it. Sin lives in me. 

Paul is considered one of the greatest teachers of the Christian faith. He planted church after church. He traveled countless miles by foot and by sea for the Lord. He was jailed and beaten for the sake of the Gospel. And even Paul, looks into his own heart and sees a bent towards sinning. For Paul sin isn’t about just committing immoral acts, its about something deep inside of us - the origin of who we are and what we are predisposed to do. Lucy explains this to Linus by saying that the human heart has both hate and love in it that are constantly at war with one another.

No one is exempt from this bent toward sinning. Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is speaking to religious officials, folks who made their lives about the business of God. But somewhere along the way, sin took over even that, as rituals replaced ethics. Before we start wagging our fingers at the Pharisees I think we need to look at our own hearts and actions - why do we do what we do as the Church? What have we misinterpreted as being very important to God, when really it is our human preference? We, too, get trapped by how our faith looks from the outside instead of looking at how our faith asks us to change on the inside. 

Which is of course what Jesus is trying to point out. Faith isn’t just about looking from the outside like we don’t struggle with sin - its trusting God to change us from the inside out. A word that is used in scripture and can sometimes be used today is hypocrites.  Some of the words used to describe hypocrites include liar, pretender, and deceiver. But I don’t think its as sinister as that. Hyporcracy is when we pretend to have it together on the outside, without checking how we are on the inside - which leads to a disconnect. 

For Paul that type of disconnect comes from putting our hope and trust in something other than Christ. For so many during that time it was the law - thinking that one could become righteous simply by following the rules, but the problem is that rules don’t change lives. 

Which is why we need a Savior. Sin is this active power in our lives trying to distance us from God. We are all sinners. We have all fallen short. And it is Christ alone that can restore us. That, friends, should be our hope and what we put our faith in - yet all too often we try to earn grace and forgiveness on our own. Or we talk about how Adam and Eve led us to be this way, without taking time to examine how sin still troubles each of our human hearts.

There is a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy telling Charlie  Brown“you know what the trouble is with you Charlie Brown?” He walks away “That you won’t listen to what the trouble with you is”. Because of sin, we too, don’t listen, brothers and sisters. Our hard hearts become a barrier to accepting Christ. And sometimes we try every conceivable way but Christ to find freedom from sin. We try looking like we have it altogether - but that is just a surface change. We try to earn our way through good deeds - but we can’t rescue ourselves from sin. We try to bring order to our lives as a form of security - but that doesn’t change our being. Only Christ can break the bonds of sin in our lives. 

For Paul, sin wasn’t about breaking rules, even though that is far too often how we talk about it. For Paul, sin was about distorting our relationship with a Holy God. We can sin, not just by what we do (sins of commission), but also by leaving things undone (sins of omission). We are fighting a losing battle against sin, my friends. Which is why we need a Savior. 

Original sin tells us why we do what we do, but the cross tells us that the victory has been won. Original sin is the frustrating part at the center of our being that tries to pull us away from God, but Christ, through his death and resurrection says that it doesn’t need to be this way. Do we have the humility today to accept the gift that Christ has offered and come and confess that we, too, are a sinner in need of grace?

“The Gospel in Peanuts: The Church” 1 Cor. 9: 16-23

On October 2, 1950, a comic strip came out that ran in newspapers for over 50 years. This comic strip was funny, but it also spoke deep truths about life. It was made into TV specials and books as well as a full length feature film. What comic do you think had such a wide impact? If you guessed Charles Schutlz’s Peanuts then you were correct!

How many of us have seen the case of characters from Peanuts appearing in our newspapers and on the TV? When I was little, we used to have a ritual with my dad. After Sunday School and Church we would go to the grocery store to pick up something for lunch and the Sunday papers. I always got to read the comics first, in full color on Sundays, and I had my favorites, including Garfield, Family Circus, and of course Peanut. 

As I look back on Peanuts now, as an adult, I have an even greater appreciation for the humor of Charles Schultz, for it didn’t just get to the punch line, but often in just a few frames could speak deep truths about our faith life, if only we would just look deeper and notice. 

For the past several years in the summer we have engaged in sermon series focused on seeing the Gospel of Christ in the world around us. Why do we need to have sermon series like this? Because I think its important that we have ways to engage the world around us in order to bring out the Gospel truths. More and more, we are finding that the folks around us, didn’t grow up going to church, yet are spiritually seeking. If we can use every day things that they understand, we have an opening to proclaim the Gospel in a way that can sink into hearts and change lives.

That being said, I’ll give the same disclaimer that I feel the need to give every year - we are not saying that Peanuts is the Gospel. Instead we are saying that it is a lens we can use to explain Jesus to folks. 

In some ways, I think we find ourselves asking the same question that the Psalmist raised so long ago in one of my favorite Psalms, 137. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? In some ways the context of the Psalm doesn’t fit us today - for here the Israelites are in Babaloyian captivity. They have been told to sink down their roots because they are going to be here a while. And now it would seem like their captors are mocking them, at the worst, or not understanding their religious songs, at the best, as they ask them to sing those songs. So the Israelites are wondering how they can sing the songs of God when they aren’t in Jerusalem, aren’t in their comfort zone, aren’t in the temple. 

But perhaps that is where we can resonate with the Psalmist today - for in a lot of ways it may feel like we are living in a foreign land. The world around us is rapidly changing. More and more of our neighbors are either leaving church, not going to church, or even more common, simply didn’t grow up in church. They don’t know why this God language that we use has value for their lives when they are simply trying to make enough money to raise their families and keep up with their ever-busy schedules. How can we sing (or share) the gospel truth today, in this type of context? 

It can often feel like we are Charlie Brown in an old strip from Peanuts where he is going around shouting again and again, louder and louder “Believe Me!” With everyone passing him by, until at last he sits down, defeated, head in his hands, saying “I guess no one believes me.” It seemed like no one was listening. No one was connecting with his message. 

Which brings us to our scripture from the Apostle Paul this morning. The Corinthians are sort of being a pain in Paul’s side. He loves them dearly. He invested time in them, setting up their community, teaching them about the ways and mission and ministry of Jesus - then when he left to go on to the next church plant, everything seemed to fall apart. The individual behavior in the community was awful. The way they were treating one another was worse. And now they are starting to doubt what Paul taught them, so he has to write this letter to set them straight. 

Two important things - first Paul has to defend himself as an apostle - a proclaimer of the Gospel. However, while he is speaking about himself, it is also true of all believers. By virtue of our baptisms, we are all called to share the Gospel. All. Robert Short, who has written several books about Peanuts and the Gospels, sums it up this way: “The job of the Christian, in everything he does, is to make down the good new of the victory already won.”

But we have to think about how we proclaim the Gospel. I vividly remember one day in college where I had to walk past a man with a very large sign on an even larger pole that was shouting at all the girls, and only the girls, who walked by that all of the women at my university were going to hell. He didn’t know us. But he thought that was his way of sharing the Gospel. Paul tells us that we not only need to be careful about how we share but also think about why we share - we don’t proclaim the Good News in order to boast about ourselves, we do it because we love Jesus. Because we are obligated to share because we are believers. 

Second, Paul points out that we get the privilege of sharing the Gospel by meeting people where they are at - not just in terms of physical location but also in terms of spirituality. Friends, we have to meet people where they are. I can’t stress that enough. If we start using church-y words that are super familiar to us, but mean nothing to people who haven’t heard them before, we can quickly lose someone’s attention and privilege to speak to them about Christ. Even using what used to be familiar Bible stories, don’t hold as much familiarity. So we begin where people are. 

Where do you meet people in your every day coming and going that gives you the privilege to form relationships? For me, one of my passions in ministry are called Fresh Expressions - going to where you naturally are and discerning if God is stirring up something new there - a new way to talk to people about God. For me, that happens a lot at the YMCA teaching exercise classes, or down at The Painting Broad. A few months ago, I had two ladies that stumbled upon our Paint and Pray there, not realizing what it was, but wanting to engage in the project. By the end, they were asking me to pray for them as they left. Friends, that is meeting people where they are and being open in how we share the Good News. 

Here’s the thing - I am not where you are. I am not always with you as your pastor. So it is on you to share about Jesus with what you do and say at your work places, grocery stores and meetings. Around your kitchen tables and at your kids schools. When we limit to being a Christ follower to Sunday morning, fiends we are missing the mission field, where God is sending us to be in deep, real relationships with folks, and relating to people where they are. Where are you called to meet people and in what ways is God leading you into conversation. 

Brothers and sisters, Jesus came to us as the bodily form of love. We are now called to go and share that love with others. Key word being go. Using the things God has put in front of us is not about making our church the new popular place to be, or making grace cheap, its about inviting people into conversations that matter. Using the language we have been given to reflect the message of grace and beauty to a world that is yearning to hear it. Let us go forth and exist into our purpose church, to raise up disciples and transform our world, all in the name of the one who loves us. Amen.