Sunday June 14th, 2009

Being A Sacrificial Community.

This morning, we continue to look at the Baptist Union’s ‘5 Core Values for a Gospel People’ as we consider how we are called to be a sacrificial community.

Let’s get straight to the point: being a sacrificial community means following Jesus in being prepared to accept vulnerability and the necessity of sacrifice, and in seeking to reflect the generous life-giving nature of God. Let’s explore that a little further as we listen to our second reading, which is from Mark’s Gospel, chapter 8, verses 27-38. It may be helpful, as you listen to the words of Jesus, to put yourself in the position of the disciples and allow Jesus to address you directly.

MARK 8:27-38

These are incredibly powerful words, aren’t they? How did it feel to hear Jesus speaking them directly to you? If we really want to know what being a disciple of the Lord Jesus means then we need to look at this text very carefully, because it sets out the way of Jesus in a crystal clear fashion. It addresses three fundamental questions:

first, it tells us who Jesus is;
second, it tells us what being the Christ, the Messiah, really means;
and, third, it tells us what being a disciple of Jesus really means.

So, let’s consider the first question:

Who is Jesus?

Let me set the scene for you a little. This part of the gospel story is set in the area around the town of Caesarea Philippi, on the way to the villages in the foothills of Mount Hermon in the north of the country. As Jesus and his disciples were walking along the route, they would have been able to look southwards, down upon the whole of Galilee, the area in which much of Jesus’ ministry to date has been exercised.

For the first time in what must have seemed like an age, they are alone, with no great crowds clamouring for Jesus’ attention, for His healing touch; and, here, in the peace of the hills, with Galilee in sight, Jesus takes the opportunity to invite His disciples to reflect upon what has happened up to now.

“Who do people say that I am?” he asks them. Their minds must have gone over some pretty amazing episodes: the exorcising of the man in the synagogue who had an evil spirit; the leper whom He made clean; the man with paralysis who was lowered through a roof on a stretcher, but who walked out through the front door; the raising of Jairus’ daughter from death; the blind man who sight was restored; eating with tax collectors and the most awful sinners – the list was endless! And at the scene of each of those events, there were people watching who were trying to make sense of the incredible things they saw:

some had whispered, “He’s John the Baptist come back from the dead!”;

others had said, “Well, Elijah is supposed to return, so this could be him”;

and still others suggested, “What he says is a lot like Isaiah – he must be a prophet!”

But when the disciples tell Him all of this, He immediately challenges them with another, much more personal question: “But who do YOU say I am?” He already knew as well as the disciples what other people were saying about Him, but asking the first question gave Him the way in to asking this more pointed one. I imagine that the disciples must have nervously glance around at each other, wondering who would dare to say it. Then Peter stepped forward, looked Jesus in the eye and said, “You are the Messiah.” And, of course, this was true – the readers of the Gospel have been aware of this from the very beginning – but did the disciples know what being ‘the Messiah’ really meant?

In the next part of the story, Jesus invites the disciples to look beyond the beautiful Galilee that held such warm and wonderful memories, towards the more distant city of Jerusalem that lay somewhere out of sight over the horizon, promising a very different experience for them all.

In verses 31 to 33, Jesus tells the disciples what being the Messiah really means, and the picture He paints of the things that will happen to Him shocks and provokes them, to the point where Peter has the audacity to scold Jesus for suggesting such things. The notion that the Messiah could suffer was a nonsense to Peter, as it was to some in the early Church who thought it impossible that the Son of God could really feel pain.

And perhaps the same thing is still a stumbling block for some people today, who think that, if Jesus really was God’s Son, the Messiah, who had power to heal and raise people from the dead, and who had authority over the elements, how come He couldn’t avoid the suffering and the crucifixion. But Jesus hasn’t got it wrong – it’s Peter and the others who are operating under a misconception: Jesus is simply re-defining what it means to be the ‘Messiah’.

You see, the way of the Messiah is the way of sacrifice: it’s not about having the power to avoid suffering and death; rather, it is about willingly accepting suffering and death in perfect obedience to God, for the salvation, the rescue, of others. Peter’s suggestion that it could be any other way than this is strangely reminiscent of how Satan tried to divert Jesus from His mission during the temptations in the wilderness, and it gets the response from Jesus that it deserves: “Get away from me, Satan!”

This is a lesson for us: we mustn’t fall into the same trap of trying to make Jesus conform to our image of what God’s Son, of what the Messiah should be, but instead we should focus solely upon Jesus Himself and let Him show us!

Back in the text, we see that, in verses 34 to 38, Jesus proceeds to tell the disciples what it actually means to be His follower, and the fact that He calls across the crowd that had again gathered to see Him emphasises that what He says here is not merely a word for those twelve men who had been His constant companions, but is also equally relevant and important to those who, through the ages, would read His words and seek to follow Him, including us here this morning.

What Jesus says is truly shocking: it was shocking for the disciples then and it should be shocking for us, too – if it isn’t, then I don’t think we can have fully understood what it is that He’s telling us:

“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.”

Jesus talks the language of sacrifice, the language of complete self-denial. It’s an instruction to overcome the grasping self that exists for its own satisfaction and to liberate the self that loves God and loves neighbour without counting the cost.

And the cost should be considerable: each Christian must take up his, or her, cross, just as Jesus did, and be a self-giving person through all the days of his, or her, life – many of us may be able to deny self for a set amount of time – an hour, a day, a week, a year even; but Jesus is demanding much more than this ... He’s asking for an entire life-change. Jesus’ kind of self-giving means being prepared to relinquish anything, and everything, through love for God and for neighbour: it means willingly giving of one’s time, money and other resources without hesitation and without complaint.


So, let’s take what we’ve learned from the Bible text and consider how, as a local church fellowship, we might be ...

a sacrificial community

I think the first thing that has to be said is that, to be a sacrificial community, the local church fellowship has to choose Kingdom over Empire - we have to be Kingdom workers rather than Empire builders. And what I mean by that is that, as a church, we have to set aside any other agenda we may have in order to work wholeheartedly for the extension of the Kingdom of God.

You see, there’s a real temptation for any local church to begin building its own little empire, competing with other local churches on the number of projects and the number of people coming through the front door, and thereby to lose sight of its calling to glorify God. You may remember that Jesus Himself faced a similar temptation in the wilderness ...

Then the devil led Jesus up to a high place and quickly showed him all the nations on earth. The devil said, "I will give all this power and glory to you. It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. Just worship me, and you can have it all." Jesus answered, “The Scriptures say: ‘Love the Lord your God and serve only Him.’”

We must resist the temptation to chase after our own glory, our own fame, our own power and serve the Lord our God only. That will mean recognising that we are just a small part of the one Body of Christ and committing ourselves to working with the rest of the Body of Christ, particularly the Body of Christ in Barnstaple. Together, we are much stronger than we are when we are all working in isolation. Together, we can bring the fullness of gospel life to a greater number of people. Together, we can encourage one and another and build each other up, as Paul tells us we should.

That’s why I am excited by the way that Churches Together Barnstaple is shaping up. I sense a real desire and a strong commitment on the part of its member churches to work together for the good of the Kingdom of God. That’s well illustrated by the emergence of the Street Pastors project and the Healing on the Streets initiative that Jerry has told us about this morning. And let’s not forget the excellent turnout from across the churches for the Good Friday act of witness in the High Street, or the way so many churches worked together to make Schools’ Week at Barnstaple Parish Church such a success.

These are really exciting times because we – the churches in the town –
are truly becoming Kingdom workers, rather than Empire builders!

The second significant thing that needs to be said about becoming a sacrificial community is that we need to get alongside and support existing social projects in our neighbourhood – secular as well as Christian – and be prepared to do so quietly and humbly rather than with a blaze of publicity that’s designed to enhance our reputation locally.

Jesus told a parable about a tiny amount of yeast mixed into a huge amount of bread dough, which caused it to rise and produce delicious bread. The yeast did its work silently and invisibly throughout that huge amount of dough – that’s just what the Kingdom of God is like, said Jesus.

When we are working for the Kingdom, we don’t have to have a fanfare of trumpets to draw attention to what we’re doing, we just need to continue to serve God and our neighbours sacrificially. Of course, we are doing what we can to help the residential service next door that’s run by Young Devon and we’re trying to do it in a low-key way – that’s the way it should be.

It’s lovely to receive recognition for what we do in Christ’s name, but we certainly shouldn’t be seeking that recognition – remember how Jesus lambasted the hypocrites who drew attention to their good deeds and prayed publicly on street corners so they’d be the focus of attention: that’s all the reward they’ll get. But those who do good discretely and who pray in private – while they won’t receive great public acclaim – will receive a lasting reward from their heavenly Father.

A third sign of a local church becoming sacrificial community is a willingness to give generously of money, of time, of ourselves – both within and beyond the fellowship – for the extension of God’s Kingdom. That doesn’t mean overstretching ourselves to the point that our health and our relationships are damaged – Jesus certainly doesn’t want that to happen – but it is a call to consider whether there is anything more that God is asking us to give, or to do, in His service.

Our giving must be sacrificial – just as the giving of the church in Macedonia was in the apostle Paul’s time. In 2 Corinthians, chapter 8, Paul writes:

Though they have been going through hard times, their wonderful joy and deep poverty have overflowed in deep generosity. For I can testify that they gave not only what they could afford but far more. And they did it of their own free will.
In this case, Paul was talking about the money they had given for the relief of the church in Jerusalem, where there was a terrible famine; but, in our modern context, it might be more than just money. For example, it could be giving time to a local charity, or offering a friendly ear to someone who desperately needs to talk, or walking alongside someone who has profound problems ... and especially when it’s costly, difficult and even painful. Sacrificial giving is risky, because it means making ourselves vulnerable; and yet, because we do so in the name of Christ for the glory of God, we can completely trust in Him who has graciously created, sustained and redeemed us.

There are many other ways in which we can be a sacrificial community for the sake of God’s Kingdom, but I have run short of time this morning. Please do let me know your thoughts about how we can be a sacrificial community, by leaving a comment on our sermon website – http://www.wordatbbc.blogspot.com/; via email; or by giving me a written note.

Let’s have a conversation about how we can be a prophetic community, an inclusive community, and now a sacrificial community. For, as we do, we will become aware of God’s will for us as a fellowship and that has to be a very good thing.

Amen.