Matthew 28:18-20 * Unity Sunday 2009 *
Pastor Leyrer
Dear Friends in Christ,
Here is an interesting thought. Did you know that before the advent of the internet the amount of information in our world doubled every two hundred years? Today in our “internet age” the amount of information doubles every eighteen months. You should also know I got this information from a book originally written in 2008 – which means that eighteen month figure may well be obsolete.
It’s like that amusing-but-insightful television commercial where a number of people begin to just randomly spout off a series of unrelated facts. It’s as if they can’t help themselves; like their brains can’t hold anymore so some of what’s in there simply spills over the side and comes out through their mouths. They’re experiencing what we have come to call “information overload.”
This is the world we live in. A world of information overload. A world in which the average American (supposedly) receives 4200 advertising messages per week. A world of access and options and choices far, far beyond what was available a mere generation ago, and light years beyond the world our grandparents grew up in.
The point: In such a world it is very, very easy to become distracted.
Here is another thought – and one that is of a more personal
nature for us at
If we allow ourselves to reminisce, we’ll recall there have been some pretty significant events in the life of our congregation connected to Unity Sunday. Let’s review…
Our first three Unity Sundays were held in the auditorium at
How quickly He answered our prayers continues to be a testimony to His grace and love, because the very next Unity Sunday, 2002, on the stage of the WLHS auditorium, symbolically using a big plastic tub of earth and with a shovel used for the same purpose in 1957, we broke ground for our new school.
Exactly one year later, Unity Sunday 2003, we gathered for the first time in this gymnasium and celebrated not only Unity Sunday, but the dedication of this building to the glory of God.
The Unity Sundays which followed may not have been as dramatic but they were no less important and sometimes equally noteworthy. Perhaps you remember the first time you heard our Chinese choir and you were struck with the reality of how Jesus Christ is Lord of every, nation, tribe, language and people. Or maybe you noticed how the number of school children grew and grew from one Unity Sunday to the next. Or maybe you remember three streams of people coming to the front last year as we celebrated Lord’s Supper for the first time in this service.
All of which is to say that whether this is your first or
your tenth Unity Sunday, this day reminds us of our blessings as believers in
Jesus Christ – and our particular blessings as members of this local gathering
of God’s people known as St. John’s
But a caution is also in order. When God blesses mightily and visibly – and this is a lesson we find throughout Bible history – God’s people must be on guard of taking those blessings for granted and becoming complacent.
So in a world of information and opportunity let us ask God to preserve us from being distracted. In a congregation marked by great blessings, may God preserve us from complacency. And perhaps the best way to prevent that is by
STAYING CENTERED
on the basic truths of who we are and what God would have us do.
Let’s follow Jesus to a hill in
And we remember why He was there. God had told us, His creatures, to be obedient to Him, but we were not. So Jesus, the eternal Son of God, came down from heaven and did for us what we could not do for ourselves. He lived that perfect life for us as the sinless substitute for mankind. That was step one. We call it Jesus’ active obedience.
Nevertheless, the wages of sin is death. So Jesus took step two. He took upon Himself the punishment our sin deserved. Willingly, voluntarily he suffered the consequences of our disobedience before a just and holy God. On that day, Good Friday, He died in our place. We call that Jesus’ passive obedience.
Three days later, just as He had told His disciples a number of times, He rose from the grave. That was step three. His resurrection was all the proof the world needed that He was who He said He was and that He successfully did what He came to do – to make the world right with God once again. And all who trust in Him as the crucified and risen Savior are saved eternally.
But that was then and now is now. Different hill, different circumstances. He summons His disciples to this hill because He has something important to tell them. Soon the resurrected Jesus will leave them, so He lays out His expectations for those who bear His name and gives His church her marching orders in words we commonly refer to as “the Great Commission.” Then He assures them with a promise they could and would cling to as they carry out their mission.
18Then
Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has
been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the
age."
What is Jesus telling us here? In broad strokes, He is telling us to be about the business of Christian nurture and Christian outreach. He is reminding us that spiritual growth and spiritual life comes only through Word and Sacrament. He is telling us that His Word – every bit of His Word – is important and has the power to change lives, and it is the role of the Church to get that Word out.
When the Risen Jesus speaks these words to us He centers us on who we are – sinners who have been saved by grace through His life, death and resurrection – and He centers us on what we are to be all about – ingesting the message for our selves and then passing it on to others.
Let’s talk about these two concepts: Nurture and outreach. Both of them have to do with us as individuals and as a church.
Nurture has to do with our own personal spiritual maintenance. The encouragement we find throughout Scripture is that each of us has a responsibility to be spiritually growing. Jesus tells us in a simple and straightforward way how this comes about in that beautiful analogy he makes in John chapter 15…
There He says He is the Vine and we are the branches. Just as a branch cannot grow if it is not attached to the life giving vine, so we cannot grow and bear fruit unless we are intimately attached to Jesus through time spent with Him and His Word. It’s really as simple as that.
Next Sunday we begin our regular Fall schedule. If you look at the Spiritual Growth opportunities in the weekly News and Notes you’ll find that in addition to cultivating our own devotional life in whatever personal way each of us sees fit, adult members of St. John’s have at least a half dozen opportunities per week to be involved in some sort of organized Bible study. It is in this back and forth setting of Bible teaching that questions are answered, truths are affirmed and real sustainable growth takes place.
Something else happens as well. A progression begins. Because nurture in the Word leads to outreach with the Word.
Many of us have known the words of the Great Commission for most of our lives. We’ve heard countless sermons on the importance of mission work and spreading the Word. And we believe that. That’s why we support mission work at home and abroad through the offerings we send to our church body. When we band together with other like-minded believers we can go places with the Gospel that as a single congregation we would be unable to do.
At the same time let us never forget that according to the words of Jesus here and other places it is the local gathering of believers that is God’s basic and primary unit for mission work. Which is why we must always be placing an emphasis on outreach within our own congregation. Because reaching out to others with Christ is one of the basic reasons why we exist.
And, of course, outreach has a personal component to it. Yet when it comes to the personal level I believe the whole concept of witnessing and sharing our faith sometimes makes us nervous and a bit unsettled. We may feel unequipped or really not entirely confidant that we can represent – or defend – our faith appropriately.
Well, that’s where nurturing ourselves with the Word comes in. You see, the trick to comfortable-in-our-own-skin evangelism is not necessarily mastering certain truths or techniques; rather it is letting God’s truth master us. As Paul put it: “We believe, therefore we speak…” – comfortably, confidently, and according the opportunities the Lord permits.
Sort of like the story that’s told about a college student who got into spiritual conversations with his Christian roommate. As time went on the Holy Spirit made inroads into his heart and he became a believer. Before he was converted one of his biggest fears, humanly speaking, was that he’d have to talk with others as his roommate had once talked with him. Well, do you know what happened shortly after he came to know Jesus? He went and found some of his friends. And voluntarily shared his faith.
Nurture and outreach. The two go hand in hand. That’s what God’s people are to be about. That’s the center.
But we live in an age of many distractions. Opportunities and options vie for our attention. And we have seen great blessings – so many we’ve almost come to expect them around here and so have to guard against becoming complacent.
That really shouldn’t be a problem. Keep the words of Jesus’ Great Commission in mind and devotion will conquer distraction… commitment will obliterate complacency… and we will gratefully stay centered – to the glory of God, the expansion of His kingdom and the benefit of our own individual souls. Amen.