While getting ready, both intellectually and spiritually, for a new sermon series we will begin on September 12th, something unexpected happened. And much like a movie that begins with the final scene and then backtracks, let me set that last statement up with a minor confession.
Last Sunday when our youth group led our worship, I thought I would give something a try. I knew the orders of worship were available on the back table. Totally on purpose, I left mine there. Didn't get one. Instead, I just went with it. Instead of looking on the order to see what might come next, I just... well... worshipped.
One of the occupational hazards of being a professional Christian is writing and executing an order of worship. Many Sunday mornings of my life are spent ticking down the list of songs and readings and prayers and tables and sermons making sure everything falls neatly into place without anyone getting hurt.
But since the youth were in charge of the service last Sunday--(and they did great)
But since the youth were in charge of the service last Sunday--(Am I the only one who thinks it's weird to talk about being "in charge" of worship?)
But since the youth were in charge of the service last Sunday, I let go of the habit of management, and as I said, just worshipped.
This is not merely a Sunday morning event, by the way. We preachers can get into routines during the week as well. Let me ease into my point from one other angle.
When I am preparing a sermon series, I am sometimes guilty of the very thing some older preachers warned me about when I was younger and more idealistic. They talked about how we preachers study the Bible so much that occasionally we forget--(actually forget!)--to be recipients of the very promises we proclaim on Sunday mornings. In other words, I preach these amazing things about the promises of God while neglecting to let those promises into my own life. Maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said, "If you have an ear to hear." Because sometimes we don't.
It's getting better, though.
It's getting better.
I am not sure whether it has to do with getting softhearted as I get older, but something is happening. Maybe it has to do with being part of such an incredibly close-knit family congregation. But something is happening. Something unexpected.
And that brings us to the present day.
While getting ready, both intellectually and spiritually, for a new sermon series we will begin on September 12th, something unexpected happened.
The series is called, "The Church as Holy Body." It will take the rich ecclesiology of 1 Peter that is rooted in God's call to holiness in Leviticus and imagine a church with a clear sense of God's mission to announce a message of hope. (Whew! That was a mouthful!)
Where was I?
Oh yeah...
I have been reading 1 Peter, really digging my heels into it. I have been skimming Leviticus 19 and 22. Just treading the water on that one. But I have also been reading a book by Jürgen Moltmann called, Theology of Hope. And it was there, at the feet of this crusty old German theologian, that the unexpected happened.
I read his quote of Calvin followed by Moltmann's own comments:
"'Hope is nothing else than the expectation of those things which faith has believed to have been truly promised by God.' ... Without faith's knowledge of Christ, hope becomes a utopia and remains hanging in the air. But without hope, faith falls to pieces, becomes a fainthearted and ultimately a dead faith. It is through faith that man find the path of true life, but it is only hope that keeps him on that path. Thus it is that faith in Christ gives hope its assurance. Thus it is that hope gives faith in Christ its breadth and leads into life."
Now in the past when I read something like that during sermon preparation I would think, "That would make a good quote." Or I would stroke my beard and ponder introspectively. "Yes, yes, interesting... hmmm." But it did not happen that way this go around. Instead, I found myself deeply moved. Deeply moved.
Churches these days are wrestling with how to communicate the gospel in such a pluralist society. The root of the missional church ideal in Lesslie Newbigin's theology is just now coming to be realized in the United States. But it is here.
It's here.
What if God is calling us to communicate a theology of hope rooted not in the church as corporate institution, but rather as communities of the faithful who know exactly where we place our hope? Hope. Real hope. Hope... not in meeting a yearly budget or composing an ideal staff or cool technological slight of hand... but real hope that reminds us to set our hearts on things above. I know, I know. You gotta have budgets and staffs and meetings. Okay. I get it. I have been around long enough to not be dismissive of such things. But I also know those things have a place in a hierarchy of priorities. And that place is not at the top.
At the top of that hierarchy is articulating a theology of hope rooted in the eternal holiness of the one who is making us into a spiritual house made of living stones. (First Peter reference for your reading pleasure.) The mission of the church is not to be cool or relevant. It is to be holy today, even as God is holy, and to announce a more lasting hope than our mere legacy.
That is why Kierkegaard called hope a "passion for what is possible."
