2nd Corinthians 5:11-21 The Same Here and There

At a Friendly’s Restaurant in Sagamore, Massachuesetts, a couple left a 16 year old a $200 tip on a $12.39 bill, encouraging her to “follow [her] dreams and never give up.”[i] A $500 tip was left for a waitress at a Mimi’s Café on a $39 bill in Fresno California in order to help with her wedding.[ii]    On Mother’s Day, a Raleigh, North Carolina a Waffle House waitress, and single mother of three, received a $1000 tip after serving a 3 am customer a Texas Bacon Patty Melt and coffee.[iii]  All of these were amazing acts of generosity left by gracious customers.  None of the news articles said anything about the faith of those generous benefactors.
On the other hand, there is the story of a pastor who was part of a large party at an Applebee's in the St. Louis area.  When her portion of the bill came, $34.93, it had an 18% tip added (which comes out to $6.29).  The pastor scribbled out the tip, wrote a big “0” in its place and left a note saying, “I give God 10%, why should you get 18%,” and signed her name to the bill, adding “Pastor” in front of her signature. This was wrong in so many ways, the biggest of which is the idea that our tithe is a tip to God for a job well done.
Why share these stories?  Because the contrast between the first three and the last one, is reflective of stories I have heard too often.  It was only a few weeks ago that I was eating in one of my favorite places and was talking with one of the staff members. Our conversation had gone many different directions and somehow ended up on her least favorite day to work. She told me she really disliked working on Sunday's. That kind of statement excites us pastors. I asked her why.  I just knew she was going to say that she disliked working on Sunday's because it made her miss church.  What I thought would be music to my ears suddenly turned into nails down a chalkboard as she said, “the worst customers we have come on Sunday’s, either on their way to, or just after leaving church.”
It was a couple of Christmases ago that I had a conversation with an employee off one of our local “big box” stores. We know that during the Christmas season many of these stores open early.  They run sales that start on Sunday. And for many of their special sales or the most popular items, they advertise that quantities are limited. This person shared with me that she could not get over the number of folks dressed in their Sunday-best who were pressed against the door waiting, pushed and shoved their way in, and if they did not get what they were there for because it sold out, would develop major attitudes, that may or may not have included colorful language.
Does anyone else see the problem here?  The folks either enjoying breakfast or lunch, or doing some Sunday morning Christmas shopping, were either on their way to, or had just left from, church.  We presume that their churches are like ours and they gather each week to praise to God, to hear, or maybe even proclaim, God’s Word, and to be in fellowship with other believers.  Yet, outside of worship, when they would move from here to there, they were a completely different person, sometimes with language that didn't praise God, but used God’s Name in vain, even calling down God’s curses upon a person or situation—some of their attitudes and actions reflecting “do unto others before they do unto you” rather than “love your neighbor as yourself”[iv] or instead of showing an understanding “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”[v] they act out “I will be first and no one will be before me,” or instead of mirroring the attitude of Jesus who “came not to be served, but to serve,”[vi] they demand “serve me now!”
It is no wonder that one of the top reasons that people say that they do not go to church is that it is full of hypocrites.  I used to think that was simply a cop out, but, my brothers and sisters, the reality of it is true.  If we are a different person out there than we are in here, we can't simply way we are all sinners, that becomes our cop-out, to cover the fact that we are hypocrites, we're not truly who we are claiming to be, that we're not truly who we are supposed to be.
James, often thought to be the brother of Jesus knew this concern when he talked about how dangerous the tongue is: 
“…no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.”[vii]
James is reminding his readers that their mouths ought not to be used for both praising God and cursing their neighbor.  James would say that the person who comes to church and worships God and then curse the person that cut in line at the K&W has a faith problem—that their relationship with Jesus is not where it should be, and that their praises of God are tainted by their attitude and language outside of worship.  In other words, their attitude and behavior out there discolor what they do in here.
My brothers and sisters, Paul tells us that once we come into a relationship with Christ, once we have surrendered our lives to God’s control, we are changed: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!”  This happens, Paul says, because God reconciles himself with us, God brings us into a relationship with Him through Christ, and sets before us the same task that He gave His Son.  We have been given the ministry of reconciliation.  We are supposed to be about bringing others into a relationship with God through Christ, we have been given the task of reconciling the world to God.  Pauls says, “we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us….”  Paul reminds the church in Corinth and reminds us that we are called to represent Christ to the world.  Paul reminds us that our primary work for God is not gathering here, our primary work is out in the world.  It is not enough to be Christ-like when we gather with one another for worship.  Our time of transformation in worship should result in lives that are transformed as we go out the doors into the world.
When folks see us, they should see lives that have been transformed by our relationship with Christ, that they might be called into that same relationship.  That means that our lives out there, should be the same as our lives in here.  As ambassadors for Christ, we stand as His representatives towards all we meet.  In other words, when someone meets any of us, they should feel like they are meeting Jesus…whether it is at the doors of the church or the doors of Best Buy…whether it is at the table of the fellowship hall or the tables of Texas Road House…whether it is in the hallways between Sunday School and Worship or the hallways between classes…whether it is working side by side preparing meals at Good Shepherd Kitchen or working side by side on the assembly line. 
When we do this, we reflect the power of God at work in our lives, for it is not we who change ourselves, it is the power of the Holy Spirit with Christ living in and through us as we completely and wholly surrender our lives to Him…it is us not living for ourselves but living for him who died and was raised for us.  It is then that the world sees grace at work, it is then that God at work, it is then that those who see us, no longer see hypocrites, because when we are the same here and there, they begin to see not us, but Christ…
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.


[i] http://myfox8.com/2015/07/25/man-leaves-teen-waitress-amazing-tip-with-inspiring-note/
[ii] http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/strangers-give-soon-be-married-waitress-500-tip-video
[iii] http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article9129425.html
[iv] Matthew 91:19
[v] Matthew 19:30
[vi] Mark 10:45
[vii] James 3:8-12

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life Between The Trees: The Cedar Tree - Ezekiel 17:22-24

Here’s your weekly question: Have we added any new proud tree-huggers to our midst?   We had a few more (despite the snow and ice covered trees) last week.   Hopefully each week we will add more and more of our congregation as we remember the importance of trees throughout God’s Word, as we journey in our “Life Between The Trees” from the Creation of Eden to the restoration of our fallen creation in New Jerusalem, not mention our call from Eden, in the meantime to care for all of God’s Creation. In Eden, as we encountered the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life we were confronted with gift of Free Will offered to us by God.   We also encountered humanity’s tendency to choose our way and choose death over obedience to God and choosing full life. With Noah, we found the Olive Tree.   Cast out of Eden we saw humanity spiral downward out of control until our sin brought about the destruction of creation with God saving Noah and his family and preserving
Read more

So, What Are We Afraid Of? - Matthew 10:26-33

Fear.   It is probably the most troubling and devastating of emotions that we experience.   It has the ability stop us in our tracks, leaving us riddled with indecision.   It has the ability to remove choices from our lives.   It has the ability to remove blessings from our lives, weaken our faith, and put our relationship with God in jeopardy, or at least call that relationship into question. The problem of fear in our relationship with God is so important that if we were to go through our Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, and count the number of times God’s Word says, “Do Not Fear,” “Do Not Worry,” “Do Not Be Afraid,” and “Do Not Be Concerned,” we would come up with a grand total of one hundred eleven times and of those one hundred eleven times, three of them occur in this brief passage. Jesus is talking to those that He has called to follow Him and who have had the courage to lay aside their lives as they knew them and commit to seeing where this new rabbi on the sce
Read more

Who Are We? A Royal Priesthood - 1st Peter 2:9-10 (Sermon from 02/15)

  Last week we began a season of remembering who we are—using 1 st Peter 2:9-10 as a springboard to launch our remembering or understanding, Peter told those dispersed Christians in Asia Minor, who were facing persecution and ridicule, and he tells us: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.   Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Last week we examined what it means to be a chosen race.   We eliminated the idea that it had anything to do with the color of our skin, our ethnicity, the language we speak, or any other physical characteristic…being a chosen race simply means being those chosen by God and in Christ all of those other worldly boundaries are wiped away…as Paul would say, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of god through faith.  
Read more