CONTENTS

PROGRAM

VISIT

SERMON ARCHIVE

REVIVAL ARTICLES

NEWS

MISSION

AIM

MEET US

HELP!

FREE STUFF

LINKS

GUESTBOOK

Read

Sign

A "fizzy" faith

Matt 9: 24 - 28

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 27 Jun, 2004

CHRISTIANITY IS intended to be bubbly and exciting. If it is not, then something has gone seriously wrong. And, throughout the Western world, something has gone seriously wrong.

  If you look at the church in large parts of Asia, it is pretty healthy. In Africa and South America, it is positively booming. But something isn't as it should be here in the west.
  Our passage speaks to that issue.
  During the week, I had an e-mail from an old friend. She was a little younger than Chris, and we all went to the Fairfield Baptist Church together in our teens.
  Our friend was talking about her life. She married a chap who was a Roman Catholic, with the emphasis on Roamin’. He was never one to be at church when he could be somewhere else. And that has meant that our friend has lost her church association over the years, too. She was saddened to remember that we had good times in those days, that being Christians meant something to us. We felt we were doing something positive for our world.
  We weren’t perfect, but we had something going for us. Where is it today?

  One of the big problems today is the great opposition to change. You’ve heard of the church not far from here where they took on a new pastor, gave him a green light to change the church and get it working in the community, then sacked him when he moved the communion table. It wasn't a Baptist church, but I am sure that Baptists have been guilty at times.

  We want change without having anything different. The Bible challenges that attitude.

  When I edited The Australian Baptist, two issues upset the readers.
  One was about the Holy Spirit. It suggested that not all Baptists think alike about the Holy Spirit. Three churches threatened to withdraw from the Baptist Union over that issue!
  The other had the title, Reinventing the Church. It said we have to change or perish. It had articles by people like the Internationally–respected Baptist Theologian, Thorwald Lorenzen. Some readers were spitting chips! Nothing needs to change: just row harder, just keep going the way we have always gone, keep preaching what we have always preached, and everything will pan out OK.
  Of course some remembered the Holy Spirit issue and decided that I wanted everyone to become Pentecostal. People react out of fear: they don’t respond to the issues. Change is terrifying. We all say we need it, but all of us are afraid of it when it comes.

  There’s nothing new in this tension.
  If you think back to the Reformation, this was exactly the situation. On the one hand, the Catholics generally said that everything was as it ought to be; on the other, the Reformers said that everything needed to be reviewed and, where necessary, changed.
  That’s the stuff of conflict and strife. That was the problem with that Reinventing the Church issue of The Australian Baptist. It tapped right into that tension, and made people afraid.

  Still, fear is no reason to avoid dealing with the issues.

  The Reformers had a motto, “Semper reformata, semper reformanda.” They wanted a church which was always reformed, but always being reformed. They were not content to make changes and then leave things forever as they had now become.
  Yet there are many in the Reformed camp who have settled into a new spiritual lethargy. They assume that Luther or Calvin said the final word, and they will not move from that place. They are so proud of themselves, yet so blind!

  I once tried to gather some Baptist pastors to discuss possible changes in the area. One strongly Calvinistic pastor not far from here had no interest in doing anything for himself or to help his brothers and sisters in Christ. He told me that, if we all just preached good doctrine, we would all grow, just as his church had grown. The fact was that he had sucked the Calvinistic Baptists out of other churches so his could grow.
  There are so many who hate change. They see themselves as defenders of true Christianity, but they never let themselves change or grow. They are stuck where they were as teenagers. They are defenders of the past, not vanguards of the future.

  When Jesus and his disciples went around, they copped flak. They didn’t play by the rules. They were free to be different.
  When Jesus and his disciples went through a paddock one Saturday, the disciples were hungry, so they plucked some grain that was overhanging the pathway. That was totally legal. Poor people were allowed to help themselves to the overhang.
  But it horrified the religious people. This was the Sabbath, and you mustn’t reap your harvest on the Sabbath!
  And again, the religious people become horrified because this time the disciples are eating when everyone else who is anyone is fasting. Only the irreligious don't fast when it’s a time for fasting.

The disciples of John came to him and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

  John’s disciples are not exactly Pharisees, but they are sincere and determined about their religion, and they have become just as legalistic as the Pharisees. This is their attitude: Religion has rules, and people who don’t play by the rules are not really religious. Be warned when you read that. The fact is that, If you leave religion out for a while, it goes off — and the first stink is legalism.
  Why do we get tied up in knots over things like that? The Jews of Jesus’ time were particularly fussy about rules and regulations, and many Christian people are not far behind them.
  It all comes down to an inability to grasp the idea of God’s grace. Without grace, fear takes over. We suffer performance anxiety, because we are afraid that, if we don’t perform to the highest expectations, we will be in Big Trouble.
  Of course, some people just assume that Big Trouble is what life is about, and they give up trying; while others assume that just a little more effort will keep trouble away.
  Jesus confronts the Jewish attitude. They are terrified that, if the nation doesn’t keep all the rules absolutely perfectly, God will send them back to Babylon.

  Jesus says, ”We’re having a party. It’s a wedding party. I’m the bridegroom, and these are my guests. You know that a wedding celebration takes precedence over the ordinary weekly fasts.”
  It’s a clever answer. It challenges the critics to think again.

“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”

  If a wedding celebration can take precedence over the weekly fast, how vital is the weekly fast anyway? Is it only a human regulation?
  Because that is what the fasts and religious obligations really were.
  I occasionally fast for a day. But God doesn’t pat me on the back and tell me I’m a good boy for doing it. Fasting is for me. Fasting is so that I will remember that I have decided to devote that time to God, or to prayer about a specific issue. God doesn’t bless the fasting, but he will bless the determined prayer.
  I have heard sermons which say that this parable teaches about the coming death of Jesus, and certainly that is part of what it is about. But I believe that it teaches a more immediate lesson, one for John’s disciples to take in. That lesson is about the coming death of opportunity.
  Jesus says,

The day will come when the Bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast

  There comes a time when the relationship changes and the joy disappears, unless we value it when we have it.

  I also want us to see how this teaching completes what we saw last week.
  Last week we saw how it is the person of sufficient faith to hear and to do what Jesus commands who is saved when the storms rage.
  This week we see what kind of obedience we are talking about. This is not the fearful obedience of someone who is terrified that some dreadful punishment will befall if the command is not perfectly kept. This is the joyful obedience of someone enjoying fellowship with a good friend.

  When you are with a friend who says, “Let’s get a couple of videos and spend the night in,” no one says, “Oh, dear! If we don’t do that exactly, he will beat us all up.” You say, “Hey! That’s a good idea! Let’s do it quickly, so that we don’t waste half the night getting ready to go to the video store!”

  And when the Bridegroom tells his mates, “Let’s feed the hungry! Let’s take a few loaves and fishes out and see what it can do for a whole crowd,” then you say, “The Lord knows about these things. Let’s do it! Let’s not muck around and waste half the night!”
  You don’t fast then, because you are already receiving the blessing. Fasting is for those who still need the blessing.
  That’s what it’s all about.

  If Jesus had left it there, if he had only said to his critics, “We are a wedding party, and we are having too much fun to stop right now,” that would have been enough. But he goes further. He talks about new wine in old skins. He talks about the futility of trying to stop it when God is doing a new thing.

“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old winsekins; if it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, so both are preserved.”

  John Wesley used to preach on Sunday, and, on Monday, he would get a note from the parson telling him he was not to preach in that church again.
  The Methodist Revival was too bubbly for the Established Church. They didn’t want to   hear about the cross. They didn’t want the message that sinners can know this very moment that they are forgiven and born again. They wanted everything calm, reflective and the same.

  That’s how it is. When God does a new thing, it won’t stay confined to the old forms and structures.

  One of the major critics of the early Christians was a man named Celsus, a pagan. One thing he hated was that uneducated, socially outcast people were healing and delivering from demons in public places. Celsus didn’t see that even his anti–Christian rant confirmed the truth of Christianity! But here you have it: even in the pagan world, God’s new thing, the Gospel of Christ, couldn’t stay in the old structures that people wanted to confine it to.
  When people are really involved in celebrating God’s new thing, when they get into the Kingdom of God and find it’s a party, you can’t confine that.

  I know some of you are already thinking, “Only a couple of weeks ago, he told us that too many people arrive for the Kingdom of God in their Hawaiian shirts with the Nikon slung around their necks, and they get an awful shock to find that the boat isn’t Princess class, but its grey with white numbers on the bow.”

  Yes, I have often said that. And it’s true.

  But the Kingdom of God is also a party. You all know that a really good party means a lot of hard work. The one needs the other.
  But a really good party combines celebration and purpose.

  Go back to what Jesus said. When the bridegroom is present, the guests can’t fast. It’s easy to focus on the celebration side of that and lose sight of the purpose side. Because we Christians often look at life in a serious way, we need to hear that we are called to celebration. We need the shock of learning that God isn’t going to reward us for being serious and humourless.
  The other side is that the guests are with the Bridegroom to help him get married. They look after him. They make sure that he gets there on time. They watch that food and drink don’t run out. They facilitate their friend’s celebration, and they enjoy the celebration themselves.

  Our task is the same. Jesus is the Bridegroom. He will come right home to collect the bride one day; our task is to help make that happen. We are at the party. It has already begun. But we are also called to do a great deal behind the scenes.

  So let’s get working behind the scenes! There are sinners to reclaim! There is a whole world to transform with truth, justice and love.

  I find two lesson for us in this passage.
  First, our Christian faith is really meant to be something we celebrate and enjoy. We had better learn to do that.
  Those of us who came to the video night last night watched a movie about a young African–american man and how he was converted and learnt to live out his faith.
  There were scenes in the church he attended, where there was a lot of dancing and singing and loud, joyful music.
  How different it was from how church often was when I was young! Back then, Baptist evening services were loud, celebratory affairs. If you had ever been to the Anglicans, Baptists were a shock to the system, because the Anglicans were so uptight, so rules–bound, and the  Baptists had such a party atmosphere,
  But we hardened and stopped celebrating. We kept hearing that we should be more dignified, that we should be more respectful towards God. And the joy died out, and Christianity lost its fun.
  If our faith is to mean something to us, we have to feel it as well as think it; we have to do it as well as study it.

  Yes, salvation is for those who are obedient through faith, but it takes deepest root in those who make it their life and their joy.

  We are so inhibited here -- all of us. We are so lacking in joyful celebration. I know there are others who are much more inhibited and much less celebratory, but it is never wise to compare yourself with the worst!

  Let’s let go! Let’s really let rip, enjoy God, enjoy each other, enjoy being here with the Lord who loves me and gave himself for us!

  Second, there’s a homework question. It is this: why has the fizz gone out of our faith? Why are we no threat to the structures and conventions of our society?
  When wine bursts out of wineskins, it is because of the life in it, the fermentation of the yeast. When it stops fermenting, it means that life has died. It’s worth thinking about!