Bret Hammond

I’ve appeared in court on three different occasions. I was called to be a witness all three times, compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And, on all three occasions, I did precisely that. The first two times, I was there to testify to the character of the defendants, or a lack thereof. I did not enjoy either of those appearances.

But the last time I was called to testify was on behalf of my son, Connor. When Connor turned 18, he became an adult in the eyes of the state. I was in court to testify that, given his challenges, Connor needs our help and support and will always have our love. On December 10, 2020, with a bang of a gavel, a judge awarded us guardianship of our son. We celebrated with sushi.

In Isaiah 43:1, the prophet testifies, “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Isaiah then launches into a courtroom drama and calls his people to testify to God’s faithfulness to them. Standing before his witnesses, the Lord testifies to our need for a savior, a deliverer, and his love.

Lyn Marshall was one of those people I would never have known if it weren't for the church. The first few times we talked, we seemed so different from each other. But, then, on a long car ride to visit her sick mother, we bonded over a mutual love of The Moody Blues. And when she told me about how she met Vincent Furnier (maybe better known to you as "Alice Cooper"), I was sold! This was one cool lady!

Lyn's passing yesterday reminded me of the truth I'll try to convey in my sermon today. "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Ephesians 2:19). We have a myriad of differences that can pull us apart and keep us apart; everything from our politics to our musical preferences (some people DON'T like the Moody Blues, if you can believe that). Yet, in Christ, we become family. No longer strangers but members of the family of God.

Some churches have a long-held tradition of placing salt on the tongues of newly baptized believers and giving them a lit candle to remind them they are "the salt of the earth and the light of the world." I love the symbolism and the message it sends. It's not, "Go out there and try to be the salt of the earth," or "You better make sure you keep your light shining!" Instead, with commitment fresh and hair still wet from baptism, it lets the new believer know precisely who they are in this world because of Jesus.

Salt and light are two identities given to us by Jesus himself. If Christians are to understand who we are together, we need to grasp the impact these two images have on the world around us.

One of my first roles in the church was as a shepherd. I don't mean that in a pastoral sense, but rather in a Christmas pageant sense. In Junior High, for our church's live nativity, I was one of the three guys chosen to play shepherds. I had the headgear (one of mom's tea towels wrapped around my head), a staff (a stick with a bent clothes hanger duct taped to one end), and an old bathrobe. The only thing I didn't have—that none of us shepherds had—was sheep.

We looked the part, but without sheep, we were just three guys standing to the side of the manger, waving at passing cars. We were as useless as the fake frankincense among the three Magi's gifts.

A shepherd simply isn't a shepherd without sheep. So, when Jesus describes himself in John 10:11 by saying, "I am the good shepherd," what he tells us is as much about his followers as it is himself. "The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."

Jesus as the Good Shepherd defines who we are together as much as it describes Jesus. Dad's old bathrobe and mom's tea towel do not make a shepherd. A shepherd needs sheep, and sheep need each other to be the flock.

The most frequently used designation for Christians in the Bible is the word "Brother." It appears over 250 times in the book of Acts and the Epistles. So while you and I call ourselves Christians and speak of ourselves in groups as churches, the Bible shows us, again and again, that we cannot understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus without the concept of family.

We often worry about the state of the family these days. We see the struggle of broken homes and absentee parents and the aftermath in children left with no role models. Unfortunately, the problem only gets worse as it perpetuates into new generations. And yet, here we are, called "The Family of God." That's a gift our world desperately needs.

When I started attending church, families invited me to sit with them, adopted me for church activities, handed me an extra plate at potlucks, and made me feel . . . well . . . like family. Those gifts made lasting impressions, and they all stem from understanding that above all else, we are the family of God.

Dad said I was named for one of his favorite westerns. Mom said she picked my name because it worked well with my brother's. I like dad's story better, but whether the name had meaning or they just liked the sound of it, I'm stuck with it.

There are far worse names to be stuck with. For example, in the Bible, the prophet Hosea has a son named "Lo-Ammi," Hebrew for "Not my people." Can you imagine being stuck with a name like that? Whenever Hosea introduced his son, he said, "He's not mine."

People want to belong, be included, and be told they matter. But unfortunately, we have to confess that we often draw lines that exclude more than wrap arms around to include others. It's not just the names we call others but our actions and attitudes that tell them, "you don't belong here."

God's heart does not exclude. God speaks in the next verse, "In the place where it was said of them 'You are not my people,' it shall be said to them, 'Children of the living God.'" God adopts the rejected, includes the forgotten, and welcomes home those who have no place to belong. The question is, do we share his heart?

The anniversary came and went with barely a notice last week. This past Friday marked eleven years since the fire that destroyed our old building. I looked through the pictures and thought about how far we've come and how many things have changed.

The last couple of pictures from that day were of the destruction of the few walls still standing. Those walls had once brought us closer to God and each other. They made us feel safe and secure in our worship, but now they were hazards and had to be torn down.

There is something familiar to me in Paul's words from Ephesians 2:14. He writes of Jesus, "For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility." Paul had a very real and solid wall in mind, a wall in the Jerusalem Temple that let some people in while keeping others out. It allowed some to approach God for worship and told others they were not welcome. That wall had become a hazard and had to be torn down.

Tearing down a physical wall is easy with the right equipment. Yet, somehow, walls of division and hostility still pop up in our hearts and heads, separating us from those who need us and need the peace Jesus offers. What does peace with God look like? It looks a lot like peace with each other.

Nothing was ever quite good enough for the old man. So he often “improved” items by adding a few new parts. There was the wire running from the TV across the living room, and dangling a speaker next to his chair, so he didn’t have to walk across the room to turn it up (if only he could have invented a remote back then). Extra handles on his old boat made it easier to transport. And, of course, some of you would remember his old van. Chalk it up to creativity or “hillbilly ingenuity,” but there were few things dad couldn’t improve upon. Though, they might not have looked better when he was finished (I’m thinking specifically of the van).

When it comes to our Heavenly Father, though, his plan for us isn’t just to cobble on a few spare parts—glue a little holiness on here or weld on some forgiveness over there. No, instead, God calls us his “New Creation!” Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “The old has passed away, the new has come!” You are not someone God merely repaired or refashioned. You are recreated brand-new! And not just you, but everyone who accepts his Son’s gift.

Robin Hood was my favorite. As a kid, it was just bows and arrows, good guys and bad guys; I didn't understand the setting or conflict that gave birth to the story. Good King Richard is off fighting, and miserable Prince John is in charge. Robin and his band of Merry Men remained loyal to the king, even though he was absent. They held to the true king's standards and fought to maintain his kingdom.

Jesus taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come," but I wonder if we shouldn't hear it more as a rallying cry than a prayer. "Your kingdom come," tells us all is not right in this world and calls us to loyalty to Jesus and to live in such a way as to bring His reign, along with his love, to all those we encounter.

Life for the fatherless was difficult in the ancient world. Children were often left with no recourse but to beg, and it could be far worse for widows. Again and again, in the Bible, we read commands like the one found in Zechariah 7:10, "do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart." God's heart is with the fatherless and the poor.

Jesus came with that same heart but called his followers to go beyond merely not devising evil against the oppressed. Instead, he called us to identify with them, to make a home and a family for them. When Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor," he called us to be that blessing by identifying with the poor and being a family for the fatherless.