The Red Letter Challenge (Week One) - Introduction

 

 We pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you this day for sending your son to not just speak your word Lord, but to embody it. To be that Word made flesh in our midst. Lord as we begin these next 40 days, and we dig into those red letters where we see and hear Your Son speaking to his people, we would ask that you break your word small fit for our consumption. In your name, we pray this. Amen.

 

So I have to admit, I am excited about beginning the Red Letter Challenge, in part because we had talked about doing this. And we had a real short runway, and we were going to do it with the rest of the Northwest district throughout the season of Lent. And it was to begin on the Sunday after Ash Wednesday. Then our plans changed a bit. And we weren't back until that following week from Boston. And so in doing so it gave us an opportunity to have a lot more time to prep ourselves, and to get the word out to all of you, so that you can participate fully in this adventure as well. Now, it's worth noting that as part of the 40 Day Challenge, our Sunday morning Bible study will resume next week at 10, or excuse me at 9am. And we'll go from nine to about 10 to 10:10. Before we worship, and that will serve as the small group portion of the 40 Day Challenge. So I would encourage you to make a point to get up just a little bit earlier, grab your cup of coffee and come and join us here on Sunday mornings at nine o'clock. As we endeavor into something new. We often have done things in our lives with the best of intentions, whether it is setting a new year's resolution or whether it is taking on a new project. And then it doesn't turn out the way that we expect. 

 

When we arrived down in Edmond, Oklahoma for Vicarage my supervisor, made a point to say "Now I know that you have just gotten here, but in three days, you're going to leave to go with the youth group to the National Youth gathering." "Okay..." So we got on a bus, and we drove down to New Orleans. And I had spent that length of time getting to know the youth director. Their DCE was incredibly organized. And when we got to New Orleans, and he had to go do the check in. He said, "I want you to take them from the convention center and walk back to the hotel." "That's easy, I can do that." But as we were walking, and I just sometimes I can't help myself, there was a guy sitting on the sidewalk. And I just said, "how's it going?" And before I knew it, the entire youth group had formed a half circle behind me to listen to this man give a diatribe on his theories of the End Times. And I thought, "well, this is awesome! These kids are getting a great multicultural experience." And about that time, the youth director came walking back by and his eyes got about this big and he kind of hustled them all along. And as we got to the hotel, he said "What were you thinking?" All I could say was "I can't help it." He said, "You didn't see that guy yelling and cursing and swearing at our kids when we walked past him the first time?" "Oh, no, I did not..." The kids did. They remembered. It was done with the best of intentions. But at the end of the day, I had some 'splainin to do. 

 

 The challenge that we bear as Christians is that we have the promise of God's Word and hope as we celebrate last weekend with Easter. We take that out into the world with the best of intentions, and so often, we end up stepping on fingers and toes in the process. 

 

The apostle Paul addresses the Corinthian church and he tells them you cannot hold on unbelieving people to the standard of a believer. They don't get it. They've never known. They don't know what the sixth commandment is. So you can't expect them to understand why you can't have more than one person that you're committed to. You can't expect them to understand why they should not have other gods if they don't know what the first commandment would be. Our challenge is to really truly know what the word of God says. To dig deep into not just the extraneous cool history that we kind of geek out on, but the words that God Himself speaks through Jesus.

 

Context is important. There was a young preacher that had just been ordained. And he was excited to attend his first ordination for a friend of his. And in his excitement, he forgot about the part of the rite where the pastors go up, and they lay hands and they're supposed to say a Bible verse as a blessing. And as he got up to the front, and he's standing shoulder to shoulder with the other pastors, he turned, and he kind of looked at the guy next to him, and he completely blanked out. And he said, "What am I supposed to say?" The guy said, "Just say something that Jesus said." And immediately it was his turn. And as he goes up, he lays hands and he closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. And the first thing that comes to his mind is: "Jesus wept."

 

And you can sense the kind of pause that that might have caused within the congregation as they thought "we just called this guy!" And here, the task was simple, say something that Jesus said. But in that moment, he could say nothing at all except for the actions that Jesus had done.

 

Jesus said to His disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." And as we dig into the Gospels, Jesus invites us to be those workers today. We hear in our gospel, the way that he Commission's his disciples, and he breathes on them and he says, "Receive the Holy Spirit! As the Father has sent me so I am sending you." In other words you are now the ambassadors of Christ. You bear his name in baptism, and you bear his word upon your lips.

 

 But if we look at the world around us, statistically, the number of NONES, those that claim no religious affiliation, is rising at an exponential rate. If we asked what is the cause? Why do we see this decline in attendance? Why do we see folks just turn their back on the church and walk away? If you talk to them more often than than not, and the statistics speak to this, their issue isn't with God. It's not with Scripture. It's with, guess who, Christians, who take it upon themselves to speak on God's behalf, to defend God, speak words that he has not spoken. Or to perhaps try and give this representation of Jesus where we have all of the right boxes checked. And if we say the right things, and we utter the magic words, and we use the right water, then we can claim a conversion. We can say, this person was saved because of me. Well, there's a problem. No one is saved because of us. 

 

So how do we change the story? We know the power that grace has. When we've seen God's mercy at work within our own lives, it's difficult to then be confronted with the hostility against the church and our fellow believers. How do we know? I assure you it is not by changing the story. So often, that is the temptation for the church to provide this therapeutic service to the people where you come and we make you feel better. And then you go back out, and you are full of joy and hope and promise, and the body and blood of Jesus. But you come in assuming that that is exactly what worship is about. It's about what God does for me. So I come in with my hand held out. And for some of us, it's because we have a drug problem and we were drug here. And we were forced to be here as kids. And we had all of the things that we should have done right and still somehow wandered away. And then we came back out of guilt.

 

It's not about therapy. That goes against the nature of grace. By the nature of grace, when God calls us by name through Holy Baptism, as he creates this work of faith in us that is then cultivated through the entirety of our lives. We don't get to go back and say, "you know, I know this is wrong, but I really enjoy doing it. And I'm baptized and I've got grace. And so I can just keep doing this thing and I can keep coming back to the grace that God gives and no harm no foul." Meanwhile, everything around us is turned in - watching what those ambassadors of Christ are doing and they see the hypocrisy.

 

As Christians. We can have the best of intentions in the world. But if we are succeeding at things that don't actually matter. We do more harm than good. Perhaps it's worth asking if we are even aiming at the right targets. The red letters of Scripture, those words of Jesus that He speaks, come with an earthly realism that is not only profound, but life changing for the people that receive it.

 

Matthew seven, Jesus speaks and says, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell in the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall because it had been built on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine, and does not do them will be like a fool who built his house on the sand. So that when the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, it fell. And great was the fall of it."

 

Following Jesus, is not to be a burden. It's not to be about carrying the bricks upon our own back so that we can lay the foundation. But it's to stand free to recognize that that foundation has already been set for us. Throughout these next 40 days, the five principles that our readings will take us through will be oriented towards being and forgiving, serving, giving, and going. In other words, these key words, these catchphrases, serve as a means by which we put God's word into practice. In doing so, find the place that God has made for you in his story.

 

The challenge of bearing the name of Jesus becomes lighter when we open our mouth and we know and trust that the words that come forth are not ours. But the words that God speaks to be right in that moment.

 

Jesus tells his disciples "In that day, when you are persecuted, do not worry about what you will say." He tells them that his words will be placed upon their lips. The things that they are to speak will be the things that he speaks through them. So I would encourage and I would implore you to take full advantage of this opportunity to not only enrich your own devotional life, but also to be a part of something bigger than yourself as we do so together as the body of Christ. So then in all things and in all ways, God always gets the glory now and forevermore. Amen.