Scripture:  1 Corinthians 1:10-18

 One of my favorite things to do is play games, and I tend to play a lot of them.  Several years ago, when I was full time in youth ministry, I actually got a bit of a reputation as being “the games guy” and I was asked to be part of some conference level youth events specifically to lead games.  When I teach a game to people, I always begin by telling people: “The goal of the game is to win” and then I tell people how you do that.  I think it is important to begin with emphasizing that the goal is to win, because during the game it can be surprisingly easy to forget that.  A good example of this is a game that was my favorite to run in youth ministry, and one I first experienced as a player in college.  This game is played with a large group over a large area like a park or camp.  The group is divided into several teams and hidden throughout the large area are several green, plastic army men.  The goal of the game is to win, and the way to win is rescue all the army men before time runs out.   There are then a lot of complex rules about how teams can raid other team’s bases, how they can freeze people on other teams so they cannot keep searching, and lots of other ways for teams to trip each other up.  Often people then have a lot of fun establishing a base, making strategies, and then raiding bases of other teams to get the rescued army men to their base. 

It does not matter how long the time limit is set for, this game rarely gets won.  Not all of the plastic figures get found and rescued, and this is because teams get so busy trying to steal from one another or hinder one another that they forget the goal, they forget how to win.  In this game the goal is to win by finding all of the army men.  If that happens then everyone wins.   This game often leads to a great teaching moment, because the participants do realize that they assumed the goal was for their team to win by finding them all, not by working together. 

This morning’s scripture reminds me of that game, because this morning’s scripture points out that as people of faith, we often forget the goal.  The goal of Christianity is not to win, the goal is the gospel.  The goal is to share Jesus and the good news of the forgiveness of sins with everyone.   This is the main thing.   As followers of Jesus we should all be unified around this main thing, but as this morning’s scripture shows often division happens because we have lost sight of the goal and we do not let the main thing be the main thing. 
 
The letter of 1 Corinthians was written to the church of Corinth to address several issues that plagued that fellowship of believers.   The faith community in Corinth is one that was being torn apart by division over several different issues.  This morning’s scripture comes right at the beginning of the letter, and he starts off by addressing a source of division that involved him personally. Like the pundits on an ESPN talk show, backing their favorite team, I imagine the Corinthians bickering about why their chosen teacher is the best one to follow.    Some thought Paul was the best teacher of the gospel.  After all, Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. He was successful at founding new churches, and he had a down-to-earth reputation of working alongside the people.   Cephas, who we better known as Peter was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples.  He is the one who Jesus himself had said his church would be built upon.   Clearly, Peter’s reputation was established, and he was well known if the Corinthians had heard of him.    Finally, Apollos was the young gun.  The book of Acts describes Apollos by stating “He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures.  He had been instructed in the ways of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor.”   We get the idea that the Corinthian church was treating these three preachers like celebrities and they had picked their favorites, and instead of realizing that all three men were playing for the same team, this became a source of division in the church of Corinth.

 Paul rightly appeals to the Corinthians to cut this out.  He points this out through the use of rhetorical questions in verse 13, “Is Christ divided?  Was Paul crucified for you?  Were you baptized in the name of Paul?”   Paul seeks to point out to the Corinthians that they have lost sight of the goal, that they are not keeping the main thing the main thing.  He reminds them that it does not matter who baptized who, and he states in verse 17, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.”

The church in Corinth had a problem with division.  What is interesting though is that dividing into factions was not limited to the Corinthian church.   To the churches of the regions of Galatia, Paul warned them to avoid this by listing dissensions and factions among a list of sinful behavior.   To the church of Ephesus, Paul encouraged them to remember that “there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.”   Giving into this base urge to pick sides is a shockingly common problem in the early church.  

Unfortunately, it has continued to be a problem for followers of Jesus.   I have nothing against there being different Christian denominations.  In fact, I think there is value in having different faith communities with different traditions, with different styles, with a different emphasis, and even with a variety in our understandings.   I think there is value to having diversity in Christian expression because a diversity in Christian expression can enable the good news of Jesus Christ to reach more people.   Unfortunately, I know not everyone feels that way, because I know that there are some branches of the Christian tree that believe other branches do not belong.  There are some denominations, churches, or Christian expressions that spend a lot of time and energy decrying how other denominations, churches, or Christian expressions are not “real” Christians.   This is the kind of factionalism that Paul was writing against in this morning’s scripture.  
 
This kind of picking sides hinders the gospel; it holds back the universal mission to make disciples of all the nations.  Sadly, the data shows this is happening.  Data from pew research shows that no major Christian tradition is growing in the US today.  Some are holding steady, but that is about it.   While some churches do report growth, research has found that 94% of all reported church growth is transfer growth, where people change the church, they are involved with.   Again, I have no problem with people finding a faith community that works best for them.  However, if that much of growth is from transferring, this means only 3-5% of reported church growth is a result of people coming to know the saving grace of Jesus Christ for the first time.  The number of followers of Jesus is not currently increasing in the United States.  Perhaps, collectively as the church in America we have lost sight of the goal.   The goal of the church is not to grow just for the sake of growth, the goal of the church is to share the gospel, the goal is to proclaim the message of the cross, and the goal make disciples of Jesus Christ. 

We cannot move the needle much when it comes to these kinds of national trends.  What we can do is focus on how we are doing on the local or personal level.   We can check our own focus to make sure we are keeping the main thing the main thing.   We can commit as a faith community, to live into Paul’s appeal in this morning’s scripture.   In Verses 10 and 11 he wrote “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.”   This sounds great and inspirational, but when we begin to break it down it can be a bit troubling.   What exactly does it mean to be perfectly united in mind and thought?      

 Perhaps a better way to come to the question is to ask what are we supposed to be perfectly united about?   Because we do not have to agree about everything.  Agreeing to be part of a faith community should not be agreeing to a long list of narrowly held beliefs and shunning everyone who falls out of line.  Scriptures like this morning are a call to unity among believers, but unity is not uniformity.   John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement once wrote, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike?  May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?  Without all doubt, we may.” 

There is a statement that comes out of the Moravian tradition that speaks to more to this idea.  While today, the Moravians may be a lesser-known denomination, they had a lot of influence on John Wesley’s thinking.  As such this Moravian wisdom has found its way into the United Methodist church and you may have encountered it before.   The saying states, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things love.”   The concept is that the beliefs most vital to the Christian faith is where we must agree with one another, have no division and be perfectly united in mind and thought.   In everything that is not an essential core belief of Christianity, then as believers we are free to form our own opinions. Our faith should inform all our opinions and beliefs.  It is very possible for two Christians to rely on their biblical understanding and faith experience but still come to different conclusions on non-essentials.   That is fine because we are called to unity not uniformity.   Finally, no matter what love covers all.   This means it does not matter how much we disagree with someone; we love them anyway.   We recognize that they are a precious creation of God that has sacred worth, and we value them for that.  

This naturally leads to the question of what is essential and what is non-essential.  Fortunately, church tradition defines this for us with the creeds, which are essentially statements of essential belief.   The most well-known creed, which comes from the 5th century but has roots that stretch back as far as the 2nd century,  is what is traditionally called the Apostle’s Creed.   This creed states:   I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.  I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin  Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead.  On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will come again to judge the living and the dead.  I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.  Amen. 

Those are the essentials.  God the Father, Jesus the son-who was, and is, and is to come, and the Holy Spirit.   When we are of one mind about these essentials and we consider that statement of faith to be the cornerstone of all that we believe, then unity as described in this scripture becomes possible.   What unites us is the power of the cross of Christ, and that gospel should have more power in our lives than every other message there is.    Often the reason why there is conflict in the body of Christ, the reason why there is division is because we forget this.  We forget that the goal is not to win some culture war.  The goal is not even to grow.  The goal is to share Jesus so that all may be saved by the power of the cross.    

So may we keep the main thing the main thing.   May we not forget what the goal is, what the mission is, and may we be united in mind and thought.  This does not mean we have to always agree about all the details.  May we seek unity and not uniformity.  As the people of God may we glorify God by being perfectly united in mind and thought by how we love one another.     May we be united in our belief that Jesus a great savior and may we be committed to sharing that good news with all.  

Scripture:  John 1:29-42

It is estimated that the average person in the United States is exposed to at least 4,000 advertisements every single day.   Due to this ubiquity, without thinking about it we are all fairly good at filtering out the noise.  We are exposed to so many advertisements that we have learned to naturally ignore most of them, so we do not really register how many advertisements we see.   At the same time nearly every form of media- radio, television, social media- that we engage with daily uses advertising revenue as the primary business model.  This has created an arms-race of sorts where consumers get naturally better at ignoring advertising and advertisers get better at getting through to the people they want to buy products.  Advertisers use the cutting edge of science and technology to create the most effective advertisements.  For instance, if you use social media, you likely have had the experience where it feels like you start seeing advertisements for something just because you thought about it.  Advertising is also big business, and around $400 billion is spent on advertising every year.   Despite all the money spent and all of the algorithms used, the most effective advertising cannot be bought.  The best kind of advertising that a product can possibly hope for is word of mouth, where people tell other people about their positive experience of a product.  Marketing research has found that 92% of people trust recommendations from a friend, and word of mouth influences up to 50% of all purchasing decisions.

We see a similar principle at work in this morning’s scripture.  When it comes to sharing the good new of Jesus Christ, the most effective strategy is not a large advertising campaign, it is not a polished, concert level Sunday morning production, and it is not a finely tuned content that works the social media algorithms to generates likes and shares.  As this morning’s scripture demonstrates the most effective way to share the good news of Jesus Christ is the same as it has always been.  It is an invitation to come and see.

This morning’s scripture contains two small stories.  Each one gives us a glimpse of those early days of Jesus’ ministry, and each story shares with us how we can share the good news.  In the first story John the Baptist testifies about Jesus.  This scripture is an interesting one, because the gospel of John does not actually contain anything about the events of Jesus’ baptism.   Instead, what we get is the event recounted from the perspective of John the Baptist.  John knew that the whole purpose of his ministry was to prepare the way for the one who would take away the sins of the world, and at the baptism of Jesus it was confirmed to him Jesus is the One.   In this morning’s scripture he shares his testimony.   He shares his own experience with Jesus, where he saw the Spirit come down, where he heard God, the Father declare “this is my son, with whom I am well pleased.”   Based off his experience, John knew that Jesus was the messiah which is why he could confidently say, “I have seen and I testify.”

   Based off his personal experience John was able to declare that Jesus is the God’s Chosen One.  “I have seen and I can testify” is the first way that we can share the good news of the gospel.  Yet a lot of people are not too comfortable with this idea. One of the biggest objections that is given for why people feel they cannot share the good news with others, is they do not feel qualified to do so.  We have this mistaken idea that to share the good news we must be good at arguing or debating what we believe.   We got this wrong idea that the best way to convince someone to our point of view is to prove we are right by pointing out they are wrong.  It has been my consistent observation that this does not work.
  Perhaps you have been at big public events and have seen bullhorn guys, these are street preachers with a megaphone shouting into the crowd. I attend Gen Con in Indianapolis every year, and most years there is a street preacher trying to get people to listen to him. While I have no doubt about the faith convictions and genuine sincerity of these people, the message they are preaching is not great.  Often the message they are preaching is based on telling people how wrong they are, how evil their actions are, and how they need to turn or burn.  I do not think this is the best way to testify to the goodness of God.  Telling people, they are wrong is not terribly effective. I think the number of people who have been argued to salvation is close to zero.

I get the temptation to want to change someone’s mind by proving we are right.  We like to be right, and we imagine that we can “win a soul” through showing how right we are.  But that language reveals just how problematic the idea is.  The whole concept of winning a soul makes salvation something to be won or lost, it makes it an argument achieve victory in.   Jesus was not God’s chosen one to win souls, Jesus came to reconcile all people back to God.  Jesus did not come to conquer, but to restore.    In this morning’s scripture, John the Baptist does not try to win an argument or convince someone of his rightness.  Instead, he testifies to his experience with Jesus and how this experience pointed him back to God. 

While many may not feel confident enough in their knowledge to debate Christianity, all of us who know Jesus, should have a story to tell.   We can all testify to what we have seen and how we have experienced God at work in our lives.    We should be able to tell of how God protected us, how Jesus healed broken hearts and shattered souls, or how the holy spirit empowered us in the most miraculous ways.   We should be able to speak about the all surrounding, all-consuming, never-ending love of God and how experiencing that love has changed our lives for the better.  We should be able to testify to the blessed assurance we have that even if we are great sinners, Jesus is a greater savior- and best of all God is still with us!  In order to share the good news of Jesus Christ, we do not need to have all the answers, nor do we need to be a world class debater.  It is far more effective to tell others how we have personally experienced God’s love and how we have been impacted by grace.   Like John we should be able to say “I have seen and I testify that this is God’s chosen one.”

The second story we get in this morning’s scripture is Jesus first encounter with the people who would become some of his first disciples.  The scripture tells us that these two were already people who were following John and they had heard John’s testimony of who Jesus truly is.  The scripture tells us that it was Andrew and unnamed disciple that tradition identifies as John himself.  They spot Jesus and out of curiosity begin following him.   Jesus calls them out on this by asking what they are doing, and they very awkwardly answer with “where are you staying?” 

That was not what they truly wanted to know.   That is what they asked but they truly wanted to know is “who are you?”  “Is it true?  Are you the Messiah?”   Jesus answered their questions, both the one they asked, and their unasked ones with one of the best and perhaps most Jesus-like answers ever, “Come and you will see.”  They spend the day with him, and these two people become part of Jesus twelve disciples.     The scripture does not share with us what happened during that day they spent with Jesus, but whatever happened it made believers out of them.    It all started though with the invitation to “come and see.”    Jesus did not just tell them the good news, he showed it to them.   

 Now we should acknowledge up front that it is easier for Jesus to show someone the good news, after all he is the Good News!  However, if we kept reading on in the gospel of John, then we see the same strategy is used when Jesus calls his next disciples.  When Phillip goes to tell his friend Nathaniel about Jesus the way he convinces Nathaniel is he tells him to “come and see.”
 
It is one thing to tell people about our faith.  It is quite another one to show them.  Telling people are experience with Jesus is good but showing them how our faith is actively changing our life is better.  We all know the common platitude; actions speak louder than words.   This has always been true, but perhaps it hits harder today.  If we want to share Jesus with an unbelieving world, then telling people Jesus loves you is not as effective as showing them that Jesus loves you.  We are going to need to go to where they are with open hands and extend the invitation to “come and see.”

  If we are going to invite people to come and see then we need to make sure we have something to show them.   There are two primary ways that we can do this.  The first way is we live differently.   Catholic author Brennan Manning got to the heart of this when he said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle.  That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”   As Christians we should live as “little Christs”.  The way that we live our lives, the way that we talk, the way that we treat others, and the way that we conduct ourselves (even when no one else is looking) should reflect Jesus.  In this morning’s scripture Jesus did not tell Andrew and John he was the Messiah he showed them through his actions.  In the same way our desire to follow God should be seen in how we live, in how we love, and in how we serve.  We should not just tell people we are forgiven, loved, and new creations in Christ.  Through our commitment to living as individuals transformed by grace, we should be able to clearly show them that through Christ we have been made new. 

 The second primary way that we can make sure we have something to show is that we can be the church.   The bible describes the church as the body of Christ.  It is through the church reaching out, serving others, and meeting needs that the world can see Christ at work in the world.   Church cannot just be a building we spend an hour in once a week, because the church is not the building, the church is the body of Christ made up all who seek to follow him.  When we gather to worship on Sunday morning, we are the church.  When we go to work on Monday morning or watch the basketball game on Thursday night, we are still the church.   Church needs to be the people of God doing the work of God for the glory of God.  Through our collective commitment to seeing the needs of this world and meeting the needs, then we can show that Jesus’s love is transformative.  We will not just be stating that we will be demonstrating it, we will be giving people something to come and see.

If you consider yourself a disciple of Jesus, then you have a holy responsibility to share the good news of Jesus with others.   I know it is easy to put Christian in our social media profiles or put a bumper sticker on the back of the car, but those statements will get ignored like the thousands of advertisements we ignore daily.   Even if it requires us to share our story or put in the time to serve others, may we be willing to share the good news of Jesus Christ.  Friends, the world needs a savoir, so may we be willing to testify to how we have experienced the Lord.  People need Jesus, so may we be able to say “come and see”.  May we show others the body of Christ and may they experience the love of Christ through how we love and care them.  May we testify to our experience with Christ, may we extend invite, and may we give people something to come and see.  May we let the world know that our lives have been changed by the Lord of love.   May we pass it on. 
 
 

Scripture:  Acts 10:34-43

It is well known and established that I am a huge Star Wars fan, so it sometimes comes as a surprise to some that I am also a fan of Star Trek.   They are very different takes on science fiction, and I clearly think there is room to really enjoy both.  However, I was not always a Star Trek fan.  What really pulled me into Star Trek was the reboot movie starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk that came out in 2009.  Initially I liked this movie because honestly it has a lot more in common with the action and high adventure of Star Wars than the cerebral, hard sci-fi of classic Star Trek.  However, watching that movie led me to wanting to see more Star Trek. Thanks to streaming service I could, and that is what I did. Series after series, movie after movie.  I expanded into reading Star Trek novels and playing Star Trek games.   Within three to four years, I went from not caring much about Star Trek to considering myself a  big and invested fan.  This probably would not have happened if it were not the 2009 movie.   

In 2015, a local movie theater was doing a screening of my favorite Star Trek movie: The Wrath of Kahn.   We attended one of the showings with a group of people, one of which was a big enough of a Trekkie that she had a star trek uniform.  Before the movie started I was talking with her, and we were interrupted by some guy behind us saying something to the effect of “why are you wearing that?”

It was said with a derogatory tone, full of vitriol.  Capturing our attention, we turned to him, and he immediately apologized.  He saw that she was wearing an original series uniform.  He had initially mistaken it for a uniform from that 2009 reboot movie, and he was concerned that she was not a “real fan” of “real Star Trek”.   I guess in this guy’s view anyone who liked the new Star Trek movies, the ones that pulled me into Stark Trek, did not count.  They were not real fans.  They did not belong.   He was apparently so concerned about this that before he realized he mistakenly misidentified the uniform he was going to call out a woman he had never met.  This guy was looking to be a gatekeeper.   Gate keeping is when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access to a community or identity based on their standards.  Unfortunately, gate keeping happens a lot.  For instance, if you are a diehard fan of a sports team then you have likely heard someone else complain about “bandwagon fans”. 

Unfortunately, gatekeeping has long been a problem in faith as well.   From close to the very beginning of Christianity have been people who have appointed themselves as gatekeepers who spend a lot of energy and effort to determine who is adhering to doctrinal purity and meeting their arbitrary standard.  It is somewhat odd that this has been a reoccurring problem in Christianity, because this is an issue that was hashed out at the very beginning of the Christian faith.   In the very beginning, there was a real question about who salvation was actually for.  For Peter, this question was definitively answered in this morning’s scripture.   There are no outsiders to God’s love, and sometimes for people to experience it we need to get out of the way. 

It may seem obvious to say that salvation through Christ is for everyone today, but that was not so clear in the first century.   The question, “who is grace for?  Is it for the Jews or for everyone?” is a question that is addressed in the gospels, in Acts, and in several of the epistles.  Again, the answer seems obvious to us today, but if we try to place ourselves in the context of the first Jesus followers, we can see how it becomes less clear quickly.  We need to remember that Jesus was a Jew.  The apostles were all Jews, and all the members of the early church that formed in Jerusalem were Jewish.  The God that Jesus called Father is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of the twelve tribes of Israel.   Especially when compared the religious attitudes and culture of the greater Greco-Roman culture, Christianity did have more in common and probably felt like an offshoot of Judaism. 

This becomes clearer when human tribalism comes into play, because the Jewish people of the first century made a clear distinction between Jews and Gentiles.  The key difference is that the Jews were God’s chosen people and the gentiles were not.  The Jews followed God’s law outlined in the Torah to maintain ritual cleanliness and the gentiles did not.  By the time of the first century this had developed that Jews were not to eat with or even associate with gentiles so that they did not become unclean by transference.  There was a strong “us and them” sense in first century Israel and it was strongly enforced by cultural forces.   All indications are that at least for the first several months, the early church- those who followed Jesus- followed these same cultural lines, and salvation through Christ was only presented by the disciples to fellow Jews.  

This all begins to change in Acts chapter 10.  This morning’s scripture comes from closer to the end of that story.  It began though with a gentile who honored God but had not converted to Judaism, reaching out to Peter.   To prepare Peter for this encounter God gave him a vision which communicated the greater truth of God’s grace for all.   Peter goes to Cornelius’ house.  His encounter there begins to change Peter’s heart and mind.   Peter expresses as much in this morning’s scripture.  In verse 34 when he begins to speak, he says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.”  

 Peter then goes on to give a recount of the basics of the gospel message that he himself was a witness to.  The message, the good news had not changed, what changed was Peter’s understanding of it.  He began to realize that the good news was not just for one people group.  It is in this scripture that he realizes that when Jesus said, “I will draw all people to myself”, that Jesus really meant all people-not just his people.  This morning’s scripture is when Peter realizes that he needs to get out of the way, open the gates, and not hinder people coming to Jesus.  While we stopped at verse 43, this culminates in verse 47 when Peter declares about Cornelius and the other gentiles, “surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water.”

In the narrative of the bible, this morning’s scripture is the turning point where the good news truly starts being proclaimed for all.  This morning’s scripture is only the first movement though.  Starting in chapter 11 the narrative of Acts begins to turn from the acts of Peter and the other original disciples to the acts of Paul as the apostle to the gentiles.   The book of Acts records how the good news of Jesus Christ was shared with Jerusalem, then all of Israel and Samaria, and then to the ends of the earth.   This was the plan of Jesus laid out at the beginning of Acts, and that plan always included extending grace to all the peoples regardless of their ethnic or religious origins.  It is in this morning’s scripture that Peter begins to grasp that even the gentiles can be saved, this is where he realizes the fundamental truth that God does not show favoritism and there are no outsiders to God’s love.   

Even though Peter began to move in this direction the issue between Jews and Gentiles and salvation in Christ comes up again in Acts.  It is also an issue that Paul wrote about extensively in several of his letters.  While the issue does eventually get settled, it does not take long before for the followers of Jesus were once again asking who salvation is for. 
Looking back on our Christian history, we have done this in very formal ways.  Sometimes Christians have attempted to divide themselves into the right kind of believers and the wrong kind of believers, but most often we make walls between believers and non-believers.  Historically, these walls are not formal declarations, but they are beliefs that are held up by cultural norms.  We create expectations of how we think good Christians are supposed to act, but often these added expectations are based more in what makes us comfortable and less in grace. 

There can be an expectation that to follow Jesus someone has to dress a certain way, talk a certain way, vote a certain way, or hold a specific set of cultural values.  This is a form of gatekeeping; it is trying to define who salvation is for.  When this happens, then people who do not fit the mold, the people whose identity falls outside the lines are left to feel that church is not for them, Chistiantiy is not where they belong, or Jesus is not meant to be their savior.  Our preferences, our sensibilities, and our comfort can get in the way of people getting to Jesus.  Stories of church hurt, stories of people who have had communities of faith hurt them, by communicating they do not belong are far too common. That is not how it should be.  Friends, if our personal preferences, if our comfortability is getting in the way of people getting to Jesus, then we must get out of the way.    God does not show favoritism, and neither should we. 

Our baptism liturgy does a great job of reminding us of this. It always begins with “through the sacrament of baptism we are initiated into Christ’s holy church.  We are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation and given new birth through water and the Spirit.  All this is God’s gift, offered to us without price.”  As this morning’s scripture proclaims, “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

Salvation and the forgiveness of sins is a free gift offered to all people.   To receive this gift does not require anyone to have it all figured out.  No one has to meet a certain threshold of good actions or specific behavior before God will accept them.  That is true for each and every one of us, and it is also true for everyone else out there as well.  We should not expect other people to have conform to a standard that we create to be accepted.  The good news that we believe, the good news that we are supposed to proclaim is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  There are no asterisks or exceptions to that good news.  God sent Jesus because God’s love was for everyone.  God does not show favoritism.  There are no outsiders to God’s love. 

In this morning’s scripture Peter first realized that God’s love was for the gentiles as well as the Jews.   Today, we need to more fully realize just what it means that God love everyone.  We all have our own personal preferences, we all have our own viewpoints of what we think is best, and we all have people that we tend to be more comfortable with.   While that is a true, may we not let our personal preferences hinder the gospel.  May we not stand between people and Jesus.  May we not gatekeep the good news.   May we realize that every person we will ever interact with is a person that God loves so much that God was willing to give God’s son for.  If God loves them that much, then perhaps we should as well.  May we open the gates of God’s love wide.  For the early church the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the non-Jews in this morning’s scripture was confirmation that there is grace enough for the Jews and the gentiles.   That is still true today.  There is grace enough for everyone, so may we boldly go and share the good news of Jesus Christ.   

Scripture:  John 1:1-18

One of the mainstays of fan conventions are celebrity meet and greets.   For a fee, fans can get a chance to be face to face with the actors who portrayed their favorite characters, get an autographed headshot, or even take a picture with them.   These meet and greets are incredibly popular, and they often sell out.   The more well known the actor the more they can charge.  For example, Mark Hamill, who is most well known for playing Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies, charged $400 for an autograph at a FanExpo in the United Kingdom this summer.   While that is on the high end, there were still plenty of fans willing to pay it because Luke Skywalker is an iconic, childhood defining character for a whole lot of people. 

Given that people are willing to spend hundreds of dollars for the opportunity to spend a few moments with Mark Hamill, a bit from the Jimmy Kimmel show that aired a couple of weeks ago was surprising.   In this segment Mark Hamill stood on his star along the Hollywood walk of fame.  He was dressed in plain clothes, including a T-shirt with his picture and name on it.  Despite that the segment shows not a single person recognizing him.   At one point a person dressed in a Star Wars costume is shown interacting with him but not recognizing who is in front of him.  One the one hand it is kind of surprising.  Given all the people who visit the Hollywood walk of fame it seems at least one person would have recognized one of the stars depicted on it.   However, on the one hand it makes sense, because no one was expecting to see Mark Hamill, and they never thought they would pass by him on the street.   It is a humorous segment, but it also sheds some light on this morning’s scripture. 
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Verse 11 of this morning’s scripture states that Jeus “came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”  This is a point that the gospel of John makes throughout.  The religious leaders, the ones who knew all of the messianic passages from the prophets, the ones who should have recognized the incarnation of God, largely missed it.   Just like fans missed Mark Hamill in the Jimmy Kimmel segment because how they encountered him on the sidewalk was the kind of encounter they were expecting.  

This morning’s scripture proclaims that Jesus is the light of the world and that “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”    We celebrate that the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We celebrate that God is with us, but the reality is that many people on this world still miss it.  The light has come, but there are many who still only see darkness.  The light of the world has come, and we get to help people see it. 

Each of the gospel writers sought to tell the story of Jesus to a specific audience with a specific emphasis they wanted to communicate.  For instance, the gospel of Matthew puts more effort than the other gospels on establishing that Jesus is the Jewish messiah who fulfilled prophecies. The gospel of John puts more emphasis than the other gospels on the divine nature of Jesus.   The gospel of John seeks to establish that not only is Jesus the Messiah, not only is Jesus the son of God, but that Jesus is God incarnate.   This is why the gospel of John does not start with a birth narrative like Matthew and Luke.  Instead, it starts with “In the beginning” and it establishes that the word was with God and that the word was God.  The gospel of John makes it clear in this opening section that this Word that is the light of all humanity, and that the word became flesh in the person of Jesus.  

The incarnational nature of Jesus, that Jesus is fully God and fully man is a core belief of Christianity.  Yet it is one that has always courted controversy.   In the first couple hundred years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, there were several people who floated alternate ideas than the incarnation.  The hang up for these people was that if Jesus was truly God, and suffered on the cross, then that means God suffered on the cross.  The idea of a suffering God bothered the people of the ancient world.  While the church fathers eventually got this doctrine hashed out in the Nicaean Creed, the incarnation is still a belief that can trouble people today, and it is still a belief that some can have a hard time accepting. 

To help teach this concept there was a story written by Louis Cassels in 1959 and then featured by Paul Harvey in 1960.   This simple story entitled, the Parable of the Birds, does a great job at explaining why we need the incarnation.   Once upon a time there was a man who was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, and he dealt with others with integrity.  Despite being a man of morals, he was not religious.   For him, there was a major hang up he had.  He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

"I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, “But I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. So, he stayed while his family went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries get heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read the newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound, then another, and then another — sort of a thump or a thud.

When he went to the front door to investigate, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the shed in the backyard.  It would provide warm shelter if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat and trampled through the deepening snow to the shed He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in.

 He figured food would entice them. So, he hurried back to the house, fetched breadcrumbs, sprinkled them on the snow. He made a trail to the brightly lit wide-open shed. To his dismay, the birds ignored the breadcrumbs and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.

He tried catching them. He then tried shooing them into the shed by walking around them waving his arms. But they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted shed. And then he realized that they were afraid of him. To the birds, he reasoned, “I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me…that I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how?
Any move he made tended to frighten and confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to the safe warm shed. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear, and understand."

At that moment, the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind. And he stood listening to the bells proclaiming the birth of a savior he sank to his knees in the snow. "Now I understand," he whispered, "now I see why you had to do it."

Like the birds, all of humanity is shivering in the cold.  Our sin has cut us off from the warmth, light, and love of God that we were created to experience.  Only God is big enough to save us from ourselves.  Yet we are not big enough to understand God, and only another person can lead us to the warmth, light, and love of God.  To be saved from our sin we need both God and human.  We need the Incarnation.  We need Jesus, the light of the world to show us the way.  
I realize that for many of you, perhaps most of you, on this day I might be preaching to the choir.   Verse 12 of this morning’s scripture states, “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”  I realize that many of us here are those who have received him and believe in his name.   And yet, there are so many people who are still lost in the darkness.   There are so many people who do not see the light that we see.   Even though the light has come into the world, even though the world was made through him, there are still so many people that do not recognize him.  We cannot compel anyone to believe, but we can help them see the light that is already there.  

We can see a good example of this on most nights.  While it is possible, it takes a lot of cloud cover to hide a full moon.   There are times when the moon shines brightly enough to bring illumination to the darkness of night.   It does not matter how bright the moon looks in the night sky, it is still just a rock in space.   The moon is incapable of generating any light on its own.  The illuminated moon we see at night is only possible because the moon reflects the light of the sun.  Moonlight is reflected sunlight.  In the same way, our lives should reflect the light of the world.  As Christians we should reflect the light of our savior, of God’s only son, into the world.  In the depth of night, the moon acts as the intermediary that continues to reflect light into the dark world.  In the same way, we as Christians should reflect the light of God’s love into the world. 

We cannot save anyone.  It is Jesus who does that.  It is through Jesus that grace and truth come.  The light has already come, so we are not the light, but we can reflect the light.   There are so many people who are lost in darkness, there are so many people who are hurting and alone.  There are so many people who need Jesus.   If we truly want to see transformation in this world, if we honestly want to see souls saved, and disciples made.  Then we must go to the places where there is darkness still, we must go to where there is brokenness, we must go to where there are troubles, and then we reflect the light.   We follow the example of Jesus.  We love the hard to love, we serve others above ourselves, and we have compassion for those who often only experience judgement.   This morning’s scripture boldly proclaims, “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”   If we want to see real transformation in this world, in this community, then we prove it by reflecting the light from the Son in the dark corners of our neighborhood.   We light it up, and in doing so our loving actions will show people Jesus.   

People often miss what is right in front of them, because they are not expecting to see it.  Perhaps one of the reasons why so many people have not yet found Jesus is because they are not expecting to find him.  They are so accustomed to the darkness, coldness, and lack of hope that is found in the world that they do not expect the hope of salvation, the warmth of God’s love and the light of Christ.   This morning’s scripture established a fundamental belief, that Jesus is fully God and fully man.   For those who do believe in his name, this morning’s scripture also contains a powerful promise: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  May we believe that is true, and may that belief fill us with an unbreakable hope.  May we take that belief beyond the walls of this building out into this community.   May we reflect the light of Jesus the son, the word of God was with God in the beginning, who through him all things have been made, and who is God- may we reflect his holy light into Rensselaer and light it up.