Sermon - Concrete Faith

Luke 24:36b-48; 1 John 3:1-7

Concrete Faith

April 22, 2012                                                                               James Sledge

I don’t know about here in Northern Virginia, but in the Carolinas where I grew up, it was common for church congregations to hold “homecomings.”  That’s the church version of a family reunion.  Invitations are sent out to old members who have moved away and a big picnic is held after the service.  The congregation in Raleigh, NC that I served right out of seminary had not done homecomings.  But when we celebrated our 50^th anniversary during my time there, people enjoyed the festivities so much that they decided to hold annual homecomings. 

Homecomings often feature former pastors coming back to preach, and so a few years after leaving the Raleigh congregation I was invited back to be the quest preacher.  I would like to think it an honor to receive such an invitation.  But in fact, all the pastors who served before me except one were dead.  And he was elderly and in poor health.  And so I got the job mostly by default.

It’s something of a peculiar thing to preach for a congregation you used to serve, especially on a day when they are celebrating their heritage.  There is no avoiding a certain amount of reminiscing.  You can’t help speaking about the things that give a congregation its unique character, its personality.  And when I began thinking of the things that made that church in Raleigh the particular church that it was, I realized that most of the things that came to my mind were tangible, concrete things.  Some of those things were really concrete, the buildings and structures.  But they were also the concrete things that had been done by members over the years, the programs that were started, the special services that were held, the mission activities that were planned and implemented, and so on.

It’s the same for this congregation.  When I first learned that Falls Church was looking for a pastor, I went online and read a document your PNC (pastor nominating committee) had written.  It described some of the concrete things that give this congregation its identity.

  And when I first met the PNC, I learned more about the church.  Of course we talked about theology and beliefs, but such things can be a bit esoteric.  At least they are until they get fleshed out by concrete programs, buildings, activities, ministries, and so on.

There’s an old story about a mother putting her young child to bed.  The child is frightened and begs her to stay with him.  She reassures him, promising that God will be there with him all through the night.  “But I need God with skin on!” protests the little boy.

The church becomes the body of Christ, God with skin on, when its faith gets fleshed out by concrete structures and programs and activities.  Being new, I know only a small portion of these concrete things here.  I’ve seen the buildings, met the staff, been moved by the music, learned about the youth mission trip, and seen the hospitality to our Episcopalian sisters and brothers.  But I’ve just caught a glimpse of how faith takes concrete form at Falls Church Presbyterian.

Sometimes people think of faith and spirituality as wispy things, as beliefs and private devotional practices.  But true spirituality leads to concrete things.  Individual Christians become the Church, the body of Christ through the concrete, the tireless work of teachers and committee members and elders.  Faith gets fleshed out by people’s dedication and commitment, by sacrificial financial giving from those who take seriously Jesus’ call to put God first in their lives.  Faith comes alive as people embrace the call to be good stewards of God’s creation.  God gets skin on as people faithfully listen for Jesus calling them to their particular ministry and work in the congregation and in the world.

Faith is about concrete things.  It has substance.  It is tangible and real.  And in different ways, the readings from both Luke and 1 John insist on the concrete nature of faith.  The resurrection appearance in Luke takes great pains to focus on the real, the tangible, the concrete.  Jesus says, “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”  Then he asks for food and eats it.  Luke wants to make sure we don’t misunderstand.  Resurrection is not about Jesus’ soul flying off to heaven.  It’s not about some vague hope in life after death.  Something new and incredible has happened.  A new power has been set loose in the world, and it is real, and it is concrete.

The Bible will not support the domestication of resurrection so common among Christians.  It insists that resurrection is real and concrete.  God has begun a new creative work in Jesus that breaks the power of sin and death, and that new thing touches lives in real, concrete ways.  God’s creative and transformative power is at work in those who are in Christ.

The reading from 1 John speaks of this new, transformed life with rather startling language.  No one who abides in (Jesus) sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. 

Now I don’t know that the writer literally means that no one in Christ ever sins.  After all, this is the same person who writes, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  Still, the author of 1 John cannot imagine faith that does not transform the believer.  Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Spirit connect us to Christ’s victory over the world’s brokenness in concrete and tangible ways.

For the Bible, faith is never simply about belief.  Faith can never be relegated to the mind, or to some “spiritual realm.”  Faith takes real, tangible, concrete form.  It is visible.  The New Testament speaks of this in many ways, describing us as new creations, calling us take up our cross, commanding us to love one another in ways that declare to the world we are Christ’s disciples.  The New Testament writers would be dumbfounded to learn that some modern Christians think of faith as a simple formula: Believe and get saved, or believe and get blessed.  They insist that faith is real, tangible, and concrete.

The concrete nature of faith can be found in the history of this church, the striving of this congregation over the years to worship God, to care for one another, to demonstrate Christ-like love for those in need.  But it’s not only our history.  Our present and our future are built on concrete acts of faith. We continue to be the body of Christ as God’s presence within us impels us to reach out and touch the world’s brokenness.  We are the body of Christ as the Spirit leads us to feed the physical hunger and the spiritual longings that we see around us.  We are God with skin on as we help others discover God’s love so that they too become God with skin on and the world gets a clearer glimpse of God’s coming new day.

Our reading from 1 John says, See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.  In Jesus, God does a kind of sideways adoption.  We become sisters and brothers of Jesus and so children of God.  In this adoption, we become something new, and that newness gets lived out.  The ways of this new family are different from the ways of the world at large.  They are the ways of our brother Jesus, the concrete ways he lived and showed God’s love, the concrete ways he was and is God with skin on to those who meet him.

In one of her sermons, Barbara Brown Taylor wonders about the fact that so many of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances have something to do with food.  There’s a breakfast on the beach in John’s gospel.  Jesus breaks bread with a couple of followers on the way to Emmaus, and he grabs a bit of fish in today’s gospel.  Taylor suggests that this might have something to do with eating being necessary for life, or that it is because sharing food is part of what makes us human. 

There is something very human and rather intimate about inviting someone to your home to share a meal.  Perhaps this intimacy is why most of us would never invite a stranger into our home for dinner even though Jesus says, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors…  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”

Of course we do invite strangers here for dinner.  I’d heard a lot about this before I came here, but I got to see the Welcome Table for the first time myself just this past week.  Welcome Table.  What a great name!  Concrete faith.  God with skin on. 

Thanks be to God!