Sunday sermon - Sharing What God Has Done

Mark 1:40-45

Sharing What God Has Done

James Sledge                                                   February 12, 2012

When our Discipleship Ministry Team began to discuss having a “Bring a Friend Sunday” at Boulevard, I shared what happened when we did one in my previous congregation.  Some may have heard this story before; if so, please bear with me. 

Bring a Friend Sundays were dreamed up many years ago as a way to help congregations that weren’t very good at evangelism.  The idea is to designate a special Sunday to invite friends in the hopes that the idea of an event will make it easier to invite people.  With that in mind, Bring a Friend Sundays often include something such as a lunch after worship.

That’s what we did at the congregation in Raleigh, NC.  We only had one worship service, and so it was easy to have a lunch in the Fellowship Hall when the service ended.  And this lunch also made it easier for folks to say to their friend, “Hey, we’re having special Sunday at our church where all the members invite friends, and we’re having a big lunch afterward.  Would you join us?”

When we did the first of these, the turnout was amazing.  We may have had some Easter and Christmas Eve services with more people, but beyond those, I’d never seen that many people in the sanctuary.  And our Fellowship Hall was overflowing with people at the lunch.  Everyone involved in planning the day was all smiles.  It had exceeded our wildest expectations.

But our excitement began to fade a bit when we started going through the friendship pads from the pews. 

Not that people hadn’t signed them; by and large they had.  But along with their names, most of those friends had included another bit of information: the name of the church where they were members.

It soon became apparent that almost every single friend who joined us that Sunday was an active member of some other church.  It was a bit bewildering.  We had made clear in publicizing the event that it was for the purpose of evangelism, so why had it become simply a fellowship Sunday with people from other churches?  I really don’t know for sure.  I suspect that our members wanted to support the event.  We had talked it up for a couple of months in advance, and they wanted it to be a success.  And so the felt that they had to invite people.

Now here’s where I a bit unsure about what happened.  Perhaps most of our members didn’t have any good friends who weren’t church folks.  I imagine that could have been true for some.  But perhaps some of them did have friends who weren’t church members, but they just didn’t quite know how to invite them.  And so they only invited church friends.  Perhaps there was something else at work; I don’t really know.

However, there was clearly something going on that made it difficult for our members to invite non-church friends, even with a free lunch.  And this became abundantly clear when we held a second Bring a Friend Sunday the next year.  Remembering our previous experience, we asked people not to invite members of other churches to the event, but friends who weren’t active in a congregation.  Our members got the message.  They didn’t invite any church friends, and attendance that Sunday didn’t look any different from a typical Sunday.

Now if we did in fact have members with no non-Christian friends, that would fit with a misperception that some Christians have.  A number of Christians seem to have gotten the idea that they should not associate with non-church folks.  But when you think about the sort of folks Jesus hung out with, and when you remember that he told his followers to reach out to all people and help them become disciples, it’s a bit hard to reconcile being the body of Christ while avoiding those outside the church.

But I’m not convinced that this was the main reason no one invited a friend to the second Bring a Friend Sunday in Raleigh.  I think they were simply terrified at the idea of evangelism.  It wasn’t scary to invite a church friend to join them one Sunday, but sharing their faith with someone who didn’t do the church thing, that was another matter.

As a rule Presbyterians struggle with evangelism.  We worry about starting a conversation and getting in over our heads.  Perhaps you’ve heard people say, or even said yourself, “What if they ask me something I don’t know the answer to?  I don’t really understand my faith well enough to share it.  I can’t explain the Trinity.”  

I’m not sure where the idea came from that evangelism requires a firm grasp of Christian doctrine.  That’s certainly not the case with the leper in our gospel reading today.  He doesn’t know any Christian doctrine.  He doesn’t even know about the cross or resurrection since neither has yet happened.  But when Jesus heals him he began to proclaim it freely. Proclaim; that’s the same thing John the Baptist and Jesus have done, and the same thing Jesus will shortly charge the twelve disciples to do.  And this former leper proclaims even though Jesus has expressly told him not to do so.

If someone asks him exactly how Jesus healed him, he won’t be able to tell them.  If someone wants to know if Jesus is the only way you can be healed of leprosy, he won’t know that either.   If someone asks him what Jesus thinks about abortion or higher taxes on the rich, this former leper will likely have no idea.  But what he knows for sure is that Jesus has touched him and made him new, made him well, made him whole, saved him.  And he can’t stop telling folks what God has done for him through Jesus.

As part of the run-up to next week’s Bring a Friend Sunday, Discipleship Team members have been sharing experiences of when they were alone or afraid and someone reached out to connect with them.  A couple of weeks ago, Ginny Achtermann shared her story of how God’s love and care had touched her.  If you weren’t here, she spoke of a time when she had just come home from the hospital following surgery.  Her mother had come to help care for her, but shortly after arriving, her mother experienced such intense pain that she wanted to go to the hospital.  But Ginny was not feeling well enough to take her, and was not yet cleared to drive anyway. 

As Ginny wondered what she would do, the phone rang.  It was a woman from her church, someone Ginny barely knew.  The person said she had a feeling that Ginny could use some help, and this woman came to Ginny’s house, took her Mom to the ER, and waited several hours there as doctors attended to her.

Now certainly it doesn’t quite rise to the level of being cured of leprosy, but at that moment, the woman who called was a life-saver, a God-send.  And Ginny was able to share without hesitation this experience of God’s love that connected with her when she most needed it.  I don’t think Ginny mentioned any theological doctrines when she shared her story.  She did not weigh in on any hot button issues of the day.  She simply proclaimed what God had done for her through a disciple of Christ who ministered to her in a time of need.

Surely every one of us has a similar story to share, to proclaim.  Surely the love of God in Jesus has touched us in some way that has changed us, freed us for a better life, let us experience God’s love and compassion in some tangible way.  It seems to me that if we cannot proclaim a time that God’s love, care, or compassion touched us, then our Christianity is more philosophy than faith.  And if that is the case, no wonder the pews of America’s churches are less and less full.  Why would anyone want to come sing hymns to a philosophy?  Why would they want to offer prayers to an idea?

Has Jesus touched you in some way?  Has Jesus used you to share his touch with others?  Centuries ago, when a leper encountered Jesus’ healing touch, he couldn’t stop himself from letting others know.  Jesus says to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone…  But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word.