May 5, 2019
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
The great Trinitarian hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty,” praises God in the early morning with our song and that all God’s work on earth, in the sky and sea praise his name. But in the third verse, we as saints may hide in the darkness and our eyes may be blinded by sin that we may not see God’s holiness.
In 1 Peter 1:15-16, the writer says, “As he (God) who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” This is a quote from Leviticus 11:44-45.
Now that we are 2 weeks after Easter when we felt close to the power of the resurrection. Now, that you have completed your course in Lent. Now that we’ll soon partake in Holy Communion, are you still feeling close to God?
What does “holy” mean today?
In many places in the United States, people whose lives are not necessarily based on the Christian faith would never want to be labeled “holy.” It would mean that one is strange and odd and outside of the group. Some people would not want to share deep secrets with someone who is holy in the fear of being judged.
When I used to travel on the plane and would need to work on an upcoming sermon, I always felt strange pulling out my Bible. I was afraid that my seatmate might think that I was a religious fanatic. My fear in being identified as a minister was that I might end up hearing the person’s confession. But isn’t that what being holy is?
What does “holy” mean to you as First Chinese Baptist people? Are we hiding in the darkness and our eyes are blinded that we can’t see God’s holiness?
When I was in my early teenager years, now around 55 years ago, I was baptized at my home church in Boston. As a typical teenager, I had my doubts and questions. While I tried to live as much of a holy life as I possibly could, I always had some questions that had unsatisfying answers.
When it was time for me to attend the pastor’s baptism class, I went forward. After many sessions, I got baptized which was a great moment. I was inspired and uplifted. I thought that I am now holy and I would have no more doubts and questions. I thought I was going to be walking just a little bit off the ground.
But after all the excitement died down and the baptismal water dried behind my ears, I was like before. Nothing seems to have changed. I still had my doubts about God. I still wasn’t as holy as I thought I would be.
Holy Rooted in Christ
The passage in 1 Peter is about the work of Christ and what it means to our witness in the world. It is when we have a clear understanding of Christ’s vision in the world is when we would have an idea of the fruits that we produce in our Christian life.
In the following verses of 1 Peter 1:15-16, we see that Christ’s ransom of our souls opens us to a trust of God, an obedience to the truth and a love for one another. Read 1 Peter 1:17-22.
Peter tells us that from our birth, we have hope in the resurrection of Christ. In our relationship with Christ, we have a love for the Lord. This is when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. This is when we accept baptism and make a public profession of our faith. From this new birth of water, we realize the holiness within us is formed by hope and love. This life-long journey moves us from Christ’s work toward our sanctification. Saints are holy people. Holy people are saints.
The metaphor of ransom is a powerful one in our Christian theology. Our bondage in sin is paid in the price of Christ’s blood. The ransom being paid grants us the freedom that we find in Jesus. This is the Easter message.
Peter uses this image to testify to Christ’s ransoming us from our futile ways, and argues over the course of this passage that Christ’s ransom turns us in trust of God, in obedience to the truth, and in love for our neighbor.
Christ pays the concrete price of the gift of himself to free us from our bondage. In so doing he buys for this price a reformation of our wills, a change of hearts.
In my own Christian journey, I began to be freed from the bondage of my doubts because Jesus Christ paid the ransom for my salvation so that more and more of my life is leading me to believe that God’s trust is in me, that I need to be obedient to the truth, and that U must love my neighbors as much as I love myself.
NE India
In February, I traveled to Northeast India for my fourth time to promote the establishment of a new Christian university. I continue to learn about the histories of the many tribes in this part of India.
Before the American Baptist missionaries arrived to the Anal Naga and other parts of Nagaland and the rest of NE India, tribes traditionally lived in isolation from others with different histories and languages. There was always conflict with neighboring villages fighting over land. The ongoing warfare led to headhunting as trophies of victory. Mostly young men fought and this shaped the social life of the village. But with the coming of Christianity, loving one’s neighbor and enemy alike as loving oneself, liberated the tribes from the anarchy of incessant warfare and headhunting. They became holy from headhunting to heart hunting in the name of Jesus Christ!
This movement or progression of God’s activities points to the Naga tribes becoming holy. We are to be holy as God is holy. When we strive toward holiness, our holiness flows from the grace that we find in Jesus Christ.
Marks of Holiness
There are three marks of holiness that we can discern from 1 Peter. The first is that we have a trust of God. It’s not only that we have trust in God but rather that we have God’s trust in us. Christ’s offer of love in his ransom for us means that we can now affirm that the trust of God is engendered in us. Christ’s offer of love serves as a foundation of our obedience and that we can also learn to trust in the ways of God.
Christ’s sacrifice gives us a new inheritance that God trusts us.
What powerful good news is that for us today! As God’s people with many years of faithful ministry, God continues to trust you to continue carrying out God’s mission in the world. God believes in you to continue proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in Chinatown, in San Francisco and to the many parts of the world!
Secondly, to be holy is to be obedient to truth. Before the missionaries came to the Chinese in San Francisco, there were many gods whom our ancestors believed. You can hear the Buddhist monks and followers singing on Sacramento Street as you walk to church.
When Dr. Jesse Hartwell and many other missionaries like Debbie Allen and Astrid Peterson shared the Good News of Jesus Christ with you and the ongoing revelation of God’s plan for your lives today and tomorrow, you were empowered with the truth of the Lord. You now believe it is one God revealed to us in three ways: God the Creator, God the Savior and God the Comforter. Just as the hymn sings, “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
As you face emerging and sometimes troubling claims of truth today, you will need to be obedient to God’s word, trusting in God as God is trusting in you to be his servants and witnesses in today’s world.
And thirdly to be holy means to love one another. Loving one another is not a problem at FCBC. Look at how many of you are here today! You understand each other and you want to be with one another. But when we are truly honest with ourselves, there are some people we don’t really like let alone be with in the same room.
As Christians, we know that God created the whole world and all the people on earth. If God only created Asian Americans, you might be able to say that God only loves us and we are only expected to love other Asian Americans. Don’t we wish that to be true? I remember James Chuck saying one time that God must love Chinese people because he created so many of us!
But God created all the people in the world. God created the different and diverse people in the US. God created beautiful people in other lands. If God created all of us; and Jesus Christ came to give us all new life, a new beginning, a second chance then we are commanded to love one another. To be holy means to love one another.
Holy People
Some of us have had the opportunity to visit some of the great cathedrals in Europe and what we found were museums. There were more tombs in the floors and in the walls than there were living people on the pews. Many church leaders are worried that American churches may become museums too.
There’s a church planter, Ed Stetzer who separates the 75% of Americans who call themselves Christians into three categories: cultural, congregational and convictional.
He defines cultural Christians as people who are Christians simply because their culture tells them they are. They’re Christian in name only, and are not practicing a vibrant faith.
Congregational Christians are similar to cultural Christians, except that they have some connection to actual congregational life, a church they attend at least occasionally, perhaps on Easter and Christmas.
Convictional Christians, on the other hand, are those who actually live according to their faith. They are the people who would say that they have met Jesus, that he has changed their lives, and that their lives are centered on their faith in him.
You may have read that in demographical studies, more people are now identifying themselves as “Nones” as having no religion. Stetzer suggests that the change is coming from defections from the cultural and congregational Christian categories, because there’s now less societal pressure to be “Christian.” These folks “feel comfortable freeing themselves from a label that was not true of them in the first place.”
Christianity may be losing its top-down political and cultural influence since these people may have only been cultural or congregational Christians. But Jesus spoke about his followers making an impact in a very different way. He taught that God’s kingdom begins with the last being first, the least becoming the greatest. These Christians who are convictional Christians may very well be holy.
They have the marks of holiness: God trusts them, they are obedient to the truth and they love others.
There was a story by MacKinlay Kantor, “A Girl Named Frankie,” published in Reader’s Digest.
In the middle of a terrible airline crash, an ordinary stewardess named Frankie returned again and again to the crashed plane to retrieve victims. Then the plane exploded, killing this ordinary hero. In the author’s own words,
Frankie lies on a hill now. Toward the north is a hill where Central High School looms and where her principal used to talk about heroes. Maybe three miles away to the southeast is the house where she spent the first nine years of her life—and that is on a hill also…You might imagine that Frankie was up there somewhere, waltzing; she’d always loved to dance.
She could be, too… Except that something made her go back into that airplane cabin 11 times, and 11 times was just one time too many.
A crashed airplane is strictly for stalwart men and asbestos suits and masks. It is not for the petite little Miss Pretty—not unless she is Mary Frances Housley. Then she had such love in her heart that no high-octane explosion can ever blast it out.
To be holy means to love one another even at the risk of one’s own life. How many times might we go with the love of God in our hearts to make a difference in the world? Are you a convictional Christian who has met Jesus and now your whole life is centered on your faith and love in him?
To be holy means to see the world through the eyes of Jesus Christ and ask what would Jesus do in such situations because God’s trust is in us.
To be holy means to be obedient to the truth in Jesus’ teachings of the greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbors and nothing else really matters that much.
To be holy means to put the life and vitality of the church first and foremost by tithing and giving sacrificially trusting in God that everything is possible in God.
To be holy means to wake up in the morning and ponder about how I can proclaim the Good News to others in my words and deeds.
The reason why we are here is that we want to be anointed, to be made holy so that tomorrow when you are at work or in the supermarket or in the office or over the kitchen sink or God forbid, at an airplane crash, that you—God’s holy one—is chosen to be the one.
Let us pray.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty, make us holier as you are holy and made visible to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Lead us to believe that your trust in us empowers us to love our neighbors and our enemies. Teach us to be obedient to the truth found in the Bible and in the Christian way of life that would give us renewal and strength in the days ahead. Bless each and everyone here with your peace and understanding. In Christ we pray. Amen.