Luke 15:1-10
September 12, 2010
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When Joy and I lived in Pennsylvania and driving to the Exton Community Baptist Church where we were members, we would pass by this house tugged in the woods under tall pine trees. This home had one of those greenhouses for outdoor living. We can see the couple probably in their bathrobes sipping coffee, reading the Sunday paper and having a leisurely breakfast. We often would comment on how we wish we could do that someday. And I was not a church pastor then!
Living in Sausalito is another scene but not too different from living in Pennsylvania. There’re fewer tall pine tree groves and land is so valuable here that houses are not easily tugged into the woods but rather they are fairly close to each other. But what is the same is that Joy and I are usually the only people on the road driving to church. In fact, we get to church in about 15 minutes with no traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge and in San Francisco.
Most people spend Sunday mornings taking it easy after a long week of work, they claim. Some go fishing, golfing, shopping in the malls, sleeping in or even leisurely eating breakfast in one’s greenhouse living room.
Some may argue that they don’t need to go to church because they can worship God by themselves. The real explanation is who needs to get up, get dressed, drive in, and be stressed out being asked to donate money for the experience?
As pastors when we hear this explanation for not coming to church, we honestly see them as excuses or rationalizations. While it’s true that you can worship God alone, most people who make such an argument don’t actually spend their alone time worshipping. When they’re climbing a mountain, walking on a golf course, sitting by a stream or lazing home in bed, chances are pretty good they aren’t thinking about God at all. And even if they were, we Baptist preachers would say that it isn’t quite the same.
These other activities place fewer demands on them than does coming to church. No one will pass offering plates among the Sunday golfers. No one will bother Sunday morning joggers with pesky questions about how they’ll address the world’s flood victims. No one will tell Sunday morning fishermen that they must repent and believe the gospel before that big one gets away. When our son, Greg was playing competitive soccer in high school and his coach was Irish Catholic who went to church on Saturday night, we told him that Greg would not be playing soccer on Sunday morning. If he wanted him on the team, the coach had to respect us going to church on Sunday morning. He did.
Today is the first Sunday after Labor Day Weekend that traditionally signifies the end of summer and vacation and the beginning of school and work. When the new church year begins, this is a perfect time to talk about why we gather together as a church.
Growing the Church
As the pastor, I have a vested interest in seeing our attendance up and our membership grow. It’s survival.
Here’s a story about Benjamin Franklin in 1756. There was a chaplain who accompanied a volunteer militia led by Franklin. To defend the Pennsylvania colony against Indian attacks, Franklin led his recruits in the building of a fort in the Blue Mountain region. Once established inside the wall, the chaplain—‘a zealous Presbyterian,” as Franklin called him in his autobiography—complained that few of the men were showing up for their worship services.
Franklin, ever a practical man, solved that problem by putting the chaplain in charge of the daily ration of rum. Franklin told the preacher, “It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were only to distribute it out after prayers, you would have them all about you.”
The chaplain accepted the duty, and Franklin reports that thereafter, “never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended.”
Notice that beginning today, our ushers will only be distributing St. Mary’s Garage parking stickers when you are leaving the sanctuary after each worship services. This we hope will solve our worship attendance problem.
While we invite you to come to church, attend worship services and Sunday school classes, share in fellowship with your sisters and brothers in Christ over lunch, there are far greater spiritual reasons why we want you to come to church. Surely, we need your regular support but the primary reasons for your attendance and involvement are that you need the church as much as the church needs you.
Community
The first reason for “why church”–is that you need to belong in a community. A faith community provides instruction, support, feedback and accountability. It brings order to your life. Attending worship is an important way of putting the events of our lives in helpful perspective. We all benefit from participation in church life. After a typically long day at church on the way home when the streets are now crowded with tourists and shoppers, Joy and I would often talk about all the wonderful things that happened that day. We become energized after spending the day with you.
Here is again the familiar illustration of a longtime church member who had always attended regularly but then suddenly stopped coming. After a few weeks, the pastor decided he’d better make a visit. He went to the man’s house and found him alone, sitting in front of a blazing fire. The parishioner invited the pastor in and directed him to a comfortable chair near the fire.
After an initial greeting, the two sat in silence, watching the roaring fire dance over the logs. Then the pastor took the fire tongs and picked up a brightly burning ember, which he then placed to one side of the hearth by itself. That lone ember’s flame began to flicker and eventually died. Soon it was a cold, gray coal, with no life or warmth whatsoever.
Then the pastor picked up that coal with the tongs, and placed it back into the middle of the fire. Within seconds, it began to glow, with light and warmth, ignited by the flames around it.
As the pastor rose to leave, the parishioner said, “Thank you for the sermon, Pastor. I’ll be back in church next Sunday.”
Who knows if that story ever really happened, but the truth it presents is plain enough: Our individual faith gives off more light and warmth when we are together supporting each other throughout life’s journey. So, we come to church because it satisfies our need for community and in church, it’s a faith community based on God’s love.
Worship God
There’s nowhere in the Bible that it says, “Go to church every Sunday.” But I know from experience that when I do miss a Sunday at church, I feel that something is missing. So at Family Camp last weekend, we had church outside under the tall redwoods.
While the Bible doesn’t instruct us to go to church on Sundays, it has many texts in which God tells the Israelites to worship him.
In 2 Kings 17:35-36, God says, “You shall not worship other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, but you shall worship the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm; you shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice.
Didn’t God bring us out of the hopelessness and loneliness of early Chinese sojourners living and working in Chinatown while their wives and children were still back in China by the missionaries bringing the Gospel good news and establishing the Chinese Baptist Mission? Didn’t God bring us out of the rumbles and fire of the 1906 earthquake and rebuilt our church like out of the ashes, a phoenix comes? And didn’t God watch over us when we were very shaky and fragile in the 1990s to become a vibrant and thriving healthy church today? This is a good reason to come to church to worship God.
In the fourth commandment, God said, “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” As Christians we know that we are to live out our devotion to God not just on Sunday—one day but every day and all the days of the week. Our lifestyle is to be changed in order to be consistent with our covenant with God.
Jesus was one who sometimes broke the Sabbath rules, doing things like healing people on that day. As he put it, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). This means that when we are living a life of worshiping God consistently, even when a sabbath day comes, we are still ask to live out a life of faithful discipleship of peace and justice. In Acts 2:46-47, we see that the first members of the early church worshiped daily, “Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple…praising God.”
And finally in Hebrews 10:24-25, the writer said, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another…”
When we take all these passages together, we have the second reason for “why church,” a biblical basis for us to come to church.
Jesus Wants Us Together
Now I have almost come to the end of my sermon without mentioning our Scripture lesson for today. The parable of the lost sheep tells us that the shepherd had 100 sheep, but one wanders off. He leaves the 99 presumably in a safe place, and searches for the lost one until he finds it. And when he does, he brings it back to the flock and then asks his friends and neighbors to rejoice with him.
According to the text, Jesus told this parable in response to some Pharisees and scribes who were grumbling because Jesus was welcoming known sinners to listen to him. He was even eating with them.
If Jesus was the shepherd in this parable and we perhaps like the Pharisees and scribes are the sheep, we like to wander off. When we do this, Jesus the good shepherd hunts us down and brings us back to the flock. If we are not found, there’s a good chance that the sheep might be eaten by a wolf or lion. The church is the place where the Shepherd drags in wandering sheep. When we come back, we are repentant of our wandering ways. Jesus wants us to come to church like the Shepherd wants all 100 sheep in his flock to be together.
The second parable is about the lost coin. This has a richer meaning than a woman who just lost a little bit of change out of her purse. When a woman got married, she was given a headband with ten silver coins to wear, much like we exchange rings today. To lose one of the coins from the headband would have been an embarrassment to the woman and her husband. She would have been branded as careless with her possessions.
Furthermore, the coins bore the imprint of a ruler, and were very valuable when put in circulation. When the coin is out of circulation, it’s useless and can’t buy anything.
There are two ways that people get “lost”—either they wander away out of their foolishness or they get misplaced. These parables emphasize two things. The first is that being lost means to be out of place. The reason the shepherd searched for the sheep and the woman searched for the coin was because they weren’t where they were supposed to be. But second, they were “useless” when they were lost.
When we don’t know Christ, we are useless. When we are out of circulation, God cannot use us in a purposeful way. We miss out on experiencing the love of God, and the blessings he has for us.
But to be found, it means we are back in place with God and back in service with a purpose in life for others. We are not in danger. Therefore, heaven rejoices and we call others to rejoice with us. The third reason for “why church” is that Jesus wants us to be found and be put back into circulation for God’s work.
These are the reasona why we come to church!
Let us pray.
Life is too short and too hard to try to make it alone. But thanks be to God, we aren’t alone. Lord, you have placed us here in this community of faith, surrounded by brothers and sisters who love us and care for us, brothers and sisters of faith, on whom we can fully rely on when times get tough. Help us to be faithful in our commitment to the life and mission of this church so that through our humble service, we may share in your glory and mercy. Thank you for finding us when we are lost and returning us to where we belong so that we may be useful for your purpose. In Christ, we pray. Amen.