Hebrews 12:18-29
August 19, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
I was still a seminarian. But the very first time that I was invited to preach at a Black church was at Rev. Earl Lawson’s church, Emmanuel Baptist in Malden, Massachusetts. Maybe it was the image that I had of Black churches or perhaps it was true, but the pulpit was very high. On the right side of the pulpit was the “Deacons Bench.” This is where all the deacons sat ready to say, “Amen.” And since Joy was with me, Rev. Lawson invited her to sit with the deacons on their bench.
Deeply into my sermon, Rev. Lawson suddenly got up from his seat and shouted at the congregation, “Listen to what he is saying!” Say, “Amen!” And they all said, “Amen!” I sensed that I needed some help in my inexperienced preaching so Rev. Lawson came to my aid. Or maybe, Rev. Lawson heard God’s truth being preached. Whatever it was, the chorus of “Amens” inspired me to speak God’s truth!
Sometimes in our church, you may hear someone shout, or sometimes mutter, “Amen.” It’s a Hebrew word meaning “right on,” or “so be it.” It’s a biblical way of saying, “This is true.” In the gospels, Jesus frequently says, “Amen, I say to you,” usually translated in our English as “Truly, I say to you.”
When we end a prayer with “Amen,” we as a congregation are making an affirmation that this is true.
What is Truth?
How do we know something said is true? Usually when we say, “This is true,” we are saying that we have some preconception of what truth is and then we affirm whatever assertion matches our preconception. So when we say, “That’s true,” we mean something like, “That certainly is true to my experience of the world thus far,” or “That idea is congruent with all of my previous ideas and is therefore unthreatening to my present existence, therefore it seems true.” Makes sense?
For Christians, the Lord’s Prayer determines what is true. Every Sunday we say the Lord’s Prayer. At the end of the prayer, we say, “This is true.” “Amen.”
Here, in the Lord’s Prayer is truth, told to us by the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” But the truth here is more than a set of propositions to which we assent, a set of beliefs. Truth is embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, the one whom we believe to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” He didn’t come saying, “I have come to tell you some truth.” He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” This truth is a person. Amen! We would not know how to pray had not Jesus taught us.
But we can’t know the truth without first being made truthful. All of us long for truth, even though we sometimes live by lies. We lied so we ask God for forgiveness and for our hearts to forgive others. We did bad things so we ask for no more temptations and evil things that we like to do. We must be transformed, forgiven, born again before we can acknowledge the lies upon which our lives are based. Before we can dare to entrust our lives to God to make our lives turn out all right, we need to be telling the truth. Amen.
One reason why some people don’t like coming on Sunday to worship God is that it’s not always a pleasant experience. Jesus promised us that when we worship God, we come to worship “in spirit and in truth.” (Jn 4:24) And sometimes, the truth hurts. Sometimes the truth will make you miserable! Sometimes when I am preaching up here, you are thinking that I am talking about you; that your name is all over the margins of my sermon. You say “Ouch!” because the truth hurts and you say, “Amen!”
Public Corporate Prayer
One way to become truthful is by praying in public. In public, said aloud, our prayers and our lives are held up to the scrutiny of our sisters and brothers in Christ. We are corrected, held accountable to the witness of the saints. We offer our faith to others and they offer their faith to us and we are all strengthened as disciples in the process. I know some of you are not as comfortable praying in public as others. That’s why I end up praying a lot! But every time, you pray the Lord’s Prayer in unison together, you are making your prayer public. We are holding each other accountable for what we are saying to God. Amen!
Two weeks ago at Youth Camp, we prayed a lot out loud, publicly. What we heard were young people telling the truth about their lives under the tall redwoods in chapel or at the morning session after JP, our speaker shared or at commitment night when many youth sought after prayers from the counselors because they sensed the truthfulness of God in their lives. They were saying, “Amen!” “This is true for me.” And we were there praying with them and for ourselves to be made accountable.
There is really no such thing as “private prayers” in the church. Even when we pray alone, at home, in our cars, we are not praying by ourselves since we believe in the communion of saints. The saints down through the ages help us to pray. The norm of prayer is what we do here on Sundays, joining our voices as one. Our norm is public prayer, prayer in Sunday worship, because prayer is about learning how to be truthful. And as anybody knows, it is virtually impossible to be truthful by yourself. Amen!
We need each other to grow in faith with God. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, it’s a corporate experience. We say it together. We say, “Our Father.” We ask God for the forgiveness of “our sins.” We pray for “our bread.” And when we have more fresh daily bread than we need, we must share it with others. None of us can make it in this faith alone. We need sisters and brothers in the church, the saints down through the centuries, those who are on the Faith 500 list to teach us how to pray.
You see, we keep getting it all wrong, praying for the wrong gods, asking for the wrong things. We keep being disappointed when God does not answer our prayers as we thought God ought. We are forever mumbling through the prayer as some disconnected, pious act that we have carefully detached from life. Therefore, we desperately need one another. Therefore, we can’t pray as Jesus taught us without the church. Amen!
In a prison camp in World War II, on a cold, dark evening after a series of beatings, after hundreds of prisoners of war had been marched before the camp commander and harassed for an hour, when the prisoners were returned to their dark barracks and told to be quiet for the rest of the night, someone, somewhere in one of the barracks, began saying the Lord’s Prayer. Some of his fellow prisoners lying next to him began to pray with him.
Their prayer was overheard by prisoners in the next building who joined them. One by one, each set of barracks joined in the prayer until, as the prayer was ending with, “Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,” all of the hundreds of prisoners had joined their voices in a strong, growing, defiant prayer, reaching a thunderous, “Amen!”
And then the camp was silent, but not before the tables of power had been turned, the prisoners had thrown off their chains, and a new world had been sighted, signaled, and stated.
Wherever, since the day that Jesus taught us, this prayer has been prayed, even in the darkest of days, the worst of situations, prisoners have been set free, the blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news proclaimed to them, and a new world, not otherwise available to us, has been created! Amen!
Consuming Fire
Now we must not think that just because we say the Lord’s Prayer that something supernatural is happening. It’s not that we through our efforts are causing God’s kingdom, power, and glory to take place. We might wish we have that power, but we don’t.
In today’s Scripture, Hebrews 12, we see a contrasting of two covenants. The first on Mt. Sinai when the law was given, it was a terrifying moment for Israel. We are reminded here of a time of blazing fire and deep darkness. The voice of God comes with trumpets. Moses knew this as a time of terror. Moses said, “I tremble with fear.” It is a terrifying experience to stand before the living, truthful God.
The second covenant we see is on Mt. Zion, the city of the living God and where Jesus through his blood is the mediator of the new covenant. And even though in Christ we are welcomed to God’s joyous inclusive fellowship, we are warned not to refuse Jesus who is not only speaking the truth about God, but is truth himself. Christ is warning us from heaven not to reject him.
When we come to worship, we come face to face with God. To come before God in worship is an awesome, awe-filled experience. Part of that awesome-ness of worship is that we are not just worshipping “god,” some generic, we-can-make-god-anything-we-please-diety. It is to worship the God who is justice and truth.
For many of us, contemporary Christians, we are not too acquainted with this God. We have made God into an intimate friend, a close confidant. But Hebrews speaks of a God at some distance from us, awesome, terrifying truthfulness.
Hebrews said, God will shake not only the earth but also the heaven. And all of the human created things will be shaken out leaving only God’s kingdom that can’t be shaken. All of our making God the way we pleases will be shaken out leaving the God of justice and truth remaining.
To say “Amen” within Christian worship is not simply to signal our closeness to who God is and what God says but also to affirm the unique other-ness of God. We offer to God our worship with reverence and awe for indeed our God is a consuming fire. God stands against us in order to stand for us. Amen!
Journey Prayer
When Jesus taught us to pray, he is making us more truthful, more faithful. Prayer, truly Christian prayer doesn’t come naturally. It has to be taught to us, even as Jesus taught this prayer to his disciples. Praying “in Jesus’ name” is so against our natural inclination that we have to be taught how to do it. We must memorize the words until they become part of us, until we say them by heart.
Teaching us how to pray is a life-long journey. We begin someplace and we pray to arrive at another place. Even in this Hebrews passage, we see the writer saying that worshipping God is a journey. In verse 18, “You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom.” and in verse 22, we read “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the innumerable angels in festal gathering.”
We go from Mount Sinai to Mount Zion.
We come from the close fellowship we found at Youth Camp to the fellowship we have at FCBC to bear witness and truthfulness.
We grow from saying “private prayers” to saying the Lord’s Prayer publicly together.
Christ transforms for us a dreadful God to a loving God.
Amen!
When Jesus teaches us how to pray, he is making us his disciples. If you want an answer to the question, “How do you know if someone is a Christian?” This isn’t a bad answer: A Christian is someone who has learned, or at least is learning, the Lord’s Prayer.
Last week, I presided over the funeral of Paula Gee, a woman who was a church member long time ago. Eventually I learned that her great grandfather was Mr. Sing Sum, a Baptist colporter missionary who traveled about the western states preaching the Gospel and passing out Christian materials. He was based out of our church.
While Paula Gee’s children were growing up, she must have told the adventurous stories of Sing Sum. At this time of need, Paula’s children called the church seeking for a pastor to lead them through the funeral arrangements for their mother. My sense is that none of Paula’s children attend church now. Maybe it was simply the children’s desire to honor their mother by having a Christian funeral service. But I like to believe that in Paula’s faith that she received from her great grandfather, Sing Sum, her own children have come to discover the meaning of life is found in the truthfulness of God. Amen!
When we sat planning the service, I suggested that we have the Lord’s Prayer printed in the bulletin. They agreed perhaps not knowing what impact this may have on their lives. But I believe that by having it in the service, it may be the beginning for this family to say “Amen!” to God for themselves. It is truly a journey prayer for them.
Praying as Christians
Being able to say the Lord’s Prayer by heart, “out loud,” in unison is a good test for whether or not someone is a disciple. It is someone who has learned the truth about God, a God who gives us daily bread, who forgives us our considerable indebtedness, who commands us to forgive, who helps us in our temptations.
This is the God whom we meet face to face. We recognize that God is not what we like to make God out to be as we please, but a God who is a consuming fire, a God who is unique and other than we are. God stands against us in order to stand for us. Amen!
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus has taught us, our lives are being bent away from their natural inclinations toward God. We are becoming the very holiness, obedience, forgiveness for which we ask in the prayer.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we find our little lives caught up in the great drama of God’s redemption of the world, we are swept up into an adventure more significant than our lives would have been if left to ourselves.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we believe that God’s kingdom cannot be shaken so we give thanks and offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
The last words of the New Testament say that this whole book, the Bible is true. “Amen.” This is true!
“Surely I am coming. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord
Jesus be with all the saints. Amen. (Rev. 22:20-21)
The great theologian Karl Barth once said, “To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” Let us now join our hands and voices in the prayer that our Lord has lovingly taught us, “Our Father…”