August 17, 2006
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the Asian American Baptist Caucus Pastors & Seminarians Retreat, Seattle, Washington
Before we pack our bags to go somewhere, we usually check the weather to see if it’s going to be warm or cold, wet or dry. When we think about Seattle, we often expect it to be cloudy and rainy! If we are packing for Hawaii, we’ll have shorts, swimsuits, sandals, and sunscreen. If we’re heading up to the mountains, we’ll pack in thick socks, hiking shoes and water bottles.
But how do we pack for an Asian Caucus Pastors and Seminarians Retreat? How then shall we live? How then shall we dress?
Many of us have been to American Baptist biennial meetings before. These biennials are usually at the city convention centers in the midst of other conventions, business meetings, social events and so forth. And before all the Baptists register and adorn their name badges and begin carrying their convention tote bags, I sometime would look at random people on the streets and say to myself, “That person looks like a Baptist!” Do we American Baptists wear distinctive clothes that we can pick them out of a crowd? Is there something about us that makes us look like a Christian?
A man was coming out of church one day, and the preacher was standing at the door as he always is to shake hands. He grabbed the man by the hand and pulled him aside.
The pastor said to him, “You need to join the Army of the Lord!”
The man quickly replied, “I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor.”
Pastor questioned, “How come I don’t see you except at Christmas and Easter?”
He whispered back, “I’m in the secret service.”
One can’t always tell who people are simply by what we see externally.
In some of our larger cities, public schools are going through a radical transformation. Discipline problems had gone down, attendance had gone up, and the place had been transformed. When asked, “What is the major reason for this transformation?” a teacher said, “It’s the uniforms.”
The new principal required all the students to wear uniforms. There were amazing results. Overnight, discipline problems vanished. Many of the tensions that they previously felt because their parents could not afford to buy them the kinds of clothes to enable them to compete between the boys and the girls, all vanished. The school was transformed.
On the face of it, the admonition to all wear uniforms sounds rather superficial. I can still remember how rebellious I was when the college I attended many years ago required us to wear a sports jacket and a tie for dinner. Actually, when I was on a cruise with Herb Tsuchiya last month, the ship’s maitre d expected us to wear a tuxedo or a dark suit on formal nights. Does dressing up for dinner make the food taste any better? On the face of it, it’s rather superficial. Is what I’m wearing makes me any more a preacher then if I was in a t-shirt and shorts tonight? Is that all it involves? If you want to be a police officer, go out, get a police uniform, put it on, and you will be one!
Surely being a Christian is more than simply putting on “the whole armor of God.” Is that all it is? Put on your Sunday best, look dull and dignified, and people will think that you are religious?
Of course, it is more than that, but it is certainly not less than that. Elsewhere, Paul says in Romans 13 that we ought to “put on Christ.”
Trying to Believe
There was a man who spent much of his life trying to figure out whether or not he was a Christian. He is a very intellectual sort of person, very intelligent. He had real troubles with various Christian beliefs.
Then one day he said, “Well, I’ve decided to stop thinking about Jesus and start living with Jesus. I have decided that, though there is much that mystifies and troubles me about what I don’t know about Jesus, I need to go with what I know, which is Jesus.” This man was trying out some clothes of faith—trying to put on Jesus.
If we are really honest with ourselves, most of us have some things about living out our faith that trouble us. We don’t have all the Christian doctrines down pack. We don’t know all of the famous passages in the Bible. We can’t seem to know the mind of Christ on volatile issues that divide us. But what we do know is that when we just try to believe, it will come to us. Sometimes it is in making believe that we come to believe.
The church once spoke of a “baptism of desire.” To receive the power of baptism, as God intended, the person participating in baptism had to at least desire to effect that which baptism promised. We say, “Just go ahead, go through the motions, and we promise that eventually it will come to you. You’ll get it. God will give you that which you now only desire.”
Faith is something that we must act like we have in order to have it. Or, as John Wesley once said to his preachers, “Preach faith until you have it.”
Maybe the way to become a full, active Christian is to get up, get dressed up in your Baptist clothes on Sunday morning, participate in the rituals of the church, open the hymnal when we tell you, open your mouth and sing when we invite you, and then one day you wake up and you are a Christian.
There’s a woman who was studying to be an actor. She was asked, “What was one of the most important aspects of becoming an actor?”
“Putting on the makeup,” she replied. “I know that may sound a bit superficial, in the literal sense of the word, but it’s more than skin deep. A good makeup job is one that the audience can’t see. How can a thin layer of grease and color make you an actor? But I realized that the makeup is not so much for the audience as it is for you. When you sit there before a mirror and spend thirty minutes putting on this makeup, you participate in the transformation. You take on a character by taking on the mask of that character. You are different. In Greek drama they always wore masks. I don’t think we’ve ever gotten beyond that. It is too difficult to take on the role of another without some help. That is where the makeup comes in.”
Maybe we make a mistake in thinking that the Christian faith has got to get deep within you, got to become something that you really feel or deeply understand, deep within. Maybe this faith is also something without.
Armor of God
Since most of us are preachers here, Ephesians 6 is a passage of Scripture that many of us feel too familiar with. We have preached on it many times before. We’ve seen countless kid’s crafts of shield and helmets. Sometimes we have taken this passage and used it to make the point that Christians need to be strong in fortitude and aggressive in our beliefs especially against enemies like the “wiles of the devil.”
While with the exception of the sword, the armor of God is all defensive armor and not offensive weaponry, we have seen people who claim to be Christians attack others. God has not given us spears and canons to attack. He recommends to us a shield, a breastplate and a helmet as part of our protection. He bids us to don a belt to under gird our defense and shoes that “will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.” And when we consider the example of Jesus confronting Satan during his desert temptations (Mt. 4), even a sword which is the Word of God can be a defensive weapon to stop the enemy from advancing.
In God’s mind, the armed Christian is on the defense, not on the offense. But what happens when the church employs defensive weapons to offensively engage the crowds of people in our culture? We end up acting like we are so sure about ourselves; that our faith that is internally understood gives us license to take on the world offensively.
Christians claim that based on our deeply held beliefs, we would spend more energy protesting abortion clinics and their patients than we would opening up our homes and wallets to promote adoption of the babies of those pregnancies which may be terminated. Some so called “preachers” stand on busy city street corners, armed with a megaphone and preaches messages of fire, brimstone and damnation while other Christian political leaders even call for the assassination of anti-American foreign leaders. Some focus on the family, yet the divorce rates for the church are the same as for those outside the church—if not higher. We proclaim our faith through the fish symbols on our car fenders but these cars still cut people off and fail to kindly let others merge in front of them.
Sometimes when we think that we are so sure about our beliefs that we go so far as to attack others when we don’t agree with us, we are not putting on the armor of God that is defensive at all but one that is offensive!
Jesus doesn’t say think deeply of me until you are really sure about who I am. Jesus simply says, “Follow me.” Put one foot in front of the other, stumble after me, imitate me, try to walk and live as I walk and live. Act like you are a disciple. Make believe that these folks beside you are your brothers and sisters. Eventually, it will come to you.
Trying Out Faith
When we pastors invite people for Baptism, we ask them questions like, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ…Do you believe in the Holy Spirit…? We ask questions of the sort that we expect solid and firm answers.
Maybe we just ought to say, “Give us ten percent of your income. Go out and tell somebody that you are a Christian. Invite at least one person to church during the next month of Sundays. Put on Christ until Christ gets to you.”
During the 1960s when the Vietnam War was raging, through much prayer and the searching of Scriptures, I decided that pacifism was the most Christian stance to take in the matters of violence and self-defense. When people asked me about the upcoming draft, I shared with them that I was a pacifist. At this point I was mostly a pacifist in my head, not in my heart. I had all of the good reasons why pacifism made good biblical sense, but I had not the complete commitment to pacifism as a way of life.
People often argued with me when I told them that I was a pacifist. Some of them who served in previous U.S. wars became angry with me. They asked if I would desert the U.S. and run away to Canada. They asked me about my reasons. They attacked my reasons. “What would you do if your family were being attacked…” and all the rest.
After some time, I became more articulate in my beliefs and became more convinced as I was trying to convince others. Then one day, I woke up and realized that I was a pacifist. I really, deeply believed. I could live in no other way. The people, by trying to argue me out of pacifism, by attacking my reasons and all the rest, had made me a true Christian pacifist.
My pacifism didn’t happen instantaneously. It was a long and slow journey that led me to becoming a conscientious objector. My faith in God grew deeper as I intersected my faith with my civic responsibilities.
For the past eight years now, I have been the pastor of First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco. In those beginning years, I wasn’t exactly sure what a pastor was to do. Previously, I have only been an assistant pastor. And for over 20 years, I was a denominational bureaucrat as they would say. What do I know about being a senior pastor?
I pulled out the robe I received from my wife over 30 years ago for my ordination. I started buying come commentaries. I subscribed to some sermon preparation journals. I began to hear people referring to me as “Pastor Don” and I learned to claim for myself my new role. I learned in time to put on the “armor” of a pastor; to wear the Baptist dress code as a pastor. And to this day, God is still remaking me every day to becoming a more faithful pastor than I started of as 8 years ago.
As Asian American Baptist pastors and church leaders, maybe we don’t need to agree on every issue that confronts us that may cause to divide us. Perhaps all we need to do is to meet faithfully in the name of Christ Jesus and in time, we learn to become the Body of Christ.
Put on Christ
Jesus simply says, “Follow me.” Put one foot in front of the other, stumble after me, imitate me, try to walk and live as I walk and live. Act like you are a disciple; make believe that these folks beside you are your brothers and sisters. Eventually, it will come to you.
So the writer of Ephesians tells Christians of that day, “Don’t go out there poorly dressed.” If you want to play football, put on a helmet. If you are going to be any good at soccer, get the right shoes. If you want to play decent softball, buy a bat and start taking some swings.
If you are going to be a disciple, put on faith, dress up in love, clothe yourselves with good intentions, and wrap the promises of God around you. Read the Bible, even if you don’t understand all of it. Pray, even if you don’t feel like it. Confess your faith, even when you don’t always 100 percent believe it. Then, having dressed well for the challenge, go out and live it.
How then shall we live? Put on the whole armor of God and you will become that which you profess. How then shall we live? Try wearing that Baptist dress code and you will be that which you desire.
Let us pray.
O God of the universe and the maker of each one of us here, equip us with the confidence to begin following you in our journey of faithful service and discipleship. Remind us that when we humbly dedicate our lives to Christ that you will lead us in your time to know your will and purpose. Show us how to love one another as Jesus loves. And grant us the wisdom to live and be strong in the Lord. Bless each and everyone here and protect them as they minister in your world in Christ we pray. Amen.