How can folks who are not church members find spiritual support when they need it? They can't just go into a church on any given Sunday morning these days, because many churches are not physically worshiping together yet. We individual Christians must be "church" for them! But how can they recognize us? This sermon suggests a way that works quite well.
After all the heat of the summer, we are finally moving into the fall. This year, though, we won’t be able to enjoy many of the traditions that we anticipate every year. The football games of some teams have been cancelled; the season of others have been shortened; and, in many cases, only families of players will be permitted to watch the games in person. Fall festivals are at risk of being cancelled. The class reunions that usually take place right around now have been put off, too. I was supposed to have my 50th high school class reunion this year, but that's not happening, either. We are planning to meet in our 51st year, instead, and everyone is hoping that all our classmates who are around this year will still be around next year to celebrate with us. I was looking forward to that class reunion! I was anticipating meeting friends that I haven’t seen in years, and to renewing acquaintances with people I didn’t hang out with in high school.
The last reunion I attended was my 30th one – 20 long years ago – and what I remember most about it was that many of us didn’t look exactly the way that we did when we graduated from Piqua Central High School back in 1970. Some of us had gained a few pounds here and there; and many of my male friends had significantly less hair than they did when we graduated. Even the behavior of some folks had changed! People I remembered as being shy (if not withdrawn) were outgoing and personable; and some of the ones who were big jerks back then had become almost human. And that was 20 years ago! We will all have changed even more by the time my reunion rolls around next year. I hope that the organizing committee will supply us with name tags. I know that I’ll need to look at a whole lot of name tags so that I can recognize people who looked very different at our high school graduation!
The church has changed, too, just like the people with whom I graduated. In the past five months, we have moved from worshiping in a physical sanctuary to worshiping virtually; and we don’t know how long it will be before we can safely gather again. It makes me wonder how people would ever find us if they needed us. Right now, they can’t just appear in our sanctuary on Sunday morning, because we aren’t there! That begs the larger question, how do people recognize the church at all? How do people know that all of us are part of a community that follows Jesus Christ? We don’t look any different from anyone else. Most of us don’t wear signs that say “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” Oh, we might wear a tee shirt now and then that has a faith-based message on it, but most of the time our faith in Christ isn’t something that people can see.
Maybe we need to wear nametags. Everybody at a 50th class reunion needs a nametag so that people can recognize each other; so we Christians should have something like that, too. But I’m not going to wear a physical nametag that says “Christian” on it when I go to Kroger or to the Y. No, that nametag needs to be something else, something that we take with us everywhere we go. What about our behavior? Maybe that should be the nametag that says “Christian” on it. That’s what Peter is getting at when he sets down all those guidelines for behavior that we heard in this morning’s scripture reading. (I Peter 3:8-9) He offers quite a list of qualities that Christians should embody: sympathy, compassion, humility, and respect for others, for example. There’s nothing new in his list, though. We’ve all been told to do these things a thousand times before! We know that this is how Christians are supposed to behave. Actually, this is how we want everyone to behave in a civilized society! But Peter presents one item just a little differently from all the rest (I Peter 3:13-16) After he tells us to behave like Christians should, he says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” Peter doesn’t tell his readers to hope; he assumes that they already do. Hoping isn’t something that Christians should try hard to do, like showing respect or sympathy. Hope should be part of our Christian DNA!
If you take a look at the rest of Peter’s letter, you’ll find that this isn’t the only place he mentions hope. Almost as soon as he begins his letter, he reminds his readers that they have been given “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3). Although he doesn’t use the word “hope” itself very often, it’s the foundation of everything that he’s talking about. We readers today might be surprised to hear about that hope, because the church to which Peter was writing was in the middle of persecution. We aren’t sure exactly what kind of persecution it was, but we can be sure that the congregation was suffering for their faith. This little letter refers to suffering over and over again! Peter talks about suffering “grief in all kinds of trials”. He encourages his readers to suffer for doing good, rather than for doing evil. He even reminds them of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that awaited him after he had persevered. Hope in the middle of that kind of suffering is pretty tough; but Peter not only assumes that they have hope, he tells them that they should be ready to talk about it! I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t expect people who are suffering to be talking about hope. Who would ever walk up to the victim of an accident and ask, “So what are you hoping for?” It seems like the very worst kind of black humor! But that’s exactly what Peter is telling this community. He wanted them to be talking about their hope to the bloodthirsty mob as they were entering the arena to be torn apart by wild animals!
Maybe we should consider the possibility that “hope” is what sets the church apart from the rest of the world. Maybe our hope in Christ and our trust in the power of God’s grace is our nametag that tells the world that we are Christians! The long list of qualities that Peter tells his readers to have – compassion, sympathy, and respect for others – are all desirable behaviors, and even expected; but many people in our society do those things. They aren’t exclusive to Christians. But hope in Christ – that’s what the church has to offer, and by that hope anyone should be able to recognize a Christian, regardless of what creed we recite or where we gather or how we worship! I’m not talking about a Pollyanna kind of hope; that sugary “Oh, it’s not so bad after all” kind of attitude that ignores what’s happening. Several weeks ago, I shared a sermon with you that offered the insight that hope is what is left when everything else is despair. One of the last lines of that sermon said, “Keep kicking despair until it bleeds hope.” Hope may seem like only a little seed in a great big manure pile of despair; but a seed of hope can take root and blossom in the middle of the very worst that life can throw at us. Hope is what keeps us going after property, possessions, and loved ones are lost to a hurricane or a tornado or a wildfire. Hope is what keeps us loving our family and friends when they call us names because of the political party we belong to or the candidate for whom we plan to vote. Hope is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other in the middle of a pandemic with no end in sight. The world needs that kind of hope right now – the kind of hope that we proclaim because we’re Christians.
So let me suggest this morning the nametag that we Christians can wear. If we want to be recognized by the rest of the world – if we want to help the rest of the world – if we want to be true followers of Jesus Christ – maybe our nametag should say, “Hello! I have hope!” That’s the nametag that I plan to be wearing! I pray that you will wear it, too.
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