Sermon on Mission February 25, 2024 2nd Sunday of Lent San Carlos Community Churches

In our readings today (Genesis 17:1-7; 15-16 and Mark 8:31-38, below) we hear God’s call to Abraham and Jesus’s call to us.? We hear God call a person – Abraham - to found a nation and we hear a person - Jesus – call a community, his rather small community of followers, to found a new sort of nation, a church.? Every time we gather as a church on Sunday morning, we hear and celebrate these ancient calls; we affirm that community of saints from Abraham to Moses to Jesus to Paul, all of the saints; a numberless multitude including the famous and not famous, male and female, literate and illiterate, including this little community of saints here in the city of San Carlos in the state of California.

We here are called, as Abraham was called, in a particular time and place, to a take a journey of faith.? On that journey we dedicate ourselves to the power of God, that force in life that is somehow greater than life.? Whether we use traditional or contemporary language we testify that the God of Abraham is our God still; that the god of Jesus and Paul is our God still; that the God of Augustine and Monica, Constantine and Helena, Saint Francis and Saint Clare; Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, is our God still.

We testify that this force in life greater than life itself is still stirring us, still moving us.? The Bible begins with movement.? The spirit of God moved upon the deep; stirred the waters.? From that movement all movement proceeds.? In honor of that first movement, in honor of the call to Abraham, in honor of Jesus’s call to his disciples, we gather here every Sunday to hear the word of God in the Bible, to hear that word explained, proclaimed and updated as best we can; we sing hymns, we lift our hearts in prayer.? We share our triumphs and tragedies with one another; share the good news and the difficult news with one another; having faith that all news ultimately is good news.

There has been no shortage of news in the past couple of weeks.? The Super Bowl disappointed us.? A gunfight that injured innocent bystanders in Kansas City celebration has shocked us; all sorts of violence from around the world dispirits us.

Here we have just begun what in the northeast is just a punishing season, climate-wise, of winter beginning to wane, the sap is running in the sugar maples, but the wintry mix of rain, snow, sleet and hail will go on for another 6 weeks or so.? While here, it is spring: birds singing, flowers bursting into bloom, hillsides lush and green from all the rain we've had.

Since it is spring and time for a renewal of life and activity, and since our financial situation has greatly improved, we are turning our thoughts to mission and membership. ?Let me begin what will be a series of sermons on mission and membership by noting that the most famous and influential evangelist of our time passed away this time of year just six years ago:

Billy Graham was born in November of 2018 and passed away just 6 years ago on February 21, 2018.? He was almost 100 years old.?

If you are my age or older, Billy Graham was part of our lives for as long as we can remember.? He was often in the newspaper.? He would show up on television, on his own television specials, on the Jack Paar Show, Art Linkletter's House Party, interviewed by Woody Allen and Phil Donahue.? You could not be unaware that this living legend, the latest of a long line of famous American preachers and evangelists, would be speaking at some massive gathering in a stadium near you at some point in your life.? You would see the posters on telephone poles.

I watched a documentary a few days ago about his remarkable life and learned some things about him I did not know.? I knew that he quietly supported the civil rights movement, but I did not know that one afternoon in the south he personally removed the velvet rope that divided the black from the white attenders at one of his famous outdoor performances.? And I did not know that he invited Dr. Martin Luther King to pray at the beginning of his program one evening at Madison Square Garden in New York.?

I heard him preach at Dartmouth College’s hockey arena in the early 80s.? What impressed me most about him is that he began his presentation by telling a number of jokes at his own expense.? In the midst of a discussion on marriage he confessed that in his own marriage he had never contemplated divorce but had contemplated murder any number of times.? And he told about being on an airplane one day when the man behind him, having obviously had too much to drink, began to behave loudly and obnoxiously.? Having failed by other means to calm him down, the flight attendant pointed and said, “You had better behave yourself – that’s Dr. Billy Graham seated in front of you.”? The man then promptly stood up, extended his hand and said, “Doctor Graham!? I am so pleased to meet you.? I have always been a great admirer of yours!”

These stories still ring true and provided a good way for Dr. Graham to make his point about fallen human nature, that human nature is far from perfect and that his preaching didn’t always work

The fact of the matter, and on this almost all Christian theologians agree, is that human beings need redemption.? All the scientific gizmos on earth may make us smarter but do not make us better people.

Why did God make us so?? Why did God make us in such a way that we so desperately need redemption?? Billy Graham never explained that better than anyone else, and never tried to, but his preaching - and all good preaching, I think - was all about the divine love that is the only cure for the human condition.?

Throughout his life, Dr. Graham argued that the reform of the individual and society must come from something deeper than legislation.? He said: “The fruit of the spirit is supernatural love given by God. ?The message of Jesus is from age to age:? Come and change the world with me.”?

Jesus did not form a government; Jesus did not write a constitution; he did not invent a new phone; he founded a church.? And that's what we're about here.? The purpose of church remains the same from age to age, to put us in touch with that the love that moves the sun and all the stars, “l’amore che muove il sole e l’altere stella,” as Dante put it over 600 years ago.? Supernatural love forgives us and enables us to forgive others.

This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, from age to age the same; we need it now as much as ever.

Genesis 17:1-7; 15-16

?When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.? And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly."? Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him,? "Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations.? No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.? I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you.? And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.”

And God said to Abraham, "As for Sar'ai your wife, you shall not call her name Sar'ai, but Sarah shall be her name.? I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her; I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall come from her."?

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Mark 8:31-38

And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.? And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.? But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said,

"Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men."? And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them,

"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.? For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.? For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life??? For what can a man give in return for his life??? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."?

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