Sharing Good News
Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church
On September 26, 2004
By the Rev. Thomas C. Davis, III, Ph.D.
Texts:
John 14: 1-14
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going. Thomas said to him, ?Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?' Jesus said to him, ?I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.' Philip said to him, ?Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.' Jesus said to him, ?Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, "Show us the Father"? Do you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works then these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
John 14: 15-31
If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.' Judas not Iscariot) said to him, ?Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?' Jesus answered him, ?Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me. ?I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, "I am going away, and I am coming to you." If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me; but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us be on our way.
Sermon Text
The other day Alice and I were going down the highway doing sixty or so in our new gas miserly Toyota Prius when an S.U.V. pulled alongside in the left hand lane and just stayed there. She and I glanced furtively at the driver, who was pointing to our car and gesturing. First I thought we must have a flat or something, but our almost brand new car was handling fine, and wasn't making any strange noises, so I ruled that out. The guy in the left lane kept even with me, and kept gesturing. Then I thought this might be the M.O. where the crook gets you to pull over, thinking there's something dreadfully wrong with your car, and then robs you. I thought of speeding up. Our new car has the pickup, but I decided against that because I didn't know what he would do, so I just kept steady. By now my heart was pounding. Then Alice says to me, "I think he wants to tell us something." So, I roll down the window, and the guy rolls down his and he shouts: "How many miles?" "Oh," says Alice, "he wants to know what mileage we're getting." Much relieved, I holler back, "Fifty!" He grins, signs his admiration with a raised thumb, and speeds off.
I have become an evangelist for the Toyota Prius. I take people for rides and they want one. A happy customer is the best salesman. You've experienced that, certainly. When you come upon something really good, you want to tell others about it-- even something simple, like a new cake recipe, or a book or CD just released. You're delighted, and so, you want to share your satisfaction and joy. You've become an evangelist. Who knew?!
This is Evangelism Sunday. Now, I know that word gives some of you the phantods, as Mark Twain used to say. It conjures up unsavory associations: smarmy pamphlet bearers, ringing your doorbell too early on a Saturday morning, making like they love you, but never enough to listen to your point of view; know-it-all preachers bellowing narrow mindedness and hate and passing it off as righteousness; smooth talking radio hucksters milking their adorers by guilt and fear and a guarantee of healing. Oh yes, I can understand why the e-word has a bad ring in many a citizen's ear, in many a Christian's ear, too. But this morning please set aside such unsavory experiences, and consider with me whether the old, old story of Jesus really is good news worth sharing; and if so, then how you yourself, a satisfied consumer of that good news, might share it with others in a way that that is sensitive and respectful, instead of presumptuous and manipulative.
I don't want to prejudice your language as you try to share your experience of living in the light of Jesus. It would be much better if you would invent your own terms to fit your own experience, because skeptics often hear faith talk as group-speak, which makes people feel secure and good about themselves, but doesn't have a demonstrable basis in common experience. For instance, as a pastor I could coach you to communicate how Jesus is your "Lord and savior." That's certainly a standard evangelistic phrase. But if you haven't made such language your own, if you haven't figured out how the terms, "Lord "and "savior", relate to your very own experience of living in the light of Jesus, then when you try to share your faith, although your message may come across as sincere, it will not likely be convincing. Think about how I opened my sermon. I said that I had become an evangelist for the Toyota Prius. That's because I have driven one for several months and I'm a satisfied customer. So, when I share the good news about that car with my neighbors, they believe me when I tell them that it will go fifty miles on a gallon of gas, and that it will get up and go?not wimpy at all! So you see, I'm not just passing along something I've read in a brochure or heard other customers say. I'm passing along my own experience, and that is generally received with great interest. It seems to me that telling good news about Jesus works in a similar way. If you pass along something you've heard about but don't know from your own experience, then your message may not seem credible. But if you speak enthusiastically about something that you know about because you have lived it, well that's another story entirely.
When you open the gospels of Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, you find language that hadn't been around long enough to become group-speak. You find language that was fresh. Oh, it was borrowed from the Jewish experience of God to be sure, but it was being stretched to enable seekers to grasp something new and astonishing, something the authors of those gospels had experienced themselves and wanted to pass on to their friends and their children. Here was their good news: There is?we tell you this because we know it by our own experience?there is a continuing presence of the Spirit of an incomparable man whom we knew well, a man so full of God's love (grace upon grace) that he was like God enfleshed. And when you open yourself to his Spirit, you will become a new person. We tell you this on the basis of our own experience: Under the influence of the Spirit of Jesus, your life takes on new meaning, for then you have someone eternal to live for, and to live with.
Friends, that's the gist of the good news that the gospels lay out for us. I like John's gospel best, because I think he talks about Jesus in a way that makes the experience of a living Lord most available to modern people. John says that no one has ever seen God. But Jesus made God known to us, because he was so very close to God. He was "in the bosom of the father," as John says in his first chapter. And in this morning's reading from the fourteenth chapter John gives another precious gift to those who are separated from the man Jesus by some two thousand years. John says that God will send an advocate who will keep reminding the adorers of Jesus of everything he said and did, an advocate who will comfort and support them. The connection between God and Jesus and this spiritual advocate is so tight in John's fourteenth chapter that we can see them as inseparable. Jesus is in God, and God is in Jesus. And the promised advocate is not a substitute for Jesus, but is his continuing spiritual presence with the community of people who once experienced the man Jesus as God-with-us.
I love John's gospel because the language he uses to talk about God and Jesus and Spirit meshes with my own experience. My mother and my Sunday school teachers taught me about God, and about Jesus. But the Spirit taught me about the Spirit. I know about the Spirit of Jesus because of my own experience--personally, inwardly, and also living in community with other people who are so obviously animated by that Spirit. John's testimony about the Spirit of Jesus confirms my own ken. But I think if I had not known about God or Jesus through my raising, I still would know the Spirit. John says that the light of Christ, which I take to be the Spirit of Jesus, enlightens every person who comes into the world?every person, whether he or she knows who's shining that light or not. There is a missionary from abroad who said that when people have the gospel preached to them, it's not as if privileged senders from outside communicate to utterly ignorant and passive receivers. Rather, the good news concerning Jesus is a confirmation and a deepening of something that the eager listeners already knew, at least in part. If you believe that Christ enlightens every person who comes into the world, it seems to me that you have to understand evangelism that way, not as the conveying of a saving message from an in-group to the rest of the world, but rather, as the fleshing out of good news which people have already inchoately sensed. So, you could say that evangelism is by no means a one-way communication, but rather, a conversation by which people sharpen their common experience of the Spirit of God as it takes shape in the story of Jesus.
Many Christians are interested in evangelism because they love their churches, and they think that sharing the good news about Jesus brings new members into their churches. However, telling the good news about Jesus, either by words or deeds, is not what brings people into a church. Merely telling or showing is not enough. The experience of God's Spirit is what brings people into a church, and holds them there. And people come to a realization of how the Spirit of God is present in their lives when they hear other people talking about the Spirit in their own lives, and also demonstrating by their actions that the Spirit is present. I can't emphasize enough the importance of making ourselves available to that Spirit, so that when we speak, we speak about whom we know, not merely about what we've been told. Consequently, we have to make time for the Spirit. As the old hymn says, we have to take time to be holy. Have you ever deepened a friendship with someone whom you spend little time with? How can you or I hope to attract any new people to the body of Christ if all we have to share with them is hearsay? But, if we know of whom we speak, then our testimony will get an eager hearing, and the Spirit will add to our numbers so that we can continue the work of Jesus with jubilation!
