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The State of the Union

Sermon by Rev. Doug Pratt — January 20, 2008
 

I ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory, to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing Him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is He is calling you to do, grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life He has for Christians, oh, the utter extravagance of His work in us who trust Him—endless energy, boundless strength!
     All this energy issues from Christ: God raised Him from death and set Him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from His rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which He speaks and acts, by which He fills everything with His presence.

Ephesians 1:18-23 (The Message)

A Time to Take Stock
In the Constitution of our United States (Article 3, Section 3) it is mandated that the President shall, from time to time, present to the Congress a report on the “State of the Union.” For nearly two centuries it has become customary for that report to be made in a public address in the Capitol building sometime before the end of January. Our current President will present his final “State of the Union” address in the near future.

In fact, we are just a couple months away from the traditional season of “annual meetings” for corporations, non-profit organizations and even churches. Nearly every human enterprise finds that it is helpful, at regular intervals, to mimic what our national constitution requires of its Chief Executive: take stock, measure ourselves, and evaluate where we’ve come from and where we’re going. Sometimes these “State of the Union” messages (and their counterparts in the private for-profit and charitable sectors) are inspiring and visionary; sometimes they’re routine and ordinary; and sometimes they’re real snoozers.

I want to take a couple minutes today to look at the church—not to present a full-blown address but to share my personal thoughts and aspirations with you. Our ultimate goal or purpose as a church is not up to me or you to decide. That’s God’s prerogative to tell us what He wants His church to be. The high and lofty eternal purpose of the Church of Jesus Christ is laid out for us in our Scripture text today from Ephesians 1, and also in many other places throughout the Bible. According to Scripture we are nothing less than Christ’s Body, His hands and feet, through which He speaks and acts, filling us with Himself. What a vision!

The “State of Our Union”
As we think about the “state of our union” in this congregation, we can follow the example of governments and companies and other organizations and focus on specific goals and plans and policies. A U.S. President spells out in his annual address his foreign policy initiatives, the legislation he wishes to propose, and other concrete plans. The CEO of an oil company or car manufacturer will brief his shareholders on new drilling prospects in remote places or the new model SUV to be rolled out. A hospital CEO tells about the new satellite emergency room or the cancer treatment center she plans to open in the year ahead. This kind of planning and goal setting is important. Certainly we operate in that way as a congregation. We have a 3-year Strategic Plan we’re working to implement. Over the past two weekends our church boards—the Deacons and the Elders—have had their annual planning retreats to establish goals for the year. We will see in the months to come the usual activities of a busy and growing church: new programs, new staff members, new ministries, and building improvements.

But I don’t want to take the time to go over those details this morning. In fact, I want us to think about the church not through our normal perspective, as a nonprofit corporation with a building, property, staff, volunteers, budgets and programs. Rather, I want us to think about ourselves as individual people who each have Jesus Christ’s Spirit living within us. Wherever I am or you are, the Church is there because He inhabits us, and we take Him with us.

The Heart of Our “Company”
A few years ago a gigantic multinational corporation undertook an advertising campaign to try to soften its image. People knew about the company: it had a half million employees worldwide, hundreds of billions in annual revenue, a dominant position in a critical industry, and an instantly-recognizable name and logo. But the perception of many was that it was a huge, faceless bureaucracy, an immense monolith. So they ran a series of television and print ads featuring individual employees of their company. These folks were young and old, dark and light-skinned, from countries and races all around the world. Each one would look into the camera and repeat a simple slogan of six letters: “I am IBM.” It was clever: a short and memorable slogan, created by changing just one letter of their name (I-A-M-I-B-M). Its purpose was to show that, at its core, IBM was not huge factories and office buildings, room-sized mainframes or personal laptop computers; the real heart of the company was its people.

The Bible makes it clear that the same is true for the Church of Jesus Christ. First Presbyterian is not a 60,000 square foot building, or 11 acres of property on Bonita Beach Road, or a printed logo or a website. It’s you, and it’s me, and it is the rest of our friends. We are the church. The technology company IBM wanted to help its customers to see that its products and consultants and service technicians could go wherever the needs were—not just in the home office and the factories and the branch offices, but on site, in the offices and homes of its clients. In the same way, we are the Lord’s Church whether we are gathered here on Sunday mornings, or scattered to our homes and jobs and communities. The church is there in the classroom, the store, the hospital room, on the golf course and the beach, in the city council chambers and the courtroom. Wherever a follower of Jesus Christ goes, Jesus travels within him or her. We represent Him to all we meet.

It sounds like an intimidating and challenging task, doesn’t it? It is. It’s nothing we can do lightly, and it doesn’t come easily or naturally to any of us: being a faithful follower of Christ. It takes our very best effort. And if we find ourselves wondering what it is that our Lord wants us to do, let’s go back again to our Scripture reading for this morning: “I ask the God of our Master, Jesus Christ, the God of glory, to make you intelligent and discerning in knowing Him personally, your eyes focused and clear, so that you can see exactly what it is He is calling you to do.”

The writer, Paul, is telling us that his prayer—for his Christian brothers and sisters and for all of us who have followed after them—is that we might be “intelligent and discerning” about life, that we will see things clearly. And he also prays that we will “know Christ personally”—with that daily relationship that sustains and guides us. And then he prays that we will be able to see our specific “calling”—what the Lord wants us to do in each situation. God has given us His Word to provide guidance to us, and He has put His Spirit inside our conscience to steer us and nudge us to do what is right. And if we take advantage of these resources, we will be able to make wise choices in various situations, to know what it is that Jesus is calling us to do (in our homes, our marriages, our parenting, our jobs and our communities).

Looking for a Few Good Men and Women
We looked at an advertising slogan a moment ago. I want us to look at one other slogan—this one from several years back (and no longer considered “politically correct”). It was the well-known motto of the U.S. Marine Corps: “The Marines are looking for a few good men.”

The primary intention of that slogan was to set the highest standards for their troops—and to imply that they are the elite, the best. Looked at from one perspective, the slogan “the Marines are looking for a few good men” confirms what we know to be true in human experience: a small number of totally-dedicated and highly-skilled people in any endeavor can make far more of a difference, and have a greater impact, than a large number of mediocre, apathetic or unmotivated people. We think back in military history: to the few Spartans at Thermopylae who held off the Persian hordes, to Gideon’s small band that defeated the Midianites, to Washington’s ragtag army that beat the British, and to the few Marines who rolled over Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard in Kuwait in Desert Storm.

But when we examine the Marine Corps slogan from another perspective, it raises a question in our minds: Who is worthy? How does the Corps determine who is “good enough” to join their ranks and claim the motto, Semper Fi?

I was a voting commissioner at a Presbyterian General Assembly national meeting several years ago. One of the other commissioners serving on a committee with me was a retired military officer from Virginia who was an active elder in his church. This man had retired a few years earlier as a Marine Corps major, and on one of our breaks we got to talking about his military career. I mentioned the slogan about “looking for a few good men,” and asked him what he was like before he entered the Corps. And that is when I had my revelation. He told me that he honestly didn’t think he would be able to make it all the way to being a Marine when he enlisted. But the training and discipline provided to him molded and shaped him in ways he never could have done for himself. And then he said to me, “Our slogan isn’t really accurate. We’re not looking for people who are already ‘good men’, because there aren’t any. What we want are young men who are willing to let us mold and build them into good men.”

Of course! That makes sense, doesn’t it? And it’s exactly what Jesus wants of us as well. Who of us could ever claim that we are worthy of enlisting in service to Christ, the Lord of the Universe? If Jesus is looking for a few who are already “good men” and “good women,” none of us would qualify. But, in fact, the only people He invites to come to Him are imperfect sinners. And what He asks of us is that we let Him mold us and shape us, so that gradually, day by day, He can make us into people who will be fit to represent Him and serve Him and make a difference in this world—the spiritual equivalents of “the few, the proud, the Marines.”

This is my heart’s desire for our church. As I share my vision for the “State of our Union,” my deepest longing and concern is not for the outward activities of an organization called First Church, for what really makes a lasting difference? It’s not buildings or budgets or programs or activities. What really matters is that we as individuals have come to know Jesus Christ personally and are living faithfully for Him. The church isn’t steel and concrete, it’s flesh and blood. We are His Church. He, the Lord of the Universe, the One who—in the words of our text—controls galaxies and governments, actually lives inside you and me. And He wants us to be His body, His hands and feet and eyes and ears, in this world.

Meaning Deprivation
As the sciences of psychology and mental health have developed, experts have discovered and put names to all sorts of problems that have always been there but not formally identified. In our times we have discovered attention deficit disorder (ADD) and bipolar disorder (BP), the autism spectrum, learning disabilities like dyslexia, and geriatric syndromes like Alzheimer’s. In less-enlightened times, people suffering from these would have been labeled “stupid” or “crazy” or “senile.” But now we understand them better; we can diagnose them and put a name to them.

One of the newer diagnoses developed in the field of psychology has been given the complex name “meaning deprivation depression.” In layman’s terms, it’s a lack of purpose. It can come to us when we experience a big change in life. People who have retired from a busy job that gave them meaning may struggle with depression, feeling that their life no longer has a goal (beyond just golfing or fishing every day). Mothers who hit the “empty nest” may struggle to re-order their lives towards something other than child-raising. A meaning deprivation depression can even creep in quietly in the midst of a busy life: What’s it all about? Why am I here? I’m sure that some of us are dealing with this now, or have been there.

The exciting word for us today from Scripture is that the cure for meaning deprivation depression does not need to come from pills or therapy. It is found in accepting the calling of Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Universe, to follow Him and be part of His body in this world. There is no higher calling. And once we see that our purpose is to honor and serve Him wherever He leads us, we no longer struggle to find a purpose. Our purpose is to live for Him. Whatever our age, whatever our health, wherever we live—even if all we can do is pray for others, our lives can make a difference. Jesus is looking for a few men and women who will let Him lead them and guide them to be His “Marines” in this world!