Stepping Out

“Don’t just talk about it, Be about it.” This is one of those phrases that I learned pretty young in life, and I’m pretty sure that it was in a context that wasn’t entirely positive and true to the actual nature of what that phrase actually means. As teenagers, at least in my town, it was kind of like a call to fight. Like if you are going to talk poorly about someone you better be ready to back those words up with your fists.

Or it was kind of a way of calling someone out when they were bragging. This is kind of a bit more in line with what this line means. Kind of like “talk is cheap, show us what you’ve got.” Yet, still here we are, and it’s kind of derogatory. See I think the original intent of this phrase is to call us to be better. To practice the integrity of doing what we say we will do, and in turn practice being who we say that we are.

I mean, in short, that’s pretty much the defining aspect of Integrity, a virtue that we all wish to see others display, but which is so hard for us to really live out in our own lives. And it’s hard because it doesn’t come naturally. There is this massive battle inside each of us between doing what we know is the right thing / who we want to be and our thought life right?

Like yes, I truly want to display all of this goodwill and charity and love towards the world on one hand, but on the other hand I want to keep what’s mine, I want to spend my time serving myself and so on and so forth. And this is a natural kind of thing. I’m pretty sure that not many people are just naturally other-centered. It’s pretty natural to be focused on ourselves and our own self preservation. Each of us is the most interesting and important person we know right?

The most challenging thing about the Christian journey is its call to be just the opposite of that. Although for years there has been this movement towards “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” within our culture, that’s simply not what the focus of the Bible and the God of the Bible is on at all. The focus of the Bible is on the community of faith, and a selfless, sacrificing God whom we are to model our lives after. So for us to say “I follow Jesus” and mean it, well we have to actually follow. It takes action. Don’t just talk about it, be about it.

But I’m not really here to focus on us as individuals for the next 20 minutes or so. But it’s important for us to realize how this all works on an individual level. We’re all fighting a battle between self-preservation and sacrificial love. There’s no denying it, but saying it out loud takes some of its power away. So let’s take a deep breath and just acknowledge that “yes, it’s really hard to both talk about following Jesus, and actually following Jesus in every moment of every day” and then we’ll exhale knowing that we aren’t alone.

So ready, Inhale ........... Exhale .............. yeah don’t you feel better? You aren’t alone in this struggle. Ok you can go home now. Just kidding. No, I’m not done yet, but I have gotten kind of to the root of our situation here. If as individuals its pretty hard to “not just talk about, but be about following Jesus” then you can imagine that it doesn’t magically get much easier when you throw a bunch of us together and call us a church. It’s like compounding interest or the law of exponents or whatever other math I can’t really wrap my head around because I quit math in 11th grade.

What happens typically, and don’t feel ashamed about this, what happens typically is we just have a LOT of talk, so much talk in fact, that it becomes really hard to BE. If you’ve served on church committees at all you know that we are really good at talking about things, but that it’s really hard to make any real movement. Whatever the reason is, things just often end up dead in the water before they make any progress.

And sometimes that can be a good thing, but a lot of times what happens is that we say “we want to be this” and then it never happens. We can make up fancy tag lines that are meant to tell the world around us who we are without actually being that in any functional sense.

So we’ve spent the last 5 weeks talking about who we are. Who is First Dunedin? Well we are a church not just in the downtown, but FOR the downtown. And we can splatter that everywhere. We can make signs, we can paint it on the side of the building if we want. But the reality is that we don’t really get to decide whether or not we are FOR the downtown. We can say that we are, but in the end, the downtown is going to decide whether or not we are FOR them. And they aren’t going to just agree with us because it’s on a sign, or because it’s our new slogan. They are going to agree with us because they see us being for them.

That might sound harsh, but it’s reality. We can’t just talk about it any more.

A few weeks ago I took a bunch of our teenagers up to Warren Willis UM Camp, and I had the pleasure of preaching to them and a few hundred other kids from around Florida every day. The curriculum for the week was centered around one story from the Gospels, and the implications of that story for the entire Christian life. As I though about it, and this message this week, I realized that in our context this story has a pretty powerful message as well. So it’s pretty well known, but it comes from the Gospel of Matthew Chapter 14. Short recap of events leading up to this is that Jesus’s cousin - John the Baptist - has just been executed, and Jesus is bummed about it so he goes off to find a place to be alone and grieve, and when he get’s there he’s greeted by 5000 + hungry people who he feeds by miraculously multiplying a few fish and a few loaves of bread. And right after that we have this story:

The New Revised Standard Version (Jesus Walks on the Water) Matthew 14:22-33

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

Often this story gets moralized for us. The moral of the story “have faith or drown” right? That’s how we hear it, because that’s how it’s always been presented. Like Peter’s lack of faith is the focal point of the story. But I’m going to challenge that today.

You see what we have in this story is actually a brief synopsis of the entire Christian journey. As individuals, we find ourselves battered by the waves, and Jesus comes to us and calls us. “come.”

And then in courage we step out, and with commitment we begin walking.

This is the important thing that happens next. We get confused, we get distracted. And when that happens, who is right there to catch us. Jesus himself.

I think this is important, because it’s not really about Peter falling. It’s not really about lacking faith. It’s about Jesus’s faithfulness to catch us when we get lost, when we fail, when we get confused, when forget to “be about it.”

You see the word that Jesus uses, that we unfortunately translate as “you of little faith” doesn’t mean “you who lack belief.” Faith, to Jesus and in the language of his time was an action word. It didn’t mean just believing, it meant doing. So Jesus isn’t saying to Peter, you didn’t believe enough, he’s saying you believed but you took your eyes off of me. He’s saying… you forgot to be about it.

So for us as a community I think that this is extremely relevant to where we find ourselves. We are at a crossroads, both in the life of our church and in the life of the Big C church, the church universal. We are living in a world that we feel is hostile to Christianity. And in a lot of ways this is true. But in a lot of ways, at least to the “non-Christians” that I converse with, it’s not a hostility towards the idea of Christianity or church in general. It’s more just a frustration with the fact that the church has not been, to them, historically good at being about what we talk about.

And I know that this is not entirely fair, because some of the most incredible advances in society and human dignity have come at the hands of Christianity over the course of the last 2000 years. Unfortunately though, that’s not the narrative that is heard any more. And honestly, the narrative that’s being taught now isn’t untrue. The Church has caused a lot of pain in the name of Jesus. We have used the name of God in vain, and I don’t mean we’ve attached it to other 4 letter words. We’ve done things and hurt people in God’s name, and no matter the good that we’ve made possible, people, in this moment can only see the mistakes.

We are seen as people, as an institution that talks about it, but isn’t very good at being about it. I think that qualifies us as “people of little faith.” But, here’s the good news. We don’t have to stay this way. While we might feel like we are collectively drowning, the solution isn’t to tread water faster and harder. The solution is to fix our eyes on Jesus and say “Lord Save US!”

And we’ve begun that process. We’ve recognized this reality. We’ve discovered the call of Jesus on our church to step out of the boat. To step out of our place of comfort, which ironically isn’t very comfortable at all, as it’s being battered by the waves and the storm, and to walk with him.

We’ve had the courage to look at who Jesus has called us to be, a church FOR the downtown. We’ve looked at what that means for us. That we are a church “For our every person.” That we are a church “For our community.” We are a church “for curiosity.” We are a church that is “for each other” and finally that we are a church that is “for Change.” This is who we are. We’ve talked about it. And now it’s time for us to commit to this. Jesus has called us to be these things, and we’ve had the courage to identify them and discuss them. Now it’s time to commit. It’s time to step out of the boat and actually be about these things so that we can truly be a church FOR the downtown.

The world is begging for the church to stop talking about Jesus and to start being about Jesus. The way that we are going to show the world that this church, here in downtown Dunedin, is about Jesus is that we are going to live into all of these things that we are for. And we can’t live into them silently. If we are for every person, then we had better better get outside of these walls and start showing the people who think we aren’t for them that God thinks they are the most incredible creation on this planet.

If we are going to be for our community, then we need to be inside of our community making real change happen and fighting for justice in the areas where change is needed. Being for our community means that we need to be at the center of our community, seeking its needs and the driving change rather than just jumping on board when someone else takes action. We need to be leaders. We need to be set the tone.

It we are going to be for curiosity then we need to be asking questions. We need to be the ones asking “how have we caused harm and how can we fix it?” We need to be holding open space for people to come and ask questions without fear of being shouted down as people of little faith.

If we are going to be for each other, well that means we’ve got to really be with each other. The church is a community, and we need to be fully engaged in that community. We need to be fully invested in one another through the power of the group who does life together, who supports one another, who loves and reminds one another that we are not alone.

And if we are going to be for change, well first we have got to change. We’ve got to take all of our talk and make it action. Pushing forward through the waves and the storm with our eyes fixed on Jesus. We’ve got to try things that are so outrageous that they are destined to fail if Jesus isn’t actively pulling us up from drowning.

If we are going to be who we say we are, then we are going to have to take a lot of action. And I think we’ve got this. I think we can, because we already do in a lot of ways. But we can be better, we can do better, if we just dream big dreams, pray big prayers, and follow after our big God.

Paul writes this in the book of Ephesians,

The New Revised Standard Version (Prayer for the Readers)

Ephesians 3:20-21

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

and it’s a reminder to us that, when we are actively “being about it” actively walking on the water, it’s really God’s power at work amongst us.

That’s comforting, because I bet you are a little overwhelmed. You’re like man, it’s a holiday weekend, I’m trying to relax here, have a good time, eat some BBQ and have a good time, and this dude just told me that I have a lot of work to do, and it’s really not the vibe I’m going for here.

I get it. I’m with you. I wanna take a nap just preaching this sermon. I’m telling us we have to do a lot of work, like hey man you know its hot out there right? I get it. I’m with you. We could totally just stay safe and sink together while telling each other that we’re doing great. The water actually feels good in our lungs.

Or we can face reality together. Take our eyes off of ourselves, off of all the work that needs to be done, off of all the reasons that we can’t do all of this stuff, and we can fix our eyes upon Jesus. The author of Hebrews reminds us of this fact, saying

The New Revised Standard Version (The Example of Jesus)

Hebrews 12:1-2

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

The truth of the matter is that this is Christ’s church. And so, he is not only our saving hand, but our example to follow.

So the question is, how are we going to be about our building blocks, our core values. And like everything, it starts with each of us committing to be about each of these aspects of who we are. But for now, I would challenge you, in the midst of whatever else you’ve got going the next two days, to find some time alone. And in that time, simply ask God, where am I called in this season. Maybe we can’t throw ourselves into action in all 5 of these areas. That’s ok. Let’s pick one, and ask God to show us how we can embody that in the world. Then start dreaming and talking about it. What are your ideas about how we can be a church FOR every person, FOR our community, FOR curiosity, FOR each other, and FOR change.

And then lets take that, and make it a reality together, as we become a church that people look at and say, that church on the corner there, that church is FOR us.