Jesus Christ the Same:
The Mission of Mid-City and Encountering the Presence of Jesus Christ in a Secular Age

Amos 6:1-7
1 Timothy 6:11-19
Luke 16:19-31

It can be daunting to walk into the Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City, and even more daunting to stick around. Some find us very white, very young, very affluent, very unwelcoming because of a similar sociological background of those whom God gathers here. Others find us very diverse, very poor, very shabby, very unwelcoming because of the unfamiliar difference of our sociological background. Some find our worship very loose, very informal, very Protestant evangelical and decide that other places might serve their preferences; others find us liturgical, even too catholic for their tastes. Some who have lived within the congregation awhile have found the organization too fluid, unstructured, an organization characterized by a lack of authority. These quietly slip away. Others have found the leadership of the congregation authoritarian, controlling, even dictatorial and have left after expressing their moral disapproval. I’m now finishing the twelfth year of my pastorate as one of the founding pastors of the congregation. I recognize that all these perceptions are grounded in certain correct observations.

How do we move into God’s future? How do we move into the future with a vitality of mission lived in unity, constancy, and peace? Even more, how do we allow the Holy Spirit to call others into the mission, both by coming to faith in Jesus Christ and in nurturing that faith to the fullness of salvation in the entire sanctification of believers? I am convinced that the way forward is to look back to the sources of the faith, the historical sources that nurture us, till we find there, at the centre of our lives, at the center of all that is, Jesus Christ, for this Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

Saying this might sound a little awkward. We live in a secular age. This secularity has seeped into our bones so deeply that we don’t even recognize it. We think that it’s natural rather than an act of human imagination that distorts the truth. We’ve learned as Christians that we can talk of a national God, an idol, but we can’t talk of the Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without sounding “intolerant”. We feel tempted to accept the formation that teaches us that adherence to the faith is done on the individual’s terms, not the terms set by the church in unity with the saints that have come before. We have a sense that like those around us that there’s no need to be part of local congregations with the regularity or sacrifice except as it meets our needs and our expectations.

But there is a deeper malaise of the secular that we feel. It seems that faith in Jesus Christ is just one option among others. We feel waves of doubt come over us; we learn to keep our faith private. We’re taught we should personally “experience God” rather than participate in God through Jesus Christ by repentance and faith. When we don’t see God present in the world, we fade into an agnosticism that eats at our bones. We think that we should be able to define God’s presence in the world as we want. When God doesn’t meet our expectations, we think God has a problem. We should be able to conjure God’s presence at our call to fit our expectations to serve our needs or our cause. We try to naturalize God’s supernatural presence.

The church has learned to adapt to this secular culture by learning to conjure a Jesus who will symbolize the presence of God in the world for any particular interest group. The church can compete in the world by making Jesus present to fulfill needs for individuals or society. Worried about ecology, global warming? First, you should be. We are creation called to care for creation as one’s made in God’s image. But wait! Here is a chance to justify the church amid the secular. Meet God in a spiritual Jesus in tune with Gaia, representing the relational flow that is God within history, a suffering history just like God suffers in environmental degradation. Jesus can represent the cause of your choice.

Of course, most persons in this society are getting the life sucked out of them by the secular, what we call personal problems. Jesus can represent God as a personal God, a divine personal Trainer – one who helps us out in our personal needs that we experience in the world whenever we call. The congregation becomes a safe house, a place to balm your personal struggles and give you positive motivation to step back in the world after the kids have driven you nuts all weekend. In a congregation adapted to the secular, the big decision is to figure out which consumerist interest group that Jesus could best represent according to our values. God becomes trapped within what is all around us. We try to conjure a Jesus to meet the needs of the world around us as the secular world defines these needs.

Any Jesus that we make present is not the real Jesus. From the very beginning, we have rejected the route of the secular. We decided to plant a congregation because we think the Christianity is true. We do not think that Jesus merely represents God in the world. We confess that Jesus was God in the world, fully human, fully divine in one person, the very revelation of God. When one participates in the life of Jesus, we participate in the life of God. Suddenly all the world becomes intelligible in the depths of its truth, beauty, and goodness. If there is one commitment of this congregation, it is not to change the church to fit our desires, but to have involvement in the congregation change us by calling us to participate in Jesus Christ. We don’t make Jesus present in the world. God the Father has raised Jesus Christ from the dead so that by the Holy Spirit, we might participate in this Jesus. We participate in God by being where God has revealed Jesus to be as gift -- pure, holy, complete gift. We are saved by grace through faith, not by works, lest anyone boast. God calls us to participate in God’s own Life through the presence of Jesus in the world today in three places.

First, Jesus Christ is present in the Word of God read and proclaimed. Did you hear that passage from Amos this morning? “Alas for those in Israel who live a life of luxury – you will be the first into exile.” Who gives the right to talk so insulting to people like that? Do you remember what was said after it was read? “The Word of the Lord.” And then you all said, “Thanks be to God.” Why? God has given God’s Word; God gives us God’s Word in the Holy Scriptures. We take the Written Word of God, the Scripture’s seriously. We don’t divide worship into singing and teaching. Our worship falls in line with the ancient practice of the church and begins with the Ministry of the Word. The Word speaks to us now, today, sharper than a two-edged sword. We don’t conjure Scriptures; we don’t seek to make the Scriptures relevant, to conform to our lives. We open up our lives so that we may be conformed to the Scriptures as we find our lives in them – for they are the Word of God.
Scriptures are the Written Word of God as they testify to the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh, the One through whom all things are made, the revelation of God, the one who suffered, was crucified, buried, and rose again after three days and appeared to his disciples. We find the presence of Jesus in the Scriptures. We don’t worship a holy book, a fourth person of a fourfold God. The Holy Book points us to worship the Jesus Christ who has revealed the Father to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. God has sanctified this book through the Spirit to make the Word, Jesus Christ present as we live in its pages, as its language becomes our language, as we perceive the world as it truly is as revealed in its pages. To live in its pages means that we turn from this secular world in repentance and faith to find our lives as creatures of the living God, who made us and redeemed us in Jesus, who wishes to heal us from our sin and restore us to the fullness of God’s image that we see in Jesus. This is why we have Bible studies. We must immerse ourselves as individuals and a congregation into the Word of God because in this Word, we meet the gift of the presence of Jesus in the world.

But Jesus is not merely present in the Written Word. As the Word of God, Jesus Christ is present in the Sacraments. Our epistle reading today in 1 Timothy reminds us to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” We find reference to our baptismal confession of faith. In the baptismal waters we find the presence of Jesus Christ. We in baptism by faith you are buried and raised with Christ. For as many of you who are baptized have been clothed in Christ. Therefore there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile, male and female for you are all one in Christ. We find the presence of Christ in the consecrated waters of baptism into which we are called by faith. Baptism is not our idea, but our Lord’s, who commanded us to go and baptize and make disciples of the nations.
But baptism is not an end in itself. In baptism we participate in the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ so that we might walk in the newness of life. Baptism is the sacrament of inititation, the end of the beginning into the Christian life. Baptism is the gate into the full worship of the church – the full worship that culminates in the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist. Following the Ministry of the Word, we share in worship with the fount of all worship, the Eucharist. We do so, not because it’s a slick style for a new generation of seekers, but because we have been commanded to by Jesus. Jesus told us that he is present in the bread and the wine – this is my body broken for you; this is my blood shed for the forgiveness of the sins of many. Paul wrote, “Is not the cup of thanksgiving, the cup of eucharistia, a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” Christ is present in worship, not in moving music, as beautiful and good as it might be, not in hand clapping and arm raising, as meaningful, fun, and good as that may be. Christ is present in the elements of the bread and the wine as the body and blood of Christ by which we are made Christ’s body in the world. The presence of Jesus Christ is found in the Eucharist. In repentance and faith, we submit our selves to be formed to participate in Christ at His Table, to allow Christ to form us into his disciple there by the Spirit.
Is this Nazarene? Oh yes. In our Call to the Table, the oldest part of our Communion Ritual, we are told to take the emblems, and by faith partake in the life of Jesus Christ to your soul’s comfort and joy. The Church of the Nazarene was formed out of an annual Christmas eve Communion gathering led by Phineas Bresee. In the earliest Manual of the Church of the Nazarene, members were required to take the elements while kneeling, in reverence to Christ’s presence there. One finds in John Wesley the appeal to constant communion. One finds in the earliest documents of the church fathers the exhortation to Christ’s presence in the bread and the cup. In the Sacrament of the Eucharist in our worship God gives us the presence of Jesus Christ in the world.

Jesus Christ is present in the Word; Jesus Christ is present in the world in the Eucharist. We find Jesus Christ present in the world through personal involvement in the works of mercy. Our gospel this morning is moving. The rich man tries to find eternal life through ordering Lazarus, the destitute, around. The rich man never gets it; he never sees Lazarus as a human being, one created by God in God’s image, one loved by God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even amid his torments, he can’t get out of the perspective of the wealthy about the poor to see that here, in Lazarus, the redemption wrought in Christ has been made active. In Lazarus, the poor man, we see the redemptive presence of Jesus Christ in the world. He never personally interacts with Lazarus, never engages in works of mercy with or for him. He never accepts Lazarus as a gift from God for his salvation, but instead sees him as a problem. It is not Lazarus’ poverty that is a problem, but the rich man’s wealth. The rich man’s wealth has so perverted his sight that he cannot see what is real. He is left with the eternal torment that comes from the blindness of a calloused heart to see what life really is about. He can’t find the presence of Jesus Christ in the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, those persecuted for Christ’s sake.
Christ is present in works of mercy done. “When did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or naked and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and come to you? Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to the least of these, you did it to Me.” The need here is to serve the hungry, thirst, naked, sick, imprisoned Christ in the bodies of the poor. It is not just for the rich, nor the middle class. It is for the poor as well – to serve Christ in the body of the poor. Christ was poor. On the cross Hee was hungry, thirst, a stranger, naked, sick, imprisoned. And he cried out – I thirst. We find the presence of Jesus Christ engaged personally in the works of mercy to the poor when we do so in repentance and faith. In the poor one finds the gift of God for the people of God. Works of mercy are not obligations one fulfills to make the world a better place; works of mercy are receiving the gift of the presence of Jesus Christ by faith, and opening oneself to be transformed by the Spirit of God to be made to love God and neighbor
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Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Our mission, as Ron Benefiel used to constantly say, is merely to be Christian – to participate in God through participating in the presence of Jesus Christ today. Our mission lies in participating through repentance and faith in the presence of Jesus Christ in Word, Sacrament, and the works of Mercy. As we participate in Christ in Word, Sacrament, and Mercy through repentance and faith, the Spirit will form us into the Body of Christ visible to the world; the Spirit will sanctify us wholly. Only when we are fully present to this Jesus, not as one consumerist option among many, but as the Way, the Truth, and the Light, can we live as a congregation, a gathered people, in the world. We find in our mission exactly what Benedict XVIth said in his encyclical God is Love: “The Church's deepest nature is expressed in her three-fold responsibility: of proclaiming the word of God (kerygma-martyria), celebrating the sacraments (leitourgia), and exercising the ministry of charity (diakonia). These duties presuppose each other and are inseparable. For the Church, charity is not a kind of welfare activity which could equally well be left to others, but is a part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being.”

Let’s confess in our faith together in Nicene Creed as God calls us to be made one at one Table with the Lord.