“Christianity 101:  Sermon for College Sunday”      December 26, 009
Colossians 3:  12–17                                            Greg Gates

Christianity 101 – an ambitious title, right? Everything you need to know not in 15 weeks, but 15 minutes. So let’s get started. All of King David’s soldiers were required to be able to fire both right-handed and left-handed. The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle to appear in all four gospels. The basket is the official escape vehicle of the Bible, being used by both Moses and Saul. A nod to my father, in Numbers, the Bible forbids us from picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Lastly, in the King James Version, Joshua 7:24 contains every letter of the alphabet except ‘q’. That about covers everything, right Beth?

Given that I lack anything but the more trivial knowledge a pastor might have, I’m going to have to draw from one thing I’m a bit more well-versed in to give the sermon today: my own life.

One evening, I was walking across campus to practice with the band I play in with my church at Virginia Tech. I was probably reflecting on a Psalm, as usual, when I see a guy standing awkwardly under an archway which, I of course must also go through. I start sizing him up and, after a moment, decide that it’s safer not to size people up when they’re in a heavy coat because you might underestimate their abilities. Finally, after another minute of walking through the light rain I make it to the archway and the young man (around my age) starts to walk up to me. “Oh dear,” I thought. Suddenly, he asked

“Are you a Christian?”

It caught me off guard. I thought that people only spoke so openly about their faith in other countries, places like Kenya and Honduras, but not here. Of course, I replied, “Yes.”

“What does that mean, when you say you are a Christian?” he quickly responded.

I knew my academic exams were coming up, but I didn’t realize God had planned one for my faith as well. I think I said something like “It means that I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and that I believe he, as the son of God, was crucified and rose again so that we might be forgiven of our sins and experience God’s grace.” I was smooth! He went on to explain that he was holding a Bible study in a few minutes and that I was welcome to come, but I unfortunately had to decline in order to get to my practice for a Christian band on time.

This is an encounter which has stuck with me and it happens to float back in to my head from time to time. It’s my “slick” answer which troubles me the most. There is a key component here, which I think I forgot to mention: what I do because of my faith in Jesus. I missed an entire part of the Trinity in the answer I gave to that guy. I neglected the Holy Spirit, the Word of God which inspires us to go out and do good work. This means that I got a 2 out of 3 on my faith exam. A 66.7% - that’s a D. Unless God curves as much as some of my professors, I almost failed this test of faith. My sermon today centers on my struggle to answer the part of the question I missed, because it’s a very important concept for me. I believe that faith isn’t just about holding the right beliefs – faith is about holding the right hands. This means that faith is about action.

The Message ends our scripture from Colossians today by saying this: “Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ – the Message – have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing; sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives – words, actions, whatever – be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.”

Give it plenty of room in your lives. Unfortunately it’s really easy, at least it is in college but I would imagine this is true in the “real world” as well, to compartmentalize Jesus in our lives. It’s easy to treat Jesus as this friend who you get to see on Sunday mornings [Saturday Evenings]. You might wake up and say “Hey! Jesus! What’s up? It’s been like a week since we last spoke…” It’s easy to safely tuck Jesus away in our personal, private weekend setting. I was talking about grades earlier – devoting just one day of the week to Jesus is a 1/7–that’s a 14.3% and a blatant F. But faith isn’t supposed to be easy. Following Jesus isn’t always supposed to be safe. C.S. Lewis, describing the Christ figure in his book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, sums it up well when the character Mr. Beaver says, “Safe? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King I tell you.”

Following Jesus is like following the lion, Aslan, Lewis is describing. Jesus is powerful and I am thankful to be on the side of lion. However he’s also a lion, and it can definitely be scary to stand next to a lion. I’m afraid that we have made Jesus too small. We’ve tried to clip his claws. We’ve made him a small part of life so that we might try to simply “fit him in” to our undoubtedly busy weeks. We’re told in the New Testament passage that we’re supposed to devote our entire lives, everything we do, to God and be grateful. We’re told to devote the work of our lives to the glory of God and that He will take care of us in return. In saying this, He tells us to do something radical. We’re familiar with the verse when Jesus tells us, “Lay not up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt and the thieves and the stock market break through and steal. Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven.” If we store all of our treasures up in heaven, how are we to live while we’re still on Earth? I enjoy the occasional Earthly treasure just as much as the next guy. So we get frustrated with Jesus, because it often feels like he asks too much of us. We yell back at him and say “What do you want Jesus? Do you want me to live by faith?”

What a weird idea. And I know you’re thinking “Greg, you’re crazy. It’s idealistic. No one can actually do that. It’s too hard. It isn’t safe.” I know it’s hard. I tried. And failed. I failed so many times. But that also means I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many times. And it means I’ll keep trying. At the end we’re going to talk about something we might be able to do just to get started.

Now we know that we’re supposed to do everything that we do in the name of God, and that isn’t easy to do. For now, let’s just say we have that under control. However, once we start having faith that God will provide for us everything we need in order to do His work and that this work will glorify Him, two new questions present themselves: What, exactly, are we supposed to do? What tools do we have to work with? I’m first going to talk about one tool I know all of us here posses: an education, and I’ll address the former question in a minute. Education, while being a very common gift in this room is also probably one of the most misused blessings God has given.

I sometimes wonder why I get the chance to go to college. I sometimes wonder why I go to college. Dr. Tony Campolo describes the most common line of reasoning many of my friends and I hear when he says this: You’re supposed to get a good education because if you get a good education you’ll get a good job, and if you get a good job you will make a lot of money¸ and if you have a lot of money then you will be able to buy a lot of stuff. God. That’s what it’s about?

My Bible and your Bible says “study to show yourselves” what, successful? No. “Approved unto God. So that on the day of judgment you need not be ashamed of what you did with your life.”

Jesus is charging my friends and me to take this education we have been blessed with and use it for the work of His kingdom. Not the size of our wallets. That’s a hard concept to grasp sometimes. It’s difficult because I hear my best friend and roommate on the other side of the room joke about what he’s going to do when he’s a millionaire at least once a week. It’s difficult because the president of my university has a higher salary than the president of the United States. It’s difficult because the median income of a family who sends one child to Virginia Tech is $100,000 a year. But I already told you this wasn’t going to be easy. Now I’m definitely not saying that it’s a sin to be successful and secure. I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. However, being financially successful in and of itself doesn’t approve us unto God. It shouldn’t be the main goal my friends and I have in mind when getting an education. I am saying that we need to change our NOVA notion of what it really means to be successful, so that it encompasses the work we do in Jesus’ name. When we do that, we acknowledge that Jesus has called us to be successful in a radically different way, in a way that isn’t always safe and easy and conventional and neatly compartmentalized in plastic clamshell packaging. Ralph Waldo Emerson offers us a definition of what our new, Christian, success might look like when he says:

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.

To put it more succinctly I would say this: To have done more for the world than the world did for you–that is success. Whether you believe it or not I am telling you that all of us sitting here are truly blessed. As such, this is an enormous call to use what God has given us for the good of his Kingdom. It’s overwhelming. It’s intimidating. It’s scary. But when we heed that calling we offer the Holy Spirit an opportunity to work through us and reveal the Word of God to those who need to hear it – including ourselves.

Remember God calls us to glorify him in every detail of our lives, so “doing His work” isn’t limited to big projects like going to Kenya or Honduras. You can glorify God in your carpool to work. You can glorify God by saying “Hello” to your mailman. You can glorify God when you fold your laundry, thanking Him that you have laundry to fold.

So, the Cliff Notes for Christianity 101: An important part of being Christian is Faith. Faith is about action – and we are told that every action we take, small as it may be, should be done and can be done for the glory of God. We are successful in God’s eyes when we realize the gifts He has given us and we use them not to help ourselves, but to help others. And it’s going to be difficult to change.

Here’s what I suggest as a first step. Our scripture from Colossians says “Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” This week, I challenge you to love everyone. This means that you don’t put down a single person this week. No gossip. No complaining. No venting. No potentially innocent teasing. I’ve tried this every week for the past 6 weeks. I think my current record is two days without making fun of someone, so I’m going to be trying it with you. You’re lucky I didn’t give this sermon ahead of all the family get-togethers last week. I believe once we can share God’s love with everyone around us (even those whom we aren’t inclined to share our love with) we will be able to more clearly see God’s love at work in our lives, creating the harmony that Paul describes. I believe that once we see that love, the weird idea of putting our faith in Jesus starts to sound just a little bit more possible.

So if you take this challenge and make it your own this week but find that you mess up on Monday like I so often do, remember that tomorrow is a glorious day with no mistakes in it yet.

Amen.