CHRIST'S LETTERS OF REFERENCE
For Habitat For Humanity
Jamaica Plain
September 17, 1998
Good evening everyone - and greetings to you all. It's great to be here among you. and to participate with you and others in this terrific project we call building on faith. What else is there to motivate our efforts but faith? And yes, Hope! And yes, love. We join for Christ's sake, and the houses we build and the families we gather we serve for Christ's sake.
Now I want to talk with you for just a moment or two about how we might think of ourselves as we join in our "building on faith." When people stand on the sidewalks surrounding the houses we hammer together, what do they see? Whom do they recognize? Have they any idea we're doing it for God's sake?
Many of you know the expression, I'm certain, that you and I are the only Bible people read. Our witness turns out to be the only persuasive testimony much of the world gets when they look for Jesus.
Paul captured this truth in the letter he wrote to the Corinthians just read for us.
Some of Paul's acquaintances in that city of Corinth accused him of fraud. They thought he bamboozled church people with lies. They called him a fool, a fake, a phony. They labeled him a sham, a quack, a rip-off. They demanded he show them his disciple license. "Where are your Christian credentials." they demanded. Show us your baptismal certificate; you got a passport from Jesus to do this job? Show us you letters of reference!!"
Well, Paul gives it right back. "Letters of reference," he explodes. "What are you talking about? I who founded you need a letter of reference to you?
I, who invested years in your growth and encouragement; I who struggled and suffered for Christ's sake to bring you into being: I need a letter of reference to prove my credentials?" And then Paul puts it to them. "You," he asserts - - "You serve as my letters of reference. You serve as any recommendation I may require. You, and how you represent yourselves to the world are ail I need in my resume as commendation to anyone who's interested. You are my testimony."
And Paul continues with this wonderful metaphor of our being letters of reference. He tells that Corinthian church that just as they serve as letters of reference for him to those clowns who call him a hoax and a cheat, so in truth we Christian are all Christ has in this world to commend the Christian faith. We are Christ's letters of reference to a city and a world that doesn't read the Bible, or go to church, that doesn't never heard of Moses or Miriam, doesn't give a hoot about religion and thinks Jesus is a swear word. Paul insists that what we offer - you and I as individuals and as churches, you and I as members of this vast and dynamic association of churches and synagogues - whether it be exercised in West Roxbury or Wellesley, Dorchester or Dedham, raising money or putting up wallboard - what we do and who we are - finally conveys the most persuasive letter of reference Chris can present to the world.
Now lets face it, from time to time some of us and our churches can be letters of reference for Jesus Christ that read pretty bland. We can damn Jesus with faint praise. Our discipleship can lose its bite, wallow in complacency, stumble along on its merry way making little difference in how we treat other people, spend our money, care for children, or serve the public welfare. Our commitment can be something like that described in a letter I came across not long ago. As the story goes, a young man spends a splendid evening with the girl he plans to marry, and after arriving home, he decides to write her a letter before he goes to bed. The letter goes like this:
"My dearest: I would climb the steepest and most rugged mountain to see the light of your eyes.
I would swim a body of water wilder and wider than the English channel to sit are your side. I would go through hurricanes and torrential rains to sit at your feet. Yours forever.
PS. I hope to call on you tomorrow if it doesn't rain.
If it doesn't rain?! Insipid! Vapid! Blah! Woman call that wedding off! And of course the sad part is that we can represent Jesus sometimes like that. Houses won't get built, streets renewed, life transformed.
Or again, what the world sees of us and of our feeble efforts to be faithful can come back to haunt us. We're letters of reference of Jesus Christ and we can fail. I read the other day of a grocer in Iowa who never went to church and the local church people thought he needed evangelization. As they put it, he was "unchurched." So the pastor of the local Lutheran church goes to see this grocer and tells him the church is going to throw a big evangelization campaign and nab all these unchurched folks - staring at the grocer right in the eye to get his point across - and would the grocer please provide for this committees some food for their meals. The grocer takes the order for cold cuts, sliced cheeses, rolls, cookies and fruit - a dinner a lot like the one we had tonight. But at the church supper when the pastor unveils the large deli platter in the church basement, he is startled to discover that the centerpiece consists of a Cross constructed out of slices of Bologna."
There you have it. Churches, Christians sometimes letters of reference smacking of baloney.
O friends, you see Paul is right. You and I and our churches and what we do provide open letters of reference, for better or for worse, commending Jesus Christ to one another and to the world. The key question, of course, is how shall we do it? What's the content of the letters of reference for Christ we are?
Well, not long ago someone stuck into my mailbox a little prophetic, polemical chestnut illustrating the nature and quality of our discipleship in a world where a lot of us where a lot of us-folk - everyone here, of course, excluded - - where a lot of folk make big claims but where they end up being pretty bland. This little piece I found in my mailbox goes like this - and its shows us what's really authentic and how the content of our lives as a letter of reference for Jesus might read.
A man fell into a pit and he couldn't get himself out.
A subjective person came along and said, "I feel for you down there."
An objective person came along and said, "It's logical that someone would fall down there."
A Congregationalist - Presbyterian - Baptist type came along and said, "We're meeting next Thursday night at 7:30 P.M. at the church to work out a process to get him out of the pit."
A Pharisee came along and said, "Only bad people fall into the pit."
A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit and the speed of his decline.
A fundamentalist said, "You deserve that pit."
Confucius said, "If you listened to me you wouldn't be in the pit."
Buddha said, "Your pit is only a state of mind."
A realist said, "That's a pit."
A scientist calculated the pressure necessary, pounds and square inches, to get him out of the pit.
A geologist told to appreciate and study the rock strata.
An evolutionist said, "You are a rejected mutant destined to be removed from the evolutionary cycle, in other words he's going to die in the pit so he can't produce any more pit-falling offspring."
The county inspector asked, "Do you have permit to dig the pit?"
A professor gave him a lecture on the elementary principles of the pit."
A self-pitying person said, "You haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit."
An optimist said, "Things could be worse."
A pessimist said, "Things are going to get worse."
Jesus saw the man in the pit, took him by the hand and lifted him out."
Of course. Jesus saw the man in the pit , took him by the hand and lifted him out.Hey!! Isn't that the kind fo work we're all about tonight? Getting to work on the project at hand? What we do is all that most people see of Jesus in this world. Habitat for Humanity: men and women, boys and girls with hammer and saw, plane and plaster, building on faith - what finer letter of reference for Jesus Christ?
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