Preaching to the Choir (and Everybody Else)
The Holy Trinity
First Sunday after Pentecost
June 7, 2009
John 3.1-17
One thing you’re not supposed to do when you’re preaching is to tell
how you came up with the sermon, you just preach it. But you know
what’s coming, don’t you? I came up with the idea for this sermon two
Sundays ago, about twenty minutes before the worship service. Someone
was telling me about a Lutheran church that has decided to skip a day
of worship and go out and help people instead.
Another thing you’re not supposed to do is think of an idea for a
sermon and then fit it into the Scripture passage you’re using. But as
you can see, I felt compelled to address this situation long before I
sat down to prepare for this sermon. However, I already knew it would
be Trinity Sunday and had a pretty good guess that John 3 would be the
Gospel reading, so I did have a pretty good idea already of how it
would fit.
Yet a third thing you’re not supposed to do is preach to the choir.
Preaching to the choir goes something like this: Murder is wrong. You
are committing great evil when you unlawfully take the life of another
person. When you preach this way the people of God sitting in the pews
rightfully disdain those who would do such a thing. The problem,
however, is that most Christians haven’t done this and have no
intention of doing it, so they also quietly congratulate themselves
for not doing such a horrible thing. Preaching goes to the heart of
the matter to the people being preached to. When it comes to murder,
all are guilty. Every one of us has harmed others in our actions and
our thoughts. The one who murders a doctor who aborts babies is every
much of a murderer as the abortion doctor. Likewise, the one who hates
or wishes ill upon that abortion doctor has sinned against God’s fifth
commandment even as the abortion doctor has. Preaching is for sinners.
Preaching to the choir is not really preaching.
So if I stand here and rail against that church that decides to skip
out on worship, I’m simply preaching to the choir. You’ll agree with
me that they should be in worship as you are, and you’ll be feeling
really good about yourself that you’re here.
So what can we say about this? It makes no sense for me to tell you
that you should be here, you’re here. But it’s also true that if your
living out of your Christian life consists of being here in the House
of God but you’re also not out there helping others and sharing the
Gospel, then there’s really not much to your Christian life.
Well, if you were to decide that today would be a good day to skip out
on church because it’s just as important to help others, what you’d be
missing out on is the Festival of the Holy Trinity. Now, would this
cause you to lose your salvation? No. Would it make a deep impact,
negatively, on your faith? Not necessarily. Is it essential as a
Christian to celebrate Trinity Sunday? Certainly not.
But what you would be missing out on is God helping you. Notice I
didn’t say you’d miss out on how God wants to help you, but on His
actual helping you. And you know what happens when God helps you? You
help others out. There is something tragic about pitting worship and
serving others against each other.
One of my professors pointed out that Trinity Sunday is the only
festival in the Church Year that observes a doctrine, not an
event—and, if you’re going to do that, then shouldn’t the doctrine you
celebrate be the doctrine of Justification, the chief doctrine of
Christianity? But at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity is
justification. The doctrine of the Trinity is not an abstract
theological concept—it’s the teaching that God is dynamic, living,
eternal, incomprehensible, relational, the one true God. Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, three in one and the one in three. The One true God,
not three parts of one God and not three distinct Gods, but one holy
God in three distinct persons.
The festival of the Holy Trinity is not about God, it’s about who God
is and what He does for humanity. Some mistakenly believe that we can
chuck worship and go out and meet people where they’re at, meet their
needs. The Lutheran church I heard about that was doing this was now
the second time I’ve heard of this kind of thing. The first was with a
non-Lutheran church who had people at a house over on Eldridge St., so
that when our members were driving here to church they saw what was
going on. And how did they know that that was what was going on?
Because they were wearing shirts that said: “Don’t go to church, be
the church.”
But I’m preaching to the choir, aren’t I? You’re the ones who are
here, aren’t you? You’re not skipping church for the good cause of
helping people. So why am I preaching to the choir? Because that’s who
needs to be preached to. And there’s another group of people that
needs to be preached to, and you can see from the title of the sermon
who it is: everybody else.
I will not for a minute discount the intentions of those who say, We
can’t just go to church, we need to be the Church. Their intentions
obviously are good. But the real question is not, Which one do you do?
The real question is, How do you do both? The way you do both is by
being here. Here is where what happens that needs to happen for you to
go out and serve and help others. If you are not served and helped by
God, what will you be able to offer others?
When Jesus was preaching to Nicodemus He wasn’t preaching to the
choir, He was preaching to Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a faithful
believer in God. But what did he need? He needed to be born from
above. He needed God. He needed Jesus. He needed the Holy Spirit to
bring him new life in the waters of Baptism.
God the Father loved the world in this way: He gave His only-begotten
Son to die on the cross for the sin of the world so that whoever
believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life. This is who
God is. This is how He works. He gives Himself. He serves. He
forgives. He gives new life. He does this because we need it. Not just
those people out there. Us. You and me. We need it. We may be the
choir but it’s the choir that needs to be preached to.
And yes, there’s everybody else. All those people out there. They need
it to. So, yes, we do need to get out there and help, and serve, and
bring the Gospel to everybody out there. Not instead of, but because
we have been served by our Lord. Because He has washed us with the
waters of renewal and regeneration. Because He has fed us with the
very Body and Blood of Christ in His Holy Supper. Without these, we
have no forgiveness, and therefore, nothing to bring people.
Oh, we could help them. But don’t we want to give them what they
really need? We want to give them Christ, just as our Heavenly Father
gave Him to us. The helping people in their physical needs is a
wonderful way to be in their lives, to manifest the love of Christ in
a way that they can tangibly experience. This is not just a way to
bait them and then start preaching to them as if that’s really all you
wanted to give them. Helping others is a natural outgrowth of the
eternal help that God gives to us. Why would we not help those who are
in need? And in the same way, why would we not share with them the
Good News that God loves them in this way, He gives them His
only-begotten Son so that they may have eternal life.
Nicodemus was having a hard time letting God do His work in him. How
can a man be born when he is already old? We, too, need to let God do
His work in us. We need to be in the place where He works in us new
life through the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our
faith. The new life He accomplishes in us produces in us the desire to
serve others. We who have born again need to be sustained in the grace
and mercy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through the hearing of
the Gospel and partaking of the Lord’s Supper. God loves us in this
way and by His grace we love others in Him. Amen.
SDG
--
Pastor Paul L. Willweber
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS]
San Diego, California
princeofpeacesd.net
three-taverns.net
It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything
except where the marks of the Church are concerned.
[Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian]
___________________________________________________________________________
'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise
noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such
gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_
_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author, as well as
for quoting or use in a congregational setting
_with_or_without_attribution_.
Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list.
Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster.
Subscribe? Send ANY note to: [email protected]
Unsubscribe? Send ANY note to: [email protected]
Archive? <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>
For more information on this or other lists offered by Confess And Teach
For Unity, you can contact the CAT 41 list administrator at:
Rev. Fr. Eric J. Stefanski <[email protected]>
