Our Declaration of Dependence

Well, here we are—the very first Sunday in our new building that God has given us. What does one preach about on a day like this? The faithfulness of God? God as Provider and Sustainer? The unity of the church? There are many things I could say, but as you know, this all came about so fast, I was thinking, I will barely have time to finish the sermon I started, let alone preach something else entirely different. So what started in Genesis chapter three turned into something else. But we will return to Genesis and stay the course through this important book, because this is simply what we do, we preach and teach our way through the Word of God. You know that I am not one of those preachers who creates his sermon series based on the summer blockbusters or the season premieres of popular TV shows. I don’t mind taking an occasional illustration from a movie, but as a pastor representing this church, I refuse to preach the Word of God based on clues taken from the surrounding culture. We believe that this trend should be reversed—that the surrounding culture should be taking its clues from the Word of God. So no matter what great celebration or great catastrophe is upon us, I always want us to run to the Word of God to find our answers, to find our comfort and to find our God.

This is not our official dedication service, but on this first Sunday, let me offer an official declaration. I am calling this our Declaration of Dependence. Whether triumph or tragedy, whether prosperity or persecution, whether life or death, this church will not waver from the preaching, teaching and doing of God’s Word. This declaration will be true not because we are better than everyone else. If I criticize another denomination like I did this past week, I don’t do it in order to say, “Ha, your church is pathetic! Your church is ordaining gays and lesbians? That’s just gross. Why don’t you come over to our church because we will never do that!” We make this declaration and commitment to the Word of God not because we are better than everyone else, but because we know that we are more desperate than everyone else. In our own strength, we know that we are so desperate and so needy and so spiritually bankrupt that we absolutely have to fly to God’s Word for any bit of strength.

Did you notice how I worded this declaration? I said that we will never waver from the preaching, teaching and doing of God’s Word. The average church loves to trumpet their preaching and teaching but they’re not so good with the doing part. The word evangelical has come to mean rock solid theology but so-so deeds. Our doctrine is neat and tidy but our lives are a compete mess. Now at one level this is a good thing. Compared to God and his Word, our lives will always be messy. If you line up a sinner alongside of perfection, we look like a mess.

Recently someone told me a true story about a church who was wanting to have new people join their church, but they had to be the right kind of people. When I heard this, my jaw dropped open in utter shock. The right kind of people?! Just who are the right kind of people? What kind of pedigree was needed to join such a church? What does the list of requirements look like to be “the right kind of person”? If I could, I would love to have someone from that church sit down and write the complete list of requirements for what it means to be the right kind of person. When they wrote this list I would ask them to select the finest piece of stationary and to use their very best penmanship—no typing allowed, don’t email the list to me—just write it as neatly as possible. I would gladly sit and watch them make this list of requirements. I would promise to carefully read what they had prepared, and then as they watched, I would tear that disgusting list into thousand pieces.

Do you want me to give you a list of the right kind of person for Grace Church? We have before us the official declaration and now I would like to offer an official invitation. Who do we want to come to our church? Come messy people. Come broken people. Gays and lesbians, come. Depressed and divorced and abused, come. Come New Agers, Satanists and astrologers. Come atheist, agnostic and confused. Those who are addicted to sex, drugs, alcohol, money, power and people pleasing, come.  We continue the list, quoting from the apostle Paul. Come envious, murderers, deceitful and malicious. Come gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful. Come sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, prostitutes, thieves, greedy, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers.

Each and all of these messy people are the so-called “right kind of people” to come to our church. We want them all to come—not to our church, but to the Lord of our church. We want them to come, not to Grace Church per se, but to the grace of our lord Jesus Christ. We want them to come with the same level of desperation with which we came to Christ. We want them to come messy but to leave redeemed and healing people. We want them to come messy, but we don’t want them to stay that way. After this long list of messy sins from Paul, he said to the Christians in Corinth, “and that is what some of you were.” When you meet Christ you get freed from the slavery of sin. When you meet Christ he smashes the idols of your heart worship and he becomes the center of your worship. As I have said at least fifty times over the years, it doesn’t matter where you are at, it only matters where you are going. Come messy, but don’t stay that way.

This is the difference between us and the official vote from the ELCA a week ago. Those who voted for the new resolution claim to be inclusive as opposed to everyone else who is exclusive—they welcome sinners and everyone else rejects them. On the surface that sounds all nice and loving. Let me paint you a picture of why this is so tragic. What if we hung up a sign on the outside of our church and spent ten thousand dollars to let everyone know that we welcome all cancer patients. If you have stomach cancer, come to our church. Lung cancer patients, please come. Colon cancer, breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma—everyone is invited to come. So we get three or four hundred cancer patients busting the seams of our little church and what do we do with them? We can pray for them but we can’t cure them, so instead we take another strategy—we inform them that they don’t actually have cancer. At first they would be a little stunned and may not believe us, but if we kept repeating it and convinced them that all of their doctors were quacks and liars they would begin to come around. If we could spend enough time with them and preached and taught this cancer illusion idea and communicated it through video, booklets and personal testimonies, we could probably get a fair number of people to believe that they didn’t have cancer. How do you think that would make them feel? They would be ecstatic—they would be overjoyed to be cancer free! We would be hailed as the most inclusive and loving church in the city. Then in three to five years better than half of these new people would be dead.

In the same way, if you welcome sinners into your church but then proceed to use all of your energy to convince them that they are not sinners, they are going to be ecstatic also. They will feel good. They will feel loved. They will feel accepted. But unlike cancer, the death that haunts them is not visible to the naked eye. The spiritual cancer of their sin is eating them alive and we would be giving our full blessing. Not on my watch.

Whether triumph or tragedy, whether prosperity or persecution, whether life or death, this church will not waver from the preaching, teaching and doing of God’s Word.

But many churches, even some evangelical churches, are not happy with this kind of declaration. There is a new saying going around in these churches: Deeds, not creeds. These churches realize that for far too long many churches have had good creeds but lousy deeds. Their doctrine has been tight but their lives were terrible. So they have decided to leave good creeds behind and focus on good deeds. First of all, this fails to recognize that what they are doing is still a creed. “Creeds not deeds” is still a creed, a belief system. Do you see, having creeds and doctrine is unavoidable.  Second, let me show you what “deeds, not creeds” looks like. (Walk over to the back wall and start beating my head against the wall.) This is what “deeds, not creeds” looks like. Look at me—I am busy, I am active, I’m doing stuff, but what am I accomplishing? I could even Christianize my deeds by repeating the word “Jesus” while I beat my head against the wall. Jesus (bump), Jesus (bump), Jesus (bump).  (My apologies to whoever hung this drywall!)

As crazy as this is, these “deeds without creeds” people are right about one thing—we have emphasized right doctrine to the exclusion of right action. It’s not that we have had too much creed but too little deed. What does creeds without deeds look like? (Make a gross, spitting noise…) “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:15-16) I make no apologies for that gross spitting noise because this is precisely what Jesus is saying here. This is exactly where creeds without deeds ends up.

But if you think that is bad, it can get even worse. Do you know what happens to a church that continues to have creeds but no deeds? “If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” (Rev. 2:5) Jesus is the lampstand and here’s the frightening part of this verse—if Jesus leaves, it is still possible to have a church. I don’t mean that it will be a spiritually fruitful church, but it would be a church nonetheless. We would still meet in this building. We would still sing worship songs. A preacher would still give sermons. We would still do most of the things that any other churches would do and we would fully believe that everything was fine—except there would be no Jesus. Have you ever been in a church where they do all of this church stuff except Jesus is not there? I don’t just mean the church has difficulties, because every church has problems. I mean that Jesus is literally not there. His lampstand has been removed. Even with perfect doctrine, creeds without deeds will be a Christ-less church.

There is one final category of churches who have deeds and creeds, but they put their deeds in front of their creeds. Let me explain what I mean. The Bible always presents our creeds as the engine that drive sour deeds, much like this train. Our beliefs are the engine that drives our actions. What we believe determines what we do. The classic example of this is the book of Ephesians. The first three chapters are mostly about theology and beliefs and chapters four through six are mostly about Christian living, but the Christian living is based on the theology and beliefs. For example, in chapter four Paul said that the church should be unified because in chapter two Paul explained how Christ has brought all believers together through the cross. We are not unified like a Lion’s Club or bowling team is unified. We are unified through the blood of Christ. Our actions are based upon our belief. But what the ELCA did last week was to switch these two and put their deeds as the engine to the creeds. Can you see how this happens? They decide that they don’t like a certain action—in this case, they didn’t like the fact that gays and lesbians could not be ordained as pastors. But we know the problem with this decision is that it goes against the Bible’s teaching. So by a vote of 559-451 they decided that they could change their belief based upon the actions. This is what I want to do, therefore, this is what I believe.

Deeds are not enough and creeds are not enough. Even deeds and creeds are not enough, rather we must deeds and creeds, but always creeds before deeds. Our doctrine lays the foundation for our actions. Our beliefs always define the direction and parameter of our good works.

Whether triumph or tragedy, whether prosperity or persecution, whether life or death, this church will not waver from the preaching, teaching and doing of God’s Word.

If we do this well, what do you think will happen? I think we are going to run out of chairs. I don’t just mean the 170 or so chairs that are here, I mean the extra 80 chairs still stored at Rod’s house. I don’t mean these 250 pew chairs we were given by the Manitowoc church, I also mean the 115 chairs that the Richland Center church gave us. We only have 365 chairs and if we do this well, 365 chairs will not be sufficient! I don’t know if this is the Lord’s will for us, but I certainly believe this is possible.

Or, we might end up like my friend Craig, with whom I reconnected this past week after 23 years. Craig is a pastor of an ELCA church in California. I didn't know where Craig stood with the decision, so I asked him. He replied as follows, “I would not and did not approve of the policy changes in the ELCA. I am a social conservative with an orthodox Lutheran theology. [In other words], I believe Scripture is our sole authority for faith, life, and teaching.”

I admire Craig, first of all, for taking such a strong stand on the authority of Scripture. His confession reads almost identical to our Statement of Faith. Craig is taking a strong stand under extremely difficult circumstances. I can talk tough, but I have a conservative denomination backing me up and a conservative church to pray for me and encourage me and to help me do this. Craig has been able to hold his church together until now, but he doesn’t know how much longer that will be true. Will his church split in half? Will he lead the congregation into a more conservative denomination? The future is not clear. On top of all of this pressure, Craig’s wife was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor last Spring. Craig can’t predict his wife’s future any more than he can predict the future of his church. But I believe he is OK with both of those enormous uncertainties. Why? Because Craig has made his own declaration of dependence. Because, as he told me, he claims Peter’s confession when he said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

I am declaring to you that this is the direction that Grace Church is headed. I cannot force you to follow, but I would hope you could make your own declaration of dependence.

Whether triumph or tragedy, whether prosperity or persecution, whether life or death, I will not waver from the believing and doing of God’s Word.

One way to do this is to read through the Bible. I think that every Christian should be reading through the whole Bible all of the time. I don't care how long it takes you---one year, two years, four years. This is basic Christianity, the ABC's of the Christian life. Read it and rejoice. Read it and repent. Often you will rejoice and repent at the same time.

As for me, whether triumph or tragedy, whether prosperity or persecution, whether life or death, I will not waver from the believing and doing of God’s Word. Who will join me?

Rich Maurer

August 30, 2009