The One Thing Needful!
A Sermon for the Intersynodal Conference
Home Moravian Church
March 25-28, 2004
Based on I John 4:7-16
The Rt. Rev. Lane A. Sapp

The Epistle text chosen for worship this morning has special significance for me not because of a sermon I once heard on this text, nor a lecture on its deeper meaning, but because of a "knock-down, drag-out" fight I once had with my older brother. I can still hear the shouts of "I hate you" that echoed down the halls of our home in Clemmons. My mother, bless her heart, had just about reached the end of her rope trying to help us get along. I knew that because this time she didn't come into our rooms with words of punishment, no spanking, no talking to—she came instead with a Bible. "Ut-oh," I thought to myself, things must be really bad. This time she's carrying a Bible! In her other hand was pencil and paper and then came the instruction. We had to write 50 times each a scripture verse that follows today's text: We love because he first loved us. Those who say, I love God, and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or a sister whom they have seen, cannot love God who m they have not seen. Needless to say, my brother Lee and I have not forgotten this text nor have we said, "I hate you." since. And this is the commandment we have from him, John says, those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

We live in turbulent and changing times, don't we? The whole of our society it seems enjoys being polarized into factions. You're either right or left and you're criticized if you find yourself in between. To be between the extremes is what I grew up to respect about the Moravian Church. The old Moravian middle some called it, which seeks unity in the center. That's not so popular anymore, in fact, some see it as the willy-nilly, wishy-washiness of not taking what others see as a proper stand.

The guiding principle of our American society today seems to ask us to mark our place in the sand—to take a position—and line up in an aggressive, judgmental and unkind stance toward the opposition. That's why I dread these next months of the Presidential campaign. One television commercial will blast a candidate with innuendo and quoted words taken out of context and then the other will respond with the same. We've all heard the promise so many times: We aren't going to be negative this year, they all say, and then the candidate who was attacked responds in much the same way. A vicious cycle and in the meantime the real issues aren't really addressed. I often wonder how other nations view us. We claim to be the land of opportunity where every person's worth is respected and every voice is valued and heard—but what kind of impression does the world receive when they listen to some of our news programming or watch our political process? Is our witness as a beacon of freedom and respect for all persons somehow marred by our actions?

And what about the Church of Jesus Christ? Hardly a day goes by anymore that the newspaper and television news isn't carrying story about division in some denomination of Christianity. We begin to look like a kindergarten class that is fighting for territory in the sandbox when we can't get along with each other. Oh, some say such fussing is necessary, that the issues before the Church today are so critical that they "call for division," that the Church of Jesus Christ is in the midst of a new reformation where lines will have to be drawn in the sand and people will have to make a choice and assemble on one side or the other. And what do the people think who are on the sidelines of the church, looking in from the outside when they see us spending so much time squabbling when we claim to be a community of love, sharing Jesus Christ with the world?

What does the disabled veteran dying with AIDS think whose family has abandoned him for an unhealthy fear of "catching the disease? What does the blind elderly woman think who lives near our church think when she sits in her apartment and shivers wondering if she will be able to pay her overdue electric bill? What does the young Hispanic boy think who has no supervision and is on the street because his Mom is working two jobs just to pay the rent? I wonder. Do they ever ask themselves, "Why doesn't the church quit fussing and turn their energy instead toward helping us?" A young woman is now attending meetings of Ekencar, a new age philosophy, and she says she left the Christian Church because they preached but did not practice, they talked the talk but did not walk the walk. They were more concerned with judgment and their own righteousness than acceptance.

Bless our hearts, as my grandmother used to say—we mean well but sometimes we're so caught up in what we think is important, that we even forget Jesus Christ. We even forget why God called out of the world and formed us into a Church. We forget the great commission and Christ's call to us to fulfill it. We forget that unity is not found in always agreeing on all the issues but in our common faith in a Savior who demonstrated in outstretched arms upon a cross the very nature of a loving God, the one who in his suffering and death provided for the world a jubilee of forgiveness, release and peace. This is the one who longs for us they way he longed for the Pharisees, that someday we will finally "get-it," and our love for him will leads us beyond legalism where we make sure everyone is right on all the issues, to a passion that takes seriously his call to share the hope of his broken body with a broken world, a world that needs to know the freedom of forgiveness and salvation, a world that needs bread to eat, light in the darkness, peace in confusion and love in a world that seems forever hell bent on hate.

We espouse the fact that we are a mission church and we love to share our history as some of the first Protestant missionaries to the West Indies, but often I think we've lost sight of the mission objectives of our forbearers. When we become like the world around us and are often so consumed with things that aren't really essential to salvation. We can't see the forest for the trees and we become blinded to a world outside the doors of our churches that is dying both spiritual and physical deaths. Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees? You tithe mint, and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. Your strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

When Zinzendorf sent the first missionaries around the globe—he did not tell them to enter an area and immediately begin preaching. He told them to make the gospel message come alive by living among the people and serving their needs—even if they're slaves—and eventually, he said, they will ask, "why are you doing this?" And then, Zinzendorf said, will come your opportunity to witness to your Savior.

St. John reminded the community at Ephesus which had itself experienced division as a result of false teaching, to find their unity in Christ and to make that unity visible by loving God and demonstrating that love in their life together as a Church. John wants the Church to understand that they must demonstrate in their relationships with each other the kind of sacrificial love God showed the world when he allowed his son to die on the cross. By this, by your love, John recorded earlier in his gospel, will all people know that you are my followers. In other words, if your going to claim to love God you have to love each other and the people God sends your way. If you don't, and you fuss, fume and bicker over things that do not have eternal significance, the gospel will mean nothing and your witness will be marred, and the words of the old camp song will be reversed to read: They'd never know we were Christians by our love! One author said its this way, anyone in whom God dwells reflects his character (1). As individuals, as a Church, do we reflect God's character in our life, in our mission?

I'm glad that we are taking needed time as a Province outside our own settings to gather as a larger family, learn from each other and concentrate in our time together not on the things that divide us, but the mission that unites us, the one thing needful—reaching out to the communities around our churches with the message of God's love—outstretched in self-giving love upon a cross. It was witnessing to this love that the Moravians came here 250 years ago and it is to this love that we are still called to witness today.

In closing this morning, I leave you with a parable for the Church in any age: There was once a life-saving station that was built on a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks frequently occur. The building was no more than a hut, and there was only one boat; but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea.

With no thought for themselves, they went out day and night, tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to be associated with the station and give their time, money, and effort to support the work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Eventually some of these new members of the lifesaving station became unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those who were saved from the sea.

So, they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. With all this work, the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members and this led them to decorate it beautifully and furnish it exquisitely such that it became sort of a club—a place for them to meet and relax. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club's decoration, and there was a memorial lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held but, fewer members were now interested in actually going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them were foreigners. The beautiful new club was in chaos. There were pools of water and wet towels all over the place. Furniture and carpet was damaged.

So, immediately, the property committee hired someone to rig up a shower house outside the club, where victims of shipwrecks could be cleaned up before coming inside. And, at the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving activities altogether because they felt they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. A small number of members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. The small group's members were voted down and told that if they wanted to save lives, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast and they did.

As the years went by, however, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old station. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself. And if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the passengers drown.(2)

Let it not be said of the Moravian Church, Southern Province, that she became so consumed with her own survival and the less important that she forgot her God ordained mission to win souls for the Lamb who was slain, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master.

(1) Note on I John 4:8, Nelson Study Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, l997.

(2) Internet address for the Life Saving Station: http://www.blogs4god.com/linker/article.php?a=001557