the church geek

This is the fifth sermon in a six part sermon series on discipleship. I preached this on July 20th. The text was Acts 13: 1-5

People always seem a little bit surprised when they get in our car and discover that we have not just one but several Johnny Cash CDs. They are even more surprised when they find out that Johnny is one of my all time favorite musical artists.

Now some of you here might be able to think back to Johnny’s early stuff. Classics like Ring of Fire, I Walk the Line, and Men in Black. While that old stuff is great, where Johnny really excels is in the recordings he made in the last couple of years of his life.

I’m not kidding when I say that these are some of the best albums of any recording artist out there. In his old age, Johnny found a way of connecting to the reality of life, belting out some of the most emotional and spiritual recordings out there.

One of my favorite songs is on Johnny’s album called American III. It’s called Nobody and instead of trying to sing it to and doing a really bad impression of Johnny Cash, I’m gonna play a bit of it here for you: (Click here for the song.)

Lori will tell you that I always break a smile and sing along, every time I hear that one line:

Well one time when things was Lookin’ bright
I started to whittlin’ on a stick one night
Who said “Hey! That’s dynamite!”?
Nobody

While that line is pretty funny, what isn’t funny is the reality Johnny so aptly expresses in that song: He has nobody he can call on. No one he can connect to. He’s got no one who cares for him or that he cares for. It’s a horribly lonely life. A miserable existence for the person that song represents.

I suppose one of the reasons I identify so much with that song is that I can remember a time in my life where I felt like that. Where it seemed like I had just about nobody in my life. No one who cared for me or who I really cared for.

It wasn’t long after I had graduated from grad school. A girl friend I had dated for a year or so broke up with me. I was struggling in my job and not making enough money to keep up with my bills. The church I was on the leadership team for was going through turmoil. Relationships with my friends were in transition. Spiritually I was dry and felt like I was shriveling up.

This period of time in my life lasted for at least a year or so. I am grateful to God that it it didn’t stay that way. Fortunately, after a time away from church, I got involved in another church. I had a chance to go on a retreat that helped re-charge me spiritually.

But more important than all of that, I became involved in a small group with some other disciples who helped me through that time in my life. They listened to me. They supported me. They challenged me. And they prayed for me.

As a result, I started to once again get more involved in leadership at my new church. I was challenged to try some new ministry related things. One of them involved working on a Prison ministry team. Eventually I discerned a calling into the ministry that was confirmed by the group I was in.

A couple of years later, a good friend in that group, said, “Do you remember when you first started how you said you told us you were bored, lonely and that it seemed like you didn’t have any friends? Look how your life has changed since then.”

She was right, my life had become full and rich. It had gone beyond anything I had experienced before. And it was greater than anything I had ever expected.

I don’t know what’s going on with each one of you, but I bet that some of you right now feel like you are living a life like the one that Johnny Cash sings about. Or maybe you are in a phase of life like the one I went through.

Perhaps, life is crashing in on you, things are falling apart. Even though people are all around you, you may be feeling like you are alone and that no one cares for you. Even in the midst of a congregation full of people, it feels like no one is there for you, to hear you, to listen to you.

Today’s discipleship question is, “Where is your Antioch?”

In today’s scripture passage from the book of Acts, we read about Paul and a group of guys who met together to inspire, share with, and encourage one another. Their names are Paul, Barnabas, Simon, Lucius, and Manean.

So far in our sermon series, we have already heard about Paul and Barnabas. But what about the other fellows? While we don’t know anything else about Lucius, we do know or can guess a few things about the others.

Acts says that Simon was also named “Niger” which means “black” in Latin, so it’s quite possible that Simon was from somewhere in Africa. Some even speculate that he may have been the same Simon who was forced by the Roman soldiers to carry Jesus cross.

Manean is described as a foster brother to Herod Antipas, the very same Herod who had John the Baptist arrested and beheaded. Herod also interviewed Jesus on the night he was arrested.

Even though these five guys came from totally different walks of life and had very unique and compelling life stories, it seems that they all held one thing in common. They were companions together in the faith.

Within their brotherhood of faith, they challenged, supported, and encouraged each other. They met together to share what was going on in their lives. They sought to discern together what God was doing and where God was leading each one of them.

In our story from Acts, we read about the five of them fasting and praying together. As they did, they came to discern that Paul and Barnabas were being called and sent out to a new place of ministry.

Preparing to follow God’s leading, the three friends gathered around Paul and Barnabas. They laid hands on them, and prayed that the Holy Spirit would be upon their work and their ministry.

It seems that that little group of guys in Antioch served as Paul’s spiritual home base. It was the place he went to where others cared for him and where he cared for others. It was the place where others knew who he was and where Paul drew strength for his own faith and life.

We all need a spiritual home base, a place that serves as our Antioch. We need it in order to fight off what can at times be that overwhelming sense of being alone. But there are other reasons we need it too.

I recently heard the popular Christian author and pastor, Rick Warren say that when it comes to sermons “People don’t remember much. If you are motivated, you remember about seven bits of information; if you’re not motivated you remember about two.”

I also have a vague memory of him saying somewhere else that people only remember 5% of what they hear in any given sermon.

Now as a preacher, that’s pretty depressing news…I don’t like thinking that by the time you will leave here this morning you will have forgotten 95% of what I have been saying. At times it really makes me wonder exactly what it is that I’m doing up here.

But that fact is not as depressing as the thought that most of you are trying to go about your week with only two to seven bits of spiritual information that you might happen to remember on any given Sunday morning. That sounds like spiritual mal-nourishment to me. It might even be a recipe for spiritual death.

The worship service on Sunday was never meant to bear the full load of your spiritual life. You weren’t meant to try to make it through a full week subsisting on just two to seven morsels of spiritual truth. There are just too many other demands, pressures, and problems in life to think that that would ever be enough.

If we are going to be really serious about discipleship to Jesus then we all need something more. Being a disciple takes intentional and hard work. It’s simply not possible to be a very good disciple by:

* Just coming each week, or every other week to worship, and listening to a sermon.
* Keeping the radio on your favorite Christian station, or
* Throwing up a quickie prayer to God in the morning or before you go to bed.

We all need a whole lot more than that to sustain our spiritual life. What we all need is a small community of folks that we can learn from.

* We need a group of others who know us well and who can help and encourage us to grow in our relationship with God.
* We need a place where we can think with others about the faith and spiritual things and who will help us apply it to our lives.
* We need people who will be honest with us and tell us when we mess things up or when we get things right.
* We need to be surrounded by folks who can help us to hear and discern the voice of God.
* We need folks who will will pray for us as we go about the various tasks and callings of living and working in this world.

Every so often, you may notice that I am gone for a day or two to something I refer to as RTA. RTA, or Reversing the Arrow, is an initiative of our presbytery that began three years ago. It is the Presbytery’s way to encourage and support pastors in the work we do in our congregations.

When I go away for twenty four hours or so to Camp Wyoming I’m not really on vacation. I’m not playing hooky. I am doing something essential to my life of discipleship and important for me in my ministry here at Knox.

During those twenty four hours away, I get together with six other pastors in this Presbytery, and during our time together:
* We talk about what’s going on in our ministries.
* We share what’s happening in our spiritual as well as personal lives.
* We open up about the joys and the frustrations of our congregations.
* We seek advice for special things we are dealing with or thinking about.
* We worship together and we pray for one another.

And it doesn’t stop there. When something happens in-between the times that we are formally together, I know that I have one or two of these special friends that I can turn to to talk about what is going on, to bounce an idea off of , to seek advice, and to ask for prayer.

My RTA group is important to me and I right now I can’t really imagine doing without it. For this moment and time in my life, it is my spiritual home base. It is the place that I would call my Antioch.

It is my hope that this fall, here at Knox we can start a small group or two, and as a result, I would hope that such a group would become a place where:

* You can gather with a couple of other folks who are also seeking to grow in their spiritual life.
* You can see as a safe place to open up about about the various struggles and trials you have in your faith and life.
* You can grow and deepen in your knowledge of scripture and in your faith in God.
* You can encourage one another to find ways God is calling you to serve others in mission, ministry, and outreach.

And in the end what I really hope is that we would be left with absolutely nobody in our midst who feels like their life is in tune with the words of that Johnny Cash song:

I ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody
I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody, no time
And until I get something from somebody, sometime
I don’t intend to do nothin’ for nobody, no time

Thanks be to our gracious God, the one who through Jesus Christ, has not only brought us into right relationship with God, but into right relationships with one another. Amen.

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