Usually I fall asleep to the random ramblings I have going
on in my mind, but not tonight. I simply cannot fall asleep and my rambling
turned into me preaching to myself. So I thought I would write it down and
maybe then I could sleep.
The pastor at the church I interned at in college had this saying;
he would often say “we are saved to serve, not saved to sit.” This is so very
true. I have seen churches, and groups who were once thriving shrink and some
of them completely fall apart. As I began to wonder how this happened, I
continually went back to Kent’s (the pastor from my church) words.
There was a time, and there are still some who think this
way, where many Christians believed that the purpose of being a Christian was
to get to heaven. That is the goal, heaven. This mentality feeds the sitting
many Christians are doing. I have often heard the phrase “I am not of this
world” and “I am waiting to go ‘home’” with this attitude there is no drive to
change the world. If being a Christian is all about getting to heaven then we
have no need to concern ourselves with helping the poor, and social justice,
because in the end we are saved, this world will pass and everything will be
peachy king jelly bean. We have taught, and been taught, to be saved and then
sit. Many churches then filled up with sitting Christians, and maybe someone
would walk by and we would share the gospel and tell them how to get to heaven,
and some would sit and join the waiting party. While there were others who
saw/see the social injustices, they see the poor, starving, addicts and are
serving them and when a sitting Christian tells them about God they do not want
to join in the sitting because the sitting is not helping the hurting.
So if being a Christian is not about getting in to heaven
then what is it about? I believe it is about working with God to bring Christ’s
kingdom here, now. Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we pray “your kingdom
come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This is a prayer of
action, not only for God to act but that we as followers will act to. If we are
wanting Christ’s kingdom to be here on earth as it is in heaven this means that
the Church, that Christians must help the poor, feed the hungry, live life with
the addicts and allow God to bring healing through our obedience and action,
this means that we must stand against social injustice, this means that we were
saved to serve not saved to sit. When those who are not Christians see the
Church active, serving, and living what they preach then they are more open to
hearing what we have to say.
Church is not about glitz and glamor. It is not a place
where we go on Sunday because that is what we are supposed to do. Church is not
about us being entertained. It is about the body coming together to worship the
creator. It is about living life together. I do not know, or want to even think
about, what this world will look like if those who claim to be followers of
Jesus continue to sit in their Sunday pews and not serve. Jesus didn’t sit and
wait, neither did the disciples, the apostles, and for those of us who stem
theologically from Luther, John Wesley, Phineas Breese, and Anna Hanscome did
not sit around, they served. They were active and they changed the world. So
what are you going to do? You who claim to be a follower of the living God?
Will you continue being a Saturday sinner and a Sunday saint? Will you sit and
wait to be taken to heaven, or will you live into what it means to be a
follower of Christ? Will you get up and serve, living in step with the Holy
Spirit striving to bring The Kingdom here on earth now as it is in heaven?
