Introduction
Two weeks ago we started a three sermon series looking at sharing our faith. In that first sermon we realised that whilst only a few of us are called to be evangelists all of us are called to be witnesses. Only a few of us have the special gifts and skills that are needed to be effective evangelists, but all of us are commanded by Jesus to witness to the love and peace we have received. We also realised that sometimes it is difficult to sum up the essence of the Christian faith, but we tried to sum it up in terms of four spiritual truths - just as the Buddhist faith can be summed up by the Four Noble Truths. For Christians, our spiritual, or noble, truths are:
*
God loves us and wants the best for us
* Human sin keeps us away from God
* God sent Jesus to reconcile us all to God
* We have to accept the forgiveness won by Jesus and make him Lord of our
lives.
These four spiritual truths are the starting place for a lifetime of discipleship. Everything else follows from these four truths.
Sharing The Faith
We can share these spiritual truths in a number of ways. Our lifestyle should encourage people to wonder what is different - in a good way - about us. The way we seek to love others, the ways in which we seek to overcome adversity, the hope we have that God wants the best for us are all ways of sharing our faith and bearing witness to the love and power of God. We also can use words and try to express in our own way these four spiritual truths.
But......
However,
many of us get to mental blocks when it comes to sharing our faith. Many of
these blocks are based on fear, but we still come to various blockages which
stop us showing by word and witness the difference Jesus has made in our lives.
Fear of rejection
The most fundamental block, it seems to me is fear of rejection. This fear operates on a personal level - if they find out I am a Christian, they will think I am a nutter, but also on a wider level. Over recent months the Church of England has been tearing itself apart over the issue of gay priests and bishops and they found they could not appoint a celibate gay man to be a junior bishop. The Roman Catholic Church has announced that all Catholic politicians must work against civil rights for lesbian and gay people. The worldwide Anglican Church seems on the verge of disintegration because a small diocese in North America has elected an openly gay man as a bishop.
These issues and debates have aroused strong opinions and much comment. Some of the most homophobic things I have heard in years have come from the mouths of Christians in these debates. One Bishop in the North West made some very silly remarks about human physiology, about what male bodies and female bodies were designed for, which showed his ignorance and homophobia.
I wonder what the average lesbian or gay person think about the Church when they hear these comments. I wonder what transgendered people think about the Church when Bishops threaten to block moves for trans equality or when evangelicals suggest therapy not equality. The anger this people provoke in our community is immense.
Our people may not know that there are different types of churches, that there are nuances of belief, that many of us stand by Jesus' message of love and inclusion. So then we go along and invite them to Church! It must be like inviting a heretic to dine at the local office of the Holy Inquisition. No wonder we get fearful of the reaction we will get.
Yet St John tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. Many years ago someone overcame their fears to invite me to MCC and what happened on that Sunday in October 1987 changed my life forever. People overcame their fears and invited you hear, you over came your fears to come here and to invite Jesus into your life. There is fear, but we need to ask God to take our fears and cast them out with powerful love that drives us to tell our people that first spiritual law, God loves them and wants the best for them.
It's easier not to bother...it takes time
The second block is one of time. We live such busy lives and we live in a culture which wants instant results. I have a choice of over 200 tv stations to watch, I can cook a meal in less than two minutes, I can have, if I pay, my shopping delivered to my door, with the internet I don't even need to go to a bar to meet or chat to other people. I don't want to spend time doing anything when everything can happen instantaneously.
Bearing witness takes time. I don't think any of us want to be like those street evangelists who assume that one comment, or one leaflet, will turn someone's life around. Instead we need to realise that evangelism is a long process. People take only so much at a time. They may take a long time to believe that God could love them and want the best for them and even longer to get to a point where they accept the forgiveness that is offered to them. We are in this for the long run.
We forget that our faith is a life-long process and that the Church we are seeking to build is intended to last for generations. The seeds for my own faith journey were laid for by my family who had me baptised at the age of 3 months and by an awareness that I was a Catholic. My mum read me a few Bible stories when I was little but her own faith was not strong enough to sustain a new growth for long. So for years the seed of faith laid dormant in me. Then it was watered by the activities of the Christian Union at my school and then by a decision to start going to mass. After that the seed of faith sprung roots and started to flourish. But I did not become an active Christian until 12 years after I had been baptised.
We will witness to people and see no results. But our responsibility is to witness and trust God to nurture and build upon the seeds that are sown. This is amazingly counter cultural in an age where we demand instant results. But if we think about our own journey towards faith then we see that with most of us, things took time too.
Not taking seriously the reality of spiritual warfare
I find it strange that we live in a culture where we can watch mythology type programmes like Buffy but doubt the reality of spiritual warfare! It seems that secular people are better at understanding there is a battle going on between good and evil than the Church is! Our faith teaches that before Creation war broke out in Heaven and Lucifer, an archangel rebelled against God. War broke out in Heaven and Lucifer and the angels which followed were cast out. There began a great cosmic battle between good and evil. The decisive battle in this war was won on the cross when Jesus defeated death. Now we have smaller battles left until the day when time is wound up. Most of these battles are fought in the tender soil of our own souls and consciences and lives. This is where the battle is played out.
I don't want to go overboard on this. Some Christians get it wrong by blaming the devil for everything that goes wrong in their lives as if they have no sense of personal responsibility. Other Christians get it wrong by not believing there is a devil, a force of evil and malevolence in the world. It is never in the devil's interest for someone to come to Jesus. It is never in the devil's interest for people in our community to find salvation, to find love and peace and grace. The devil would much rather our people continue in a downward spiral of loneliness, despair and degradation than find grace and hope. The devil, of course, loves it when the Church, the main army in this great war, do his work for him.
By failing to take these concepts seriously we find a block in our efforts to share our faith. Other things that get in the way may be getting in the way for a purpose, and a purpose not of God. Tiredness, rows, distractions, fear, that stop us doing what God wants us to do are put in the way to distract us by the father of lies. The good news is that we are not powerless in this. We can resist these distractions, we can ask Jesus to remove them. The trick is knowing what's going on.
Fear of not knowing how to handle the tough questions.
Sometimes we get fearful as we think we won't know how to answer the questions people have of us. We can tell them that God loves them but get confused when they ask why God lets awful things happen to people. We can tell them about free will and human choices but then they may come back with something else. Let me let you into a terrifying secret - I don't know the answers either! I wish someone would tell me some of the things I puzzle about, but faith in God is not an intellectual system where everything is worked out, instead it is an adventure, a risk, where we take things on trust. We won't know the answers to their questions, but we will be able show love. We can say "I don't know but I will try and find out". We can recognise that sometimes people don't want answers but the freedom to question and explore.
Conclusion
Most of the blocks we experience are to do with fear. Fear keeps us paralysed and unable to move on. Fear is the mind-killer. But we have an antidote to fear, love. Our fears can keep others away from God and the quality of love and life that we wish to share. Let's pray that God's love will remove our fears, so that we become more effective witnesses.
Loving
God,
We know that your love removes our fears,
But sometimes we want to cling to our fear and to our pain,
As we are comfortable with them.
Help us to move beyond our fears,
Our fear of rejection,
Our fear of not knowing what to say,
Our fear of wasting time and
Our fear and ignorance of spiritual warfare,
So that through our love and our lives,
Your love and life may shine through,
So that our people may be saved.
Amen.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.