May 7, 2000

Pastor David G. Mullen

Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36-48

Hi, I’m Dave, and I’m a sinner. Oops, maybe you don’t know that you’re supposed to answer back, "Hi, Dave!" So let’s try it again. Hi, I’m Dave, and I’m a sinner! …

Now why would I begin like that? I’ll bet there are quite a few worshippers here today who know why that sounds familiar. It’s like the beginning every talk at an AA meeting. One would say, "Hi, I’m Dave, and I’m an alcoholic." And everyone says, "Hi, Dave." It’s a fellowship thing. It’s a bottom line thing: honesty about being a drunk and about needing God to enjoy sobriety in the deepest possible sense of the word.

Today I want to talk about the bottom line in terms of the fellowship of the Church. I think that all three Scripture lessons today flow together in a remarkable way–a way that seemed to me could easily be called recovery: recovery from sin and brokenness and recovery of the very thing humanity misses so much: deep, loving, and abiding relationship with God, the source of all life and healing.

"Hi, I’m Dave, and I’m a sinner" is in fact a wonderful to begin any serious discussion of the faith. What if in every controversy in the church all the speakers began that way. Wouldn’t that somehow alter the tone, the sense of who we are and what we are about? "Hi, I’m such and so, and I’m a sinner." Truly the beginning of new life for any of us is that we come to understand God to be the merciful Christ who dies on the Cross in order to forgive us all!

If we lived on the basis of forgiveness, we enter into new life greater than the worst of what any of us have done. And that is real liberation, the beginnings of real recovery. Remember that in our first lesson Peter preached to his people the Jews about their role in the killing of Christ. These are words that need be heard in the right way, for they have too often been the excuse for anti-Semitism, for calling Jewish people "Christ-killers". But there is no justification for anti-Semitism. In fact Peter makes excuse for them: though they were part of a terrible thing, they didn’t know what they were doing, and because they didn’t, if they just turn back to God, they can and will be forgiven!

In this fellowship called the Church, we can admit that we’ve all acted out of ignorance, we’ve all been Christ-killers. We’ve all done things, said things, lived in ways that killed the love of God within us. We’ve all participated in the deathly ways of the greedy world. And thus many of us become addicts. Addicts dependent on alcohol, drugs, food, sex, pornography, dysfunctional relationships, rage, work, or even, and maybe especially for some of us, self-righteousness and smug religion. All that is part of the old life of ignorance. But we didn’t really know it until the life-changing grace of God got a hold of us!

In terms of the 12 Step spirituality of AA, we are always working on the first three steps: admitting that we are powerless over the things that torment our lives; and are coming to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity; and we are in the process of day by day of turning our lives and our will over to the care of God (the care of God–what wonderful words!) whom we understand to be our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But now we arrive at the second stage of being the Church. St John wrote to his beloved Church, My dear children, you know that Christ came to take away sins. He isn’t sinful and people who stay one in their hearts with him won’t keep on sinning. If they do keep on sinning, they don’t know Christ, and they have never seen him.

Now I know that can and probably does sound like the worst sort of idea of being the church. It sounds like we are back again at phoniness, pretending to be what we are not. And it seemed to suggest that if any one among us does act in ways that don’t measure up, why then, obviously they are not really a Christian, and surely on the downward slide to hell! Oh, man, that’s the worst possible way of being the Church! Yet, isn’t true that too often the church has acted like a spiritual FBI sniffing out sin in every corner. Too often the church has driven people away because it gave the impression of being more concerned about checklists of principles, dos and don’ts, purity of doctrine, or some other spiritual credentials. No, there is no way that the church, and we who are members of it, are not still showing the symptoms of sin every day of our existence. What then can John possibly mean, Christ isn’t sinful and people who stay one in their hearts with him won’t keep on sinning. If they do keep on sinning, they don’t know Christ, and they have never seen him.

Once again, let’s think of AA. No recovering alcoholic who’s truly found a spiritual basis for life wants to go back to the old way of life: drinking. That life was a living hell for the alcoholic and his or her family. To go back to it would be to lose all that good things of the new life gained the fellowship and program and fall into a hell worst than the first. Thus the fellowship, the group of life of AA exists to help each other maintain sobriety for those times when the temptations becomes severe. No alcoholic is ever perfect. In fact, like anyone else, members of AA show themselves to be oftentimes grouchy, whiny characters like anyone else anywhere. But the point is that life is different now, lived on a new basis–and that the group is a huge part of it, encouraging, mentoring, supporting, and yes, sometimes warning of danger ahead.

So among us. Blessed with faith and healing, this fellowship of forgiven sinners exists to encourage one another in the new life. We must help one another to not fall back into the old ways, and to keep on doing the good and healthful things that lead to greater life.

But there’s a third stage of being the Church. Jesus told his disciples, You are witnesses of these things. You must tell everything that has happened. AA again can perhaps clear up our vision. The 12^th step says, Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. In other words, recovering people need to go out and live on a spiritual basis and when meeting practicing alcoholics, share the good news!

The early church honored the Lord’s command to tell everything that happened. : In its missionary activity the Church turned the world upside down with the good news of new life in the Risen Lord Jesus. What has happened to the modern church? We’ve turned inward, as though we could keep the new life of Christ just for ourselves. But that sort of thinking makes us sick again. Part of our recovery is recovering a passion for reaching others.

In all honesty we are a community of beggars that ought to be dedicated to showing other poor lost beggars where and how to find food. "Hi, I’m Dave, and I’m a sinner." Yes, indeed. But oh, what food I have to share: life in Christ, a feast of divine goodness and mercy. Amen.