Baptism Barrier

WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
September 13th 2009

Rev. Mark R. Bradshaw-Miller
“Baptism Barrier”

Have you ever thought of yourself as an evangelist? You know, an evangelist. Someone like Philip in today's Scripture reading. And evangelist is someone who shares the gospel with people who don’t know about Jesus. Have you thought of yourself as someone who tells others about Jesus?
I am guess that if I set out a sign-up sheet to recruit evangelist it would be a fairly short list. Very few of us even like the word evangelism. It seems to either make us feel guilty because we're not doing it, or turn us off because there's no way we would ever want to do it. A very large study has just been done on evangelism in churches like ours. The conclusive finding was that the vast majority of people would rather go get a root canal than talk about, much less DO, evangelism. For the last forty years, most churches have been in decline. It seems we’ve developed a real -threatening aversion to evangelism! Right now, at this very minute, you may want to put your fingers in your ears and sing “la, la, la.” Anything to drown out the “E” word!
Why do so many of us have such a visceral reaction to evangelism? There are all kinds of reasons why not much evangelism is happening in most congregations. I'll give you some of my own reasons. I don't want to be anything close to the stereotype that comes to my mind when I think of an "evangelist."
Nor do I want to offend people by pressuring them with rhetoric about where they'll spend eternity. Besides that, I wonder sometimes what business I have telling people what they ought to be doing or believing. I have enough trouble in my own life doing and believing what I should. I'd rather just do the best I can, being the best Christian I can be, and hope that is a good enough witness to others.
After all, St. Francis of Assisi said, “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” I do fine talking faith language with you here at church. But when I’m with people who aren’t churchgoers, words fail. I flounder. I hope words aren’t necessary.
But what happens when we meet someone who obviously needs to hear some words about God’s love? Someone like the Ethiopian eunuch. He is an African man with an important job that came at a high price. Most likely, he had been castrated at some point in his life so that he could serve the queen of Ethiopia. That why he's called a "eunuch." He was unable to be married or have children. Religious law kept him from participating in worship services. Yet, somehow, he had heard of God and wanted to know more about God. What do you do when you don't think of yourself as an evangelist but you come across someone like this man?
Someone who bears deep wounds inflicted by the world . . .
Someone who is not welcomed by traditional religion . . .
Someone who looks successful but feels empty . . .
Someone who is searching for God, searching for something besides what she has . . .
Someone who needs to hear about God’s love. Someone like Rick.
Rick was a successful businessman. He visited a church in the “Bible belt.” He came because he saw an ad they had placed on TV. The minister of the church had been opposed to putting ads for a church on television. "Only fundamentalist mega-churches do that," he'd said. "It costs too much anyway. We should be using that money for caring for the poor. Besides," he'd said, "What kind of people pick their church from ads on television?"
But the church did it anyway. They got dozens of visitors who had never before been to any church in their lives. One of them was Rick. Rick brought his 8-year-old son, Andy, to church one Sunday. The children's Sunday school happened to be studying Esther that day, and Andy was part of the class. Monday morning the minister got a call from Rick. "My son is so excited about this story he heard at church," he said. "He said the story is from the 'book of Esther.' Can you tell me where I can get a copy of that book? I want to read it to him at home. Can I buy it at Barnes and Noble or somewhere?'" Rick, a college graduate and successful businessman, had never owned a Bible. He had no idea that Esther is a book in the Bible.
I wonder if it surprised you that someone could grow up in this country and not know that Esther is a book in the Bible? This is increasingly true. In 1910 only 3% of Americans were growing up with no faith training, but in the 1980s 14.5% were growing up with no faith training. And the number of people coming to adulthood in the U.S. with no faith training at all continues to increase. In our own community many of our neighbors have no religious identity. They are not Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or Christian. They are not connected religiously at all.
"What is to prevent me from being baptized?" the Ethiopian man asked. That’s a good question. For people like Rick, the obstacle to being baptized, to becoming a Christian, is simply that no one has ever told them about God. Let me say that again. No one has ever told them about God. Friends, I wonder if we are preventing people from hearing about God. Are we keeping people from hearing about God’s love? Are we constructing barriers between the gospel and the people who desperately need to hear it? Is our fear of being like a stereotype a barrier?
Is our lack of confidence in ourselves a barrier? Is our desire to give people their "space" about religion a barrier?
Could it be that for many people like Rick, we are actually preventing them from knowing more about God? Are we keeping people from becoming followers of Jesus? That may seem unfair but what I mean is that we have all been touched by the ministry of Westminster. We value the unique character, no not characters, of this community. Many of us have come to deeper faith because of this place. And the truth is that there are others who are deeply hungry for welcoming message that God welcomes all people which we proclaim.
If we knew that there was someone who was thirsty for a drink of water, none of us would walk by. We would each gladly share what we have to make things better for someone else. We would not keep it to ourselves if someone needed it! But this is exactly what the church does when we do not share the welcome we have found in Jesus with those in need. We sit with the waters of baptism in our hands. Meanwhile, neighbors around us are desperately thirsty to know that God loves them through Jesus Christ. This is what it is all about.
Maybe that is easier said than done. It certainly seems that Philip had it easier than we do. After all, the Spirit of God seemingly transported him to the Ethiopian man's side and compelled him to share the gospel! It seems like all Philip did was show up and God did the rest. If we were to be evangelists, what would that look like for us? To be truly authentic it would not be an invitation to become someone we are not or share a message of which we do not believe. How would the Spirit work with us? Where would the Spirit of God send us? Who would be on our pathway?
Friends, I invite you to come on a spiritual adventure with me. What would it look like for us to be authentic evangelists? This is what we'll be exploring together as a church for 6 weeks, starting October 11th . You are invited to pray, to study, to question, and to think about how God might be sending us out to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a church, we will be reading the short book, Unbinding Your Heart. It came out of the study I mentioned earlier. Today in your bulletin there are sign-up sheets for the small groups that are forming now. We will use these groups for prayer and discussion. You will be spiritually encouraged and intellectually stimulated in these groups. Together, we will be inviting God to show us what it would look like for us to become evangelists. What would it be like for us to share God’s love in our own unique way?
There is a story about a family who shared with a pastor about one of the most the memorable Christmases they ever had. It was the last Christmas they spent at their grandparents' house. The grandfather had Parkinson's disease. Soon, they would move to an assisted living center. It had been their family's tradition to gather around the Christmas tree and listen to the granddad read the Christmas story from Luke. This year, when Granddad tried to read, he could barely move his Parkinson’s-locked jaws. He just couldn’t manage to speak the words aloud. The family sat there and watched him struggle. No one seemed to know what to do. Should they say something? Would it hurt his pride if someone helped him? No one did anything for what seemed to be a very long time. But Emily, the 6-year-old granddaughter, had just learned to read. She knew exactly what to do. She quietly tiptoed over to his chair and plopped herself beside him. Then, taking his finger into her hand, she helped him point to each word, saying them out loud with him as they read along together:
“Unto you is born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”
"Do you know what you're reading?" Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch. The man nearly begged, "How can I unless someone guides me?" So Phillip went and sat beside him. Who will God lead you to sit beside? Amen!