With Faces Set

Sermon, 6/27/10 (Pentecost 6). We at BPC have the outline of a vision: “Personal, Passionate, Progressive”. And scripture makes clear our purpose: outreach, outreach, outreach. Clear on both and with faces set outward, we can face and transform our challenges – that Jesus’ resurrection might be ours, as well …

Scripture     Luke 9:51-62

With Faces Set

Let’s just go ahead and say it.

Say what we may be tempted not to say, because this matter prompts so much anxiety. Anxiety, because the matter seems so urgent. And it is urgent. Anxiety, because uttering it might scare away prospective members. And so it may – though more certainly flee from the anxiety it takes to cover up this matter.

And yet, urgency can be expressed with little anxiety. One can be purposeful without being fearful.

So Jesus teaches us. His urgency and his purpose today are of one piece: “On their way (the disciples) entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.”

So let’s just go ahead and say it. Say what is urgent in our church. And take the opportunity, amidst this sense of urgency, to set our face with Jesus – to express a renewed sense of purpose for our future …

But first, let us resume our biblical story – already in progress.

Closure has come to Jesus’ extended ministry, in and around his backwoods home region – at least, as Luke orders the narrative. For now, the federal capital beckons him. An earlier passage in Luke 9 portends his “departure” there – the Greek word is exodov, his exodus, his resurrection leadership outward – to liberate Israel from her oppressors, within and without.

Exodov. Jesus’ resurrection leadership outward. The new Moses, pointing us to our Promised Land. Purposely and purposefully revealing to us – as Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, makes plain – that the resurrection, indeed, is ours for the asking – ours, for the acting.

His purposefulness resounds, across the ages: “He set his face” … “His face was set.”

So, taking Jesus’ lead, let’s go ahead, set our faces with him, and just say it. Transparently – urgently – non-anxiously. Without shame, affirming and celebrating as we do the steadfast stewardship of servant leaders in this congregation to whom we owe a debt far greater than the one I am about to share with you.

A debt of six figures. Last year for our congregation, and quite possibly this. We draw at this moment on a generous endowment that – at the present rate of deficit spending – would at best last us three more years.

Has your face lost its “setting” yet? There’s really no need.

Anxious yet? We need not be.

We need not be anxious, when we keep before us the fact that our projected 2010 debt is diminishing as we go – not quickly, but certainly.

We need not be anxious, when we set our faces not toward these figures, but purposefully with Jesus, toward the Jerusalem just beyond our doorstep.

We need not be anxious, when – with faces set outward – we find ways to use our real estate riches for the community outreach a church of our physical means is called to create. As one wing would be used, beginning within 18 months, to provide a clubhouse for spiritual recovery groups in our community – for a period of several years – that would at the very least cut our annual deficit in half.

We need not be anxious. Not when we can affirm, to paraphrase the prophet Isaiah: “The grass and wings of our property withers … and the flower of our fellowship and Christian ed halls fade …

… but the world of the Lord endures, forever!”

When we know that – when we affirm that – when we trust that – we no longer anxiously focus our energies on saving the church as-is. (As if the church has not already been saved!)

When we know that – when we affirm that – when we trust that – we set our face away from the comfort of Clarendon, and set our face the way outward from Wilson.

But only when we know that – and only when we affirm that – and only when we trust that reality: That the grass and wings of our property wither … and the flower of our fellowship and Christian ed halls fade … but the world of the Lord endures – and forever!

If our faces are set, and our purpose is set, tough decisions await us, still. Property upkeep: How much? When? And what about our three full-time staffers – yours truly included? None of these expenses before us is a given.

But our call to witness outward is. Our scriptures are clearer on this than just about anything else: our need to follow such an Exodus vision – to be about the ministry of healing a hurting world – where, indeed, the Resurrection is and can be ours!

A vision that is – as our Session makes clear – Personal in our hospitality, Passionate in our worship, and Progressive in our diversity. Note the uncompromising outreach focus in two of those three Ps. Personal: World, we want you to know you are welcome here – no exceptions. Progressive: We embrace God’s diverse creation and its needs as our own. And even the ultimate goal of Passionate in worship is to commission and send us forth to be passionately about God’s kingdom work.

Personal, Passionate, Progressive: that’s the starting-point for a vision for this congregation. For, as Proverbs puts it well: “Without a vision, the people perish.” To which my seminary chaplaincy instructor memorably added: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there.”

To which the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke chimes in: “Follow me … Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God: A phrase that can faithfully be translated in this post-royalty age as the common-wealth of God.

Our Session recently affirmed, in a spiritual formation exercise, that –  generally speaking – we at Bethesda Presbyterian Church are an intellectual, sophisticated bunch. Urbane we are! May we become willing and able to let go of the final letter from that word, if and when it prevents us from becoming the urban church that same Session would have us be.

An urban church: Focused northwest-ward, Rockville and beyond. Focused southeast-ward, to the District of Columbia. Our Session has affirmed for four years now this Old Georgetown/Wisconsin corridor to be the focus of our church growth and outreach. Need we wonder why all 15 of the adults who have joined our congregation since November hail from this long strip of land? And so need we wonder where our outreach witness also lies?

Personal in hospitality, Passionate in worship, and Progressive in diversity: that’s God’s outward-facing, urban-placing call for us. At least, as our Session has heard it.

May we become willing and able to let go of the costs of three other Ps that would hold us back from answering this call: Property as possession … perhaps Personnel – the most painful of matters! – and, the most intangible yet arguably the costliest P of all: our Sunday morning Piety.

In the movie “Grand Canyon”, an East Los Angeles tow truck driver sojourns to that national monument annually to gain a wider perspective on life. For the tow truck driver knows that, when he sees his life in the light of eternity, he can then respond creatively to the challenges of his community’s poverty and hopelessness as well as his own personal problems. He knows that, apart from that wider perspective, he would become tyrannized by all those small things that seem so all-important.

And so would we.

So let us gaze out over our Grand Canyon, my friends. It lies before us in two ways – one repentant, one redemptive.

Repentantly, it represents the valley of the shadow of our privatized piety. An endless chasm of self-absorption, this.

Redemptively, though, that vista represents the boundless common wealth of God’s creation – the kingdom vision, set infinitely before us. If we but dare to drink in its awesome beauty. If we but dare to claim it, among us – at-hand.

As Jesus concludes his teaching today: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

The Commonwealth of God – life, resurrected. Where, after all, his face was truly set.

Could the same be said for our faces, as well?

Could it be said, then, that the Resurrection is ours?