Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "If We Tell It, They Will Come"

Text: Matthew 2:1-12

Have you ever wondered what gave the wise men

the idea to follow the star?

Remember, they were astronomers … we think …

so of course they would have noticed it right off.

And surely they would have wanted to study it

with whatever rudimentary equipment

they had available in their day and time. . .

But what gave them the notion

that they ought to follow it?

It’s not like they were small children

and thought they could get a closer look

if they wandered in its direction.

And even that wouldn’t explain

their bringing gifts!

How did they know?

What told them to drop everything

and embark on a journey of several months, at least,

following that bright spot on the horizon?

There must have been something powerful,

something attractive and compelling about that star,

to draw them away from their home and country,

to follow wherever it led.

Almost as if it had a pull of its own,

to bring them to itself from far away.

Whereas we today find ourselves, ironically,

in almost exactly the opposite position.

The wise men knew nothing about the star,

yet they felt compelled by it.

We, on the other hand, know lots about the star:

We may now be able to explain it in any scientific way,

but we hear about it and sing about it

at least once a year,

and we know it announced the birth of Jesus,

and threw Herod into fits,

But we no longer find it compelling.

Not the star, not its message.

Christ is born, oh yes, that’s very nice,

but aren’t we just a bit glad when the rush of Christmas is over

and we can get back to "normal" life, whatever that is?!

Now, I may be overstating our situation

by a little bit . . .

But how many of us can truthfully say

that we have allowed Christ

to draw us into a totally new way of life?

or that we have left something important behind

in order to follow him?

How many of us can claim that

our life is a beacon

to lead others to Christ?

How many of us

are so excited about our faith

that others are drawn to us

even if they don’t know quite why?

Even the wise men, who were unbelievers,

knew that something special was going on.

But do we?

Or have we reached the point where

we take it for granted

that God has appeared in our midst?

I don’t know for sure what it is

that has gotten us stuck.

I do know this:

the Christian faith is growing all over the world,

but not in North America.

The number of Christians in the world is growing;

the number of Christians in the U.S. is shrinking.

In fact, within the last decade or so it has happened

that Caucasian folks like most of us here

are no longer the majority among Christians.

Christianity is growing in Africa, in parts of Asia,

even in parts of eastern Europe as well.

It’s been strong for several centuries in Latin America …

But here, and in western Europe,

it’s doing a slow fade.

Where the Christian faith has always historically been strong,

it’s starting to die out.

That suggests to me two things:

The first is that the message itself

still has great power.

Just like the star, all those years ago,

beckoned the wise men

to come and se what God had done,

so, in our day and time,

the story of Jesus Christ still has power.

People hear it, and find it compelling.

It answers their questions, or at least acknowledges them –

it meets some of their deepest needs.

It helps make sense out of their lives.

It describes a God who is loving, not arbitrary.

It asserts that God became one of us,

and so knows, from the inside,

all the problems and difficulties of being human.

It has a wonderful storybook

about people who were imperfect

just like the rest of us

yet who were able to serve God

and were loved by God.

It insists that our lives have meaning and purpose

beyond the right here and right now.

And that is powerful stuff!

The Christian message today

remains just as compelling as it was

all those years ago

when the wise men loaded up their camels

and chased after that star.

Christ can change the lives of 21^st-century people

just as surely as he did

his first-century followers.

That’s the first thing.

The second goes right with it.:

In those places where

the message appears to have lost its power . . .

the problem is not the message

but the messengers.

And that’s us.

We have somehow fallen down on the job.

Either we aren’t getting the message out,

or if we are, we’re presenting it in such a way

that it doesn’t seem to attract people.

Let me suggest a few reasons why that may be . . .

see if you fit in somewhere.

For those of us who came of age

in the first half of the 20^th century,

up through about the 1950s,

churchgoing was something that was

very much taken for granted.

It was not only acceptable, it was expected;

and you were somewhat suspect

if you didn’t attend church regularly.

Sundays were treated differently in society as a whole.

Most stores and businesses weren’t open,

your kids would never have had a soccer tournament

or Little League game scheduled on a Sunday.

Church membership in the U.S.

hit its all-time high in the 1950s.

And so, if you’re someone who was

growing up during any of that time,

probably it didn’t seem too important

to tell the message of Christ

because it was assumed that

everyone knew it already.

Why would you bore your neighbors with something they already knew?

Or insult them, by making it appear as if

you thought they didn’t know it?

You might know in your heart of hearts

that your church was better than theirs! …

even so, you knew that they knew the story of Jesus.

Foreign missions were important . . .

we knew there were lots of people "out there,"

across the ocean somewhere,

who needed to hear the message . . .

and we supported financially

those who traveled to bring it to them.

But we ourselves lost the skills, and the sense of urgency,

about telling the good news

to the people nearest to us.

It wasn’t very necessary then –

so we don’t know how to do it now.

Others of us, who came of age in the 1960s and later,

grew up into a generation

where the Christian faith was perceived very differently.

Churchgoing became optional, to say the least.

Many perceived it as a lot of foolishness,

bad psychology, a crutch for the weak-minded.

Faith was intellectually suspect.

And then, of course,

if going to church was something our parents did,

we certainly weren’t going to do it!

So for the baby-boom generation,

and I think for generation X as well, or whatever you want to call that group,

if you were a Christian you kept pretty quiet about it,

because otherwise your friends and your colleagues

might think you were pretty strange.

So, then, you certainly wouldn’t make an effort to share the message,

because that would mean you were really beyond help!

I can’t even describe for you

some of the astonished reactions I got

at the first reunion of my high school graduating class,

when I told people what it is I do for a living!

It was not just surprise about

that being the path I had taken . . .

you could attribute some of that to the fact that

people who study as much math and science as I did

don’t usually turn around and go into touchy-feely kinds of work! . . .

but there was also real surprise that

I would come back into this group, now,

and admit it, and talk about it, and be excited about it!

Well, that’s my generation!

For many of us,

even if we believe the gospel ourselves,

it’s considered suspicious and faintly embarrassing to talk about it.

So we don’t do a good job

of telling the message, either.

The other possibility,

and I think it’s at least partly true for all of us,

is that sometimes we’re not sure we know the message well enough ourselves

to go tell it to anyone else.

Either we feel we are lacking in some basic biblical knowledge –

don’t know where certain stories can be found,

don’t remember the names of Jacob’s sons,

can’t recall the names of all twelve disciples,

can’t name a single significant incident from the book of Judges,

haven’t a clue what the book of Revelation is talking about–

and so we don’t speak up

because we don’t want to expose the limits of our knowledge . . .

And/or, we recognize that even on our strongest days,

we have some questions and some occasional doubts

and we haven’t always lived up to what we say we believe –

and so we don’t speak up,

because we believe we aren’t very credible witnesses.

What if someone said to us,

you mean if I follow Christ,

I’ll end up like you?

Whatever it is holding us back,

we need to figure out how to overcome it,

and to tell God’s good news to the world.

The message has power of its own:

it doesn’t depend on our being eloquent,

it doesn’t depend on our having lots of facts at our fingertips,

it doesn’t even depend on whether we are perfectly good people

(thank goodness!)

But it does depend on our willingness to speak up.

Like the star,

the message will draw people to itself.

They will come, like the wise men,

from places that may surprise us.

They will come bringing gifts

that are different from, but complementary to, what is already here.

But come, they will.

If we will speak.

If we will say,

"God has come into our midst;

isn’t it wonderful?!"

The message awaits a messenger.

May we speak, and the world hear.

Amen.

© 2005 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)