Coming Together So They Will Know God is With Us
Mark 9:2-8; 1 Corinthians 14:20-25
A Sermon by Rev. Thomas J. Boone
Central Presbyterian Church, Mobile AL, April 26, 2008

One of the more beautiful sights I saw growing up in California was fog. Now that may seem a bit strange, so let me explain. We lived just north of San Francisco where there were a lot of hills. And at night I’d watch the fog rise on the horizon, coating the rolling brown hills like a blanket of white foam. Another picturesque memory I have is driving near the Golden Gate Bridge with my family on one Saturday morning. The fog hadn’t yet lifted completely and it was amazing to see the sight that has been imprinted on millions of postcards. I could see the top of the bridge over the fog but the rest of the bridge was covered by dense white fog. Of course, that’s not my only memory of fog.

From a distance fog can mesmerize, but it’s a different story when you’re in it. I have another memory of my father driving us home after a Christmas Eve service. We had intended to do our tradition of seeing Christmas lights on houses, but during the service the fog settled in and blocked anyone from seeing a few feet in front of them, let alone Christmas lights on houses. We lived about six miles from church and that night it took my dad almost an hour to get home, the fog was so thick. When we’re surrounded by fog, what would otherwise be obvious becomes blurry at best. Depending on how thick the fog is, it may not even be possible to see the front of your car while driving.

Losing focus on what ought to be our ultimate aim can be an easy thing to do, and fog isn’t the only analogy I could’ve chosen. Most of us have adjusted to the effect now, but do you remember when television and movie directors started using an effect where the camera would move in a way that resembled casual video? Casual video is where an amateur person like me takes a video of a soccer game, for example, and the camera images seem bumpy. Why we’d ever want that kind of effect in shows made by professionals I have no clue, but it seems to be the rage. Well, my point in bringing this up is that when it first came out it was hard for me to focus on one thing in the screen, and maybe that’s the point of it. The picture’s too frenzied for the typical viewer to focus only on one thing.

Often we allow our lives to get too frenzied to focus just on one thing, too. One day I had two diametrically opposed conversations with two different people. The first conversation was in the morning with a man in his thirties who had come to me with some questions about God. He had only recently started coming to church after a long sabbatical, try twenty-something years, and confessed that he had a lot of questions about the meaning of life, his ultimate purpose, whether or not the church was a good place for raising kids (obviously he wasn’t from here), and what the whole tithing thing was about. He had a lot of questions, but I couldn’t help but think that he was missing the point so I said to him, “It sounds to me as if you’r hiding behind a lot of fluff and avoiding the real issue.” He got this surprised look on his face and asked me, “What do you mean?”

We proceeded to have a conversation about his quest for Jesus, his re-encounter with the mystery of God and what impact this would have on his life. Coming to church for someone like that isn’t about programs, children, tithing, or anything else other than the realization that all they’ve sought isn’t enough to satisfy. The real issue for him, as it is for many other people we call “seekers,” is that they have come to the point where their capacity to fill the void in their lives no longer works. So, seekers will turn to things beyond themselves in order to find satisfaction where none has yet existed.

What I told him I’ll illustrate in the next conversation I had with a man in his 90’s later that day. He was someone who had lived a full life, served in three wars as a career Marine. A rough man who had seen it all, he was also under hospice care in a season when most people abandon the frenzied offerings of life in favor of a robust focus on the eternal. My particular view going into these types of conversations is that I have far more to gain than to give so I sat with Charles on that day as I had done several times in the past year. He was close to dying and he had shared a lot of stories with me as if he were telling his memoirs rather than writing them. On that day, he said “Tom, I’m not scared to die, I’m nervous about going down rather than up.” “Charles,” I said, “when the time comes, keep your eyes focused on Jesus and you’ll go the right way.”

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.” The hymn is one of our favorites, but to look at the modern church scene I wonder if we truly get the point. Every now and then I’ll ask people why they go to a certain church. The answers are predictable: some will say it’s for the children’s programs, others will say it’s for the music. Some will say jokingly its because the food is so good, but then they get serious and say that there’s a lot of good people there. I’ve heard that good and short sermons will get people coming to church, and another stock answer I hear especially in the deep south is that’s where the family has always gone. One family I visited a while back attended a mega-church and they things they bragged about were the bowling lanes, exercise facilities, and swimming pool in the church.

Not once in the nearly twenty years that I’ve been asking people why they go to church have I ever heard that they go because the focus is on Jesus. Instead people talk about the programs, facilities, and the people or staff. But never have I heard the one reason that I think should be the reason people choose one church over another: that church makes it all about Jesus.

In the transfiguration just as Peter and the other two disciples were about ready to miss the whole point of the event, Moses and Elijah disappear and they see only Jesus alone. They thought it was an amazing thing to see not just Jesus, but to see Moses and Elijah: fabled figures of Jewish history right there in front of there eyes! But, the irony of the whole scene is this: Jesus was the main event. Peter and the other disciples were getting a daily dose of the main event and they wanted to erect altars memorializing these other two guys. Evidently it was easy to lose one’s focus on Jesus even when he was walking with people in front of their very eyes.

How often are we erecting memorials to things far less significant than Jesus? We praise one form of worship over another. We celebrate tradition over an authentic and spontaneous experience of the Holy Spirit. We crave more and more money in the bank even though Jesus himself warned us against keeping our treasures on earth. We feed our egos with big houses, fancy stuff, and nice cars while forgetting that while Jesus was on earth he didn’t even have a place to lay his head. I was in an Apple Store recently and I found myself craving the things that feed my weaker nature, so I’m not immune to the temptations. What do we have in our possessions that serve the express purpose of keeping our focus squarely on Jesus alone? This is about it [holding up a Bible]. But, when we’re most honest with ourselves we must also admit that we spend far more time memorializing the distractions than we do focusing on Jesus through this [pointing to scripture].

And what are the results? Maybe you can relate to a few of these things that plenty of people confess to when they lose their focus on Jesus. Fuses seem a little shorter between people; immorality becomes easier to entertain; disunity permeates the body of Christ; dishonesty becomes smoother; honor and love surrender to self-absorption; and we lose sight of what’s truly important in favor of the miniscule. On the other side of the coin, what happens when we focus more on Jesus? Tempers seem not to flare as much; patience seasons disagreements; purity becomes clearer and there’s greater strength to choose it; our love for each other permeates our mission and fellowship; and we pursue the great ends of the church at all costs.

And that is the reason why Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14 that when Christians keep their focus on Jesus, people who don’t know Jesus will say “God is really among them!” The Corinthians Christians had a lot of problems, as you likely remember from Sunday School, past sermons, or even from the reading we’ve been doing. But, at the heart of the problems that Paul’s describing is their loss of focus on Jesus alone. They were the ancient equivalent to the modern church that proudly testifies to programs, finances, large membership, various ministries, and an affluent plant and property. Yes, you’ve got all that and more, Paul says, but look at the problems you’re facing that show what you’ve lost: get back to Jesus!

Life will disorient and distract us from Jesus, so the true battle of every Christian man and woman is to keep our senses tuned into Jesus. Problems will still exist, but with a Jesus-focus, just like I told that 90-year-old man who was dying, we’ll end up going the right way. We’ll still disagree with each other, but we won’t risk the destruction of the church in our arguments. That’s what I’ve seen emerge here lately. You’ve allowed yourselves to experience Jesus in new ways, and in traditional ways. That fight’s gone, praise God! But now’s the time to embrace what you’ve achieved and not lose focus on what’s really important. At all costs, focus on Jesus and on what He wants to do here. You have money, a plant without debt, a growing membership, a location for outreach, and a membership of old and young. You have a youth group that has grown from one handful to five handfuls. These are blessings that many churches crave. God is among you, He is really among you! So let’s keep our focus on Jesus, challenge ourselves to do all He seems to be calling us to do, and get on not with the business of surviving in the desert, but in being the light to midtown you were always destined to be. Hallelujah. Amen.