First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Joshua 5 and Luke 15

“Into the Far Country”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

March 18, 2007

A friend in ministry is a great moment. I was blessed in having one before I knew just what I had. Tim Burden was the Methodist pastor down the block. He was a former YWAMer, which meant he had spent years on the streets of Amsterdam asking people if they wanted to know Jesus. Walking the streets of Amsterdam last year I couldn’t help but remember Tim and what must have been the most frustrating of callings. Amsterdam is a kind of Mecca for secularism and godlessness. It isn’t anti-religion; it just seems unreligious.

When I met Tim he was growing a church in the middle of Ohio where he and his wife Beth were raising four children. I am not sure exactly why we clicked, but we did. I want to believe it was because we shared a similar sense of mission for the church. Where before it was one person leaving a church and going into the great unknown lands to bring the gospel to the heathen and clothes to the naked, Tim and I shared a vision that mission was the church going out and coming back. And not just one church, but many churches together.

On our last mission to Mexico Tim and I led an unwieldy band of twenty different churches, representing twelve denominations. This was a remarkable thing to see, and a remarkable moment to be in the midst. Given the wealth of denominational directions and particulars we stripped away most of the rules or structures. Pastors were pastors and team members were team members. It didn’t matter if you were the only person from your church, or if you were one of twenty. It didn’t matter if you sang with your hands up or your hands down; it mattered only that we worship God.

As all mission trips will have, there were challenges. We had problems with busses, we had problems with the heat, and keeping 100 people going in the same direction is where the phrase herding cats came from. On this last trip though we faced a challenge that cut to the very core of what we were doing. One of the pastors on the trip, Paul, was the leader of a tiny home church that was highly sectarian: they were the real deal, while the rest of the churches were just a series of motions, a gathering of the godless.

For the most part Paul was able to conceal this, to keep his contempt of Presbyterians and Methodists in check. And I am pretty sure it all started without intent to do harm, but harm was done, the unthinkable happened. He convinced two young Presbyterians that their baptism was inauthentic as it was not their choice and without the proper formula- that being immersion. These two young girls, Mandy and Dawn, in a moment of zeal and desire of salvation agreed to be baptized again by Paul on our free day.

The free day was at one of Monterrey’s parks called Horse Tail Falls. So there was plenty of water for baptizing and before anyone knew what was happening he baptized Dawn. When confronted, he realized the lines he had crossed and he stepped out of the water leaving Mandy waiting and furious. And there is nothing quite like the anger of a fourteen year old girl whose eternal salvation was questioned and then denied.

Back at the church where we were staying the pastors gathered in a closed meeting. There have only been two times in ministry when I have been angry and this was one of them. Afterwards Tim would say to me, I could never imagine you angry, now I can. In the midst of the anger about disrespect and the nature of our mission and the sense of being a team, being one, Paul didn’t budge. He was right, right in the way that has no opportunity to be other. He knew what was necessary for someone to receive salvation and if these would be pastors aren’t going to do it, well it was up to him.

Then I asked him a question that turned the tide. "These are my parishioners," I said. "You want to baptize them, so are you their pastor now? Are you going to nurture their salvation, teach them repentance, show them what it means to stand before God in prayer? Or are you here just to get them wet? Is that what it means to be saved? Are you their pastor now?"

***

When the Apostle Peter preached at Pentecost it says the people believed and asked him, what must we do in order to be saved? What is necessary for salvation? And Peter said to them, you must repent and be baptized. Although it is in the form of a parable, the church since the time of Luke has seen the necessary steps of salvation in the story of the prodigal. What Peter spoke directly answering the crowd, Jesus described in the story about a wayward son who returns to the father. He repents and he is brought into the house; he goes from death to life. He is saved.

Since the time of Luke the church has fretted and debated just what it means to be repentant and be baptized. The house church pastor, Paul, who tried to re-baptize two teenager wasn’t trying to create a problem, he was trying to do what he believed was necessary for salvation. He believed there was a very particular path that leads to Christ and if this way is not strictly followed then, you strive in vain. Paul wasn’t trying to create a problem, yet on multiple levels he embodied the problem the mission trip sought to overcome. What if the church isn’t your definition or my definition? What if the church as the body of Christ was not limited to a small band of believers in a living room convinced that the world around them was hell bound? What if it was something more?

Put together twelve denominations with more than twenty congregations in the context of foreign mission you might just get a glimpse of the answer. In this instance, though, we encountered how far we were from the prize. The pastor wept with the question of whether or not he was their pastor now. He knew for just a moment how much bigger the church was than his definitions. He knew how far he was from grace.

In our story of the prodigal there is one line that soothes this failure, “while he was yet far off”. I can’t begin to tell you how much this verse can mean in the chaos of missions. Standing in a barrio in Mexico or a field of cassava in Malawi or the moldy ruins of Mississippi’s coast, all places that far from the prize- they are as yet far off- these small steps have great meaning. When the church is more than one definition, more than one person or place, then there can be a moment where we glimpse the kingdom of God, or what the prodigal called, home even if it is yet far off.

No matter how we define it though, no matter if we get the bigger picture, there is in our passage today a definition of salvation for all. I am usually reluctant to say this is the one, this is required, this is necessary, as the Holy Spirit has called me to follow not lead, to interpret the scriptures not write them. Yet, in our passage there is a moment, a great clarity that cannot be denied. Where Pastor Paul and I would greatly disagree about the nature and means of baptism, we are actually on the same page with repentance. We would both agree that in order to receive salvation, we must first repent.

Hence my question, are you their pastor now? For he knew it was one thing to lead someone to believe that their life is not their own, to sense that my life can be remade in Christ if I offer my heart to him. This is the paradox of salvation: God doesn’t inflict salvation, you must want the Holy Spirit to abide in you; Christ doesn’t enter a heart without invitation. Paul knew it was one thing to lead someone to this invitation, it was quite another to help them navigate the freedom of Christ, to learn to trust repentance.

The prodigal is a pattern of receiving salvation. He repents and turns to his father and asks forgiveness for a squandered life. In this repentance, the father bestows an extravagant grace. The grace of the father is not piecemeal or a beggars portion, but the stuff of a wild party.

***

I grew up in the altar call tradition, in a holiness church, where wild parties were not encouraged. The key to the altar tradition is simple. The key is that no service of worship is concluded until salvation is offered to all. At the end of each service there was a time of prayer where the pastor coaxed the congregation with a soothing voice of invitation. The organist played “Just as I am” quietly and after a number of years had learned how to accentuate the call of the pastor with a kind of wooing rhythm. I prayed at that altar, not once but many times. I watched people come to that altar broken and offer their sins with many tears. People came for healing; they came repentant; they came for themselves and sometimes they came for others.

They came seeking salvation. They came to navigate the waters of repentance, praying, I want you to make me into the image of your son. They came hoping to see the limits of life overcome by miracles and mercy. In each worship service there was a moment where it was made clear that the grace of God depends upon you, you must open your heart. God doesn’t impose salvation.

Since the time of my childhood I have come to see the altar call tradition as one amongst others. It is neither the only way, nor a misguided way. It is one way. Although it is only one way, it is perhaps the clearest witness of the paradox of salvation, it is up to you. God doesn’t impose salvation as it is love, and love is never forced upon the beloved.

It isn’t necessary that you knell at an altar or chancel when you pray, but it is necessary that we offer our heart to Christ. It isn’t necessary that we are immersed as adults with a certain formula said as we enter the water; it is necessary that we seek first the kingdom of God, that the pieces of our souls that are broken are lifted up with a repentant heart saying, make me into the image of your Son. It is not necessary that we pray a certain prayer, but it is necessary that we see ourselves as sinners prayerfully seeking repentance.

Again, repentance is not feeling guilty or seeing yourself as a shame. Repentance is when you no longer want what destroys the soul God created and you ask God to be made right. We must never forget the image Jesus offers of those who repent. It’s not a moment of suspicion or modest acceptance. The image is a wild embrace.

God offers this wild embrace to those who turn their hearts unto him. The call for repentance is not a one time deal. As the Holy Spirit draws us more and more unto the image of Christ we are called upon to repent again and again. This is what it means to work out salvation with fear and trembling, what was promised by the Apostle Paul, the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion. Each step along this path is taken the same way: each moment of salvation is when we yield our spirit to the spirit of Christ.

No congregation, no tradition, no part of Christianity has a corner on this market. No one person has more spirit than the next. We are all in this together. We are all sinners in the hands of God. We are all sons and daughters hoping to find the father who is waiting for us to return. Give your heart unto Christ. Yield your spirit to receive his. Seek the Holy Spirit, go home. If we seek him, if we ask, if we pray, the prodigal’s return awaits us. This is what love requires. Amen.