Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Laying the Foundation: Unity

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

This morning, we lay down the final plank in the foundation that we have been laying from God’s Word that we will then seek to use to build upon and to use as the launching pad for implementing the strategic plan that we approved last winter. We’ve gone through dependence upon God, focusing on His mission, understanding sacrifice and then this morning, that of unity, of being together as God’s people.

You see, I believe as we come together as God’s people, as the body of Christ, as the members of the congregation that are gathered here, we will be a powerful force in God’s kingdom because there is power in unity. There is strength in unity of all going in the same direction for the same purpose trying to achieve the same goal.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a great illustration of that. Having family night at the Burcham household, we popped in Finding Nemo. I don’t know if you’ve seen Finding Nemo or not. Finding Nemo is about a little fish; oddly, his name is Nemo. Nemo gets separated from his father so most of the movie is about finding Nemo. That is, the dad is on a quest to find his son. Well, at the end of the movie, the grand reunion, father and son come back together and just about the point where you think they’re going to swim away happily ever after, uh-oh, a twist comes. A big ship comes by, a fishing boat. It lets down its net. The net captures a whole school of fish, including one of Nemo’s friends. And then we see a great example of the power of unity. Let’s watch.

[Movie] “Now, go, hurry.” “Tell all the fish to swim down.” “Well, you heard my son. Come on.” “Dory. Tell everybody to swim down.” “Swim down together. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Swim down.” “Everybody swim down.” “You have to swim down.” “Swim down.” “Swim down.” “Swim down.” “Don’t give up. Keep swimming. Just keep swimming.” “It’s working.” “Keep swimming.” “Keep swimming.” “Just keep swimming.” “Keep swimming.” “Come on, Dad.” “You’re doing great, Son.” “That’s my dad.” “Come on, to the bottom.” “Keep swimming.” “Keep swimming.” “Keep swimming.” “Almost there.” “Keep swimming.” “Keep swimming.” “Keep swimming.” “Yeah!”
They get captured in the net. Every fish has a different idea how they’re going to escape the fate. Some are going to try to swim to the top and jump over. Some are going to try to swim and get out of the net. Others are just going to panic and freak out, not knowing what they’re going to do. They’re all lost. They’re all headed for the top of the ship. Pretty soon, they’re going to be laid out. Break out the tartar sauce. Fish and chips tonight.

But then they get united. They say, “Keep swimming down.” And when they all work together, when every single one of them is swimming as hard as they can towards the bottom, not the ship, not the rope, not the net can contain them. Goal achieved. It wasn’t easy. It called for every single one of them to swim as hard as they could but, as they were united in one voice, “Keep swimming, keep swimming,” success. That’s the power of unity. That’s the power of working together.

My friends, we have some ambitious plans ahead of us and it’s not going to be easy. But I am convinced if we come together as the body of Christ, as we work together and as we have one voice going in one direction with one goal to be achieved and one mission that we’re after, God is going to do incredible things among us. And by His grace, I believe He will grant us success. But a very important plank in our foundation is that of being united with one voice.

Unity really has three aspects of it if we’re going to be together: Trust, Respect and Participation. We have to trust. We have to trust God, trust and believe that God is leading us, trust and believe God can accomplish the impossible, trust and believe this is really what God is going to do among us. That’s really what Joshua was trying to point out to the people of Israel and they got it. We’ve worked our way all the way through the book of Joshua. They have now conquered the land. Joshua is old. He knows he’s about to die so his final plea to the people of Israel, to God’s people, is they would be united. He says, “Let’s be united in serving the Lord our God.” What’s interesting is how the people respond to Joshua. They respond by saying, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord and serve other gods,” but here’s the key, “It was the Lord our God Himself who brought us and our fathers out of Egypt.” You see, they got it. Who brought them out of Egypt? The Lord did. Who gave them the Promise Land? The Lord did. Who did they put their trust in? The Lord. That’s who they put their trust in. They put their trust in God. They believed that this was God’s mission. They believed God was going to deliver the Promise Land for them and God did. But here, even at the end, they’re still focused. They still understand. “This isn’t something we did. This is something God did among us and God did through us.”
We can never lose sight of that. We have to always focus on the fact that we’re trusting in God. In one sense, this takes us full circle right back to the first plank we laid down, dependence upon God. If we think for one moment that we can achieve anything without God, we’re lost already. The only way we can achieve anything, the only way that plan is going to become a reality, the only way we’re going to reach people with the news of Jesus Christ is depending upon God and trusting in Him and believing in Him and understanding this is His mission and we’re going to move together. We are united in our trust and in our faith of God.

In addition to that, we have to trust one another. We have to trust each other and believe in each other and trust and believe that we all want the same thing, that we all want to work for God’s mission and for His kingdom. This is a little bit more of a challenge for us because we have a society that is working against us. Because every time you turn around, somebody is trying to take advantage of us. Somebody is lying to us. Somebody is deceiving us. Somebody is trying to pull the wool over our eyes or dupe us into something. It happens on a daily basis, right? It promised that it would slice, dice and make julienne fries, whatever those are, but all it did was make a mess in our kitchen when we finally got it in the mail, right? The TV ad said 10 minutes a day for 10 days and you’d have perfect abs and all you had was being a perfect fool and nobody likes being fool. Nobody likes being taken advantage of, suckered into something. As a result, we don’t trust people too much, do we? We always question. We always question their motives. We always question their sincerity. We always question the truthfulness of what they’re trying to say. We can’t be united if we don’t trust each other. It cannot be so among the people of God. God says we have a higher calling and that higher calling says that we trust each other.

Trusting each other really has two aspects to it, though. First of all, we ourselves have to be trustworthy and then we have to be willing to be trusting. I think you see that perfect balance in Luther’s explanation of the 8th Commandment, “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Luther’s explanation of that really has two parts of it. The first part deals with being trustworthy yourself. The second part is being able to trust somebody else. Because the first part says we’re not to lie, deceive or slander our neighbor, right? That means being trustworthy. It means we’re not going to lie. We’re not going to try to pull something over on someone else. We’re not going to slander somebody else, right? That’s being trustworthy. And then the other side of that is to trust because then he says, “But we’re to speak well of him and we’re to put the construction on anything we see or anything we hear.” You see, there are two sides to trusting one another. We ourselves have to make sure that we are trustworthy, that we’re not talking bad about somebody else, that we’re not lying, that we’re not deceiving and then we have to be open enough to say, “But I trust you and I’m going to speak well of you. And anything you say, instead of taking it the wrong way, I will take it the right way. And I will put the best construction on that until proven otherwise.” That’s what it will take for us to trust one another.

But if we can trust each other as the body of Christ, that unites us. It unites us in our trust of God and it unites us as we trust one another and think the best of each other.

The second aspect of unity is that of respect. And that means we have to respect one another and respect each other’s opinions. Think about it for a moment. There are over 2,500 of us. To think we’re going to agree on anything 100% is almost laughable. In my household, we’re down to four of us still in the house and we can’t agree on where to go for dinner. Now how in the world are 2,500 of us going to agree 100% of the time and 100% in one direction. It won’t happen this side of heaven. The important thing is that we continue to respect each other, that we continue to listen to each other. We all have differing opinions. We all have different perspectives. We all come from a different background and we can see it in a slightly different way and that works to our advantage. That works to our advantage. That means we are forced to look at something from every possible angle. It means it keeps us in check and balance as we move ahead. We have to respect one another and listen to one another.

But I need to share with you I think we do a good job. I want you to know that. I think we do a good job at this one. I think we do a good job of respecting each other. I think we do an excellent job of listening to each other and trying to understand one another. When I talk to people outside of our congregation and I talk to people in the community and they ask about some of the decisions we’ve made, and we’ve made some whoppers, folks, and when we talk about the ministry destination and we talk about relocation and we talk about the things that we have decided as a congregation, they want to come up to me and put their arm around my shoulder, “Oh, Ron, it must be tough right now. Wow, it must be kind of rugged over there.” And I take their hand and say, “No, it’s not.” “But isn’t there a lot of yelling, a lot of arguing, a lot of anger in the air?” “No, no and no.” You see, I believe that we have come together as Christian people and we made a decision like Christian people are supposed to make decisions. We’ve listened to one another. We’ve discussed with one another. We’ve expressed our opinions with one another but we have respected each other. We have respected each other and we have honored each other through the whole process and I need to tell you that has been a powerful witness to our community. If you don’t know it, that is a powerful witness to our community as people look at Gloria Dei and they say, “That’s how Christians make the tough calls. That’s how Christians make decisions.” It reminds me of the book of Acts when it says, “See how they love one another.” We’ve been that kind of witness. We can’t lose it. We just can’t lose it. We need to continue to respect one another and listen to one another.

We also need to respect the process, respect the process in which we make decisions because, at some point in time, we have to move ahead and we have to make a decision. Through all time, God’s people have been called upon to make decisions. Where is it God is leading us? What is it God is trying to say? Now for Joshua, it was easy for him, right? God came down and talked to him. You don’t get much more straightforward than that. That process is simple. I listen. I do. Okay, that’s easy. It’s not quite that simple anymore, though. When God doesn’t come down and speak directly, when we don’t have visions of what God wants us to do, then what process are we going to use to try to decide how God is leading us. Another example of that is in the New Testament. In the New Testament, Judas has betrayed Jesus and now he has hung himself. The people of God come together and they say, “We need a replacement for Judas. We need another one who will be an apostle.” How are they going to make that decision? God didn’t come down and tell them. God didn’t speak to them. Jesus didn’t indicate it before He went off into heaven. Instead, the people of God came together. They prayed and they cast lots. “Matthias, you’re the man.” And they believed God spoke through that. That’s who God wanted.

Today, we don’t cast lots. We cast votes. That’s the process we have. We pray together, we discuss together and then finally the decision has to be made and we cast votes and we believe that God speaks through that.

This past week, I was talking to Pastor Meyer and he told me this issue came up in his Thursday morning bible class and I really like the way he explained it. He said, and he’s talking about himself but I could use myself in the first person, “I believe that I’ve been called to this congregation, that God called me here.” Now I can’t speak for Meyer but I know I didn’t receive a phone call from God. No revelation, no dream at night saying, “Ron, you’re supposed to go to Gloria Dei.” But I truly believe that God called me here, as Pastor Phillips believes that God called him here. How did that work? God spoke through His people. And how did He speak through His people? We came together, we prayed and we voted and we said that’s who God wants here.

Really it’s no different from what we did last winter. We talked, we discussed, we investigated, we prayed and we voted. Over 600 of us did and well over 2/3 said, “This is where God wants us to go.” That’s the process. We have to respect the process. Respecting the process means that once the decision is made, then we get behind it and we’re united behind it. No, we didn’t all agree. This side of heaven, I don’t think we ever will. We respected each other. We respect the process and now we are united as we move ahead towards that goal. If we don’t do that, friends, it will be utter chaos. It’s just a playground for the devil. He will lead us in so many different tangents and so many different directions, we’ll never accomplish anything. We’re united when we respect. We respect one another and we respect the process.

And then we’re united in our participation. When we work together as one, we are a powerful force for God’s kingdom. We participate, we work together because of a servant heart, though. Look at Joshua, what did he say? He says, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” And what did Jesus say to His disciples? He said, “Do you want to be the first? Then you need to be the very last and you need to be,” what? “A servant of all.” We serve God when we serve one another. We serve God when we serve others. In other words, we put God’s mission ahead of ourselves. We put the need of other people to hear the gospel message or to be reintroduced to the gospel message ahead of ourselves, ahead of our wants, ahead of our desires. We put God’s mission ahead of everything else and we seek to serve our God by serving others.

It’s no different that what the Son of God has done for us. Yes, Jesus said to His disciples that you must be the servant of all but Jesus also said, “I have not come to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many.” Jesus is the epitome of what it is to serve. He served His Father and He was united with His Father in the salvation of mankind. He put your needs and my need of salvation above everything else and He put the desire of the Father to be reunited with His creation above everything else so He was willing to do whatever the Father asked of Him. So He was united with the Father of the decision that He would come and live among us. He was united with the Father of the decision that He would have to be nailed to the cross. He was united with the Father of the decision that the sins of all mankind would be heaped upon Him and even united in the decision that He would have to suffer hell instead of you and I. Because He came to serve you and He came to serve me. We are united with our God when we serve Him by serving others.

But united means all of us. Every one. 100%. It won’t work any other way. You think about little Nemo. Do you think if half the fish swam down, they’d have made it to the bottom? Three-quarters? 80%? 90%? It took 100% effort. Every fish with one voice, “Just keep swimming.” It takes the whole body of Christ, all of us with one voice moving in one direction. Moving towards the one mission that we believe God has led us on. And, my friends, I believe that by the grace of God, united, we are a powerful force in God’s kingdom. Amen.