Sermon Title: "Those Who Bring Good News"
Date: August 10, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Romans 10:5-17

When I returned to church on Wednesday morning after two weeks of vacation, I looked at the sermon title posted outside:  “Those Who Bring Good News.”  I stood out there on the sidewalk and thought to myself, ‘What was that sermon supposed to be about when I came up with the title in the last hour I worked on Tuesday, July 22?’  Something in the epistle lesson spoke to me that day about those who bring good news, but I knew it would take a while for me to recapture whatever theme I dreamed up for this sermon at 5 p.m. on that very busy July Tuesday.  Most of you know what the last day before vacation is like . . . as well as the first day back!

Then it dawned on me.  It had to do—as does much in my life—with churches, and the message they proclaim.  While our Oregon trip was primarily to visit our daughter Emily in Portland, and to attend the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, any trip with me would not be complete without some references to our visits at churches.

In Bend, Oregon, we stayed with Bob and Barbara Mowers, who were active members here 1990-97.  Bob was transferred to Long Beach, and began to attend Bay Shore Church before Barbara arrived.  The son of an Episcopal priest, he was not too connected with the church prior to coming here.  Barbara was delighted he sought out and attended a church on his own, and in the course of their years here, both were very active, Bob becoming chair of the Pastoral Relations Committee.

In Oregon, we visited their new Lutheran church, scheduled to be completed in September.  The Mowers were very conscientious about searching out a church, and they are anxious to make the move from their present out-dated building to this new structure.  Bob asked if I could guess what he is doing now.  He’s going to be chair of the stewardship campaign, which, of course, will include a substantial mortgage payment.  He printed me out spreadsheets with his projections about current giving and a challenge goal with a ten percent increase for 2009.

Now we drove Peggy’s car on this trip because it gets better gas mileage than mine; plus, if I drive mine too much for pleasure trips, the percentage of business-related mileage goes way down.  But after all the church talking the Mowers and I did, including catching up on news of many of you whom they remember, I thought, ‘Surely I could have deducted some of the mileage on my car after all!’

In Sisters, Oregon last Sunday, we attended an ecumenical service at an Episcopal church with Len and Karen Atkins, who attend here when they’re in town.  Several of their friends at church remarked they had worshipped here while visiting the Atkins in Long Beach, and commented on both our organ and choir.  No comments on my sermons, though!

However, the window behind their altar is glass, and looks out over the Three Sisters mountains.  The preacher has a lot to compete with.  And, in fact, Karen told me that when she’s not particularly inspired by what he says, she comes home and reads my sermons online.  Both the Mowers and the Atkins read our weekly Carillon in its online edition.

Now, beyond the point of visiting with and socializing with these two nice couples, my point for this sermon is that they are both active in their own local churches.  And it occurred to me, upon my return and looking anew at Paul’s words of today’s lesson, those churches—and ours—are in the business of “bringing good news.”

The Mowers’ church is about to enter its third building in its history, having come a long way from the original building founded by Swedish Lutherans.  The Atkins’ church has an 8:30 ecumenical service for Protestant townsfolk who are not as interested in the higher liturgical form of the 10 o’clock Episcopal service.  Nevertheless, each church stands as a beacon in its community to the Good News of Christ.

Such churches did not exist anywhere when Paul wrote to the Romans in the middle of the first century.  There were fledgling communities of new Christians—struggling to understand what they were to be about with their various pasts—some Jews, some Greeks, some Romans.  It was not a safe time to be a Christian because of religious persecution against this fellowship of new believers.  But Paul assured them that “no one who believes in [Christ] will be put to shame.” (10:11)

Paul concludes with four pointed questions:  ‘How are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?  How are they to believe in someone they’ve never heard of?  How are they to hear unless someone proclaims him?  How are they to proclaim unless they are sent?’

Many, reading these words, have had that strange sense of being confronted with a challenge they cannot ignore.  All Christians should at least ask themselves, as well as ask God in prayer, whether they are among those who will be sent as heralds of the Good News.  As a result of such questioning have come religious teachers and professors, pastors and priests, Sunday School teachers and youth advisors, Bible study leaders and those who call on the home-bound.

For the next five days, our church will host an event which involves more of our children and youth at one time than any other:  our annual summer Vacation Bible School.  Dozens of children and nearly that many helpers will spread the Good News, this year through visiting a recreation of a Jerusalem marketplace in our Youth Center. 

Our children learn about God, Jesus Christ and hear the Good News in a variety of ways.  Besides Vacation Bible School, Sunday School and a week at Pilgrim Pines church camp, our twice-yearly children’s musicals are educational too.  Recently, our music director Julie Ramsey told me that while sitting at a table with a second grader at a church brunch, he recounted the whole story of their spring musical, “The Three Trees,” to someone who had not seen it, telling them that he really thought the third tree was the most important, for Jesus died on it and now we see it empty because he’s risen.

I see that as another opportunity for the Good News to be shared, not only by the children who participate, not only by the parents who listen to the CDs in their cars and at home and mouth the words as their children sing in worship, but also among everyone of you before whom the children present their program.  These are all ways in which the Good News is shared in our church and in churches across this country and around the world.

I want to say there is a burden placed upon us as Christians, but it would be better for me to define it as a charge or a challenge.  Jesus said it in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel:  “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations … teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (28:19-20)  Paul reiterated it to the Romans:  “How are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?  And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?” (10:14-15)

The Friday we visited the Mowers’ church, they were serving a hot lunch to the hungry and homeless.  This weekend at the Atkins’ church, they are having an art festival, the proceeds of which go to support community programs.  The third Wednesday of each month Bay Shore Church makes and serves dinner to the hungry and homeless at Christian Outreach in Action.  Such gestures beyond the local congregation and its walls must serve, too, as some proclamation of the Good News as we fulfill Jesus’ admonition:  “…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…”  (Matthew 25:35)

Here’s a scary thought:  The only Christ some people will know is the Christ who lives in us.  If they know we are Christians, if they know we go to Bay Shore Church or any other church, they may well begin to build what they know and believe about Christ based on us.  Are we prepared to be “those who bring good news?”  Are we, as individuals, willing to become proclaimers of the Good News of Christ?