Sermon:  "Who Taught You the Good News?"
Date:   August 7, 2011
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Romans 10:5-15

Whenever a couple books a wedding here, we ask them to fill out this information sheet.  It gives us the names, contact information for the couple, their occupations, ages, parents’ names and whether they are still married or not.  Important to know that; one can’t assume anymore that the parents want to sit next to one another.

This sheet gives Rev. Susie or myself an entrée to discussion with the couple.  If they are born within a year or two of one another, we might ask if they met at school.  If they are several years apart and born in different states, we might ask how and when they met.

But the most provocative question on the sheet is “Church Background.”  Many couples leave it blank.  I ask them about their church background, if any.  They might mention their grandmother took them whenever they visited her, or they went with a college roommate when they spent the weekend with the roommate’s parents. 

Or a couple will list “Christian.”  When I ask what church in particular, they say no church; they’re just Christian.  In other words, they aren’t Jewish, they aren't Muslin, and they aren’t Roman Catholic, so therefore, they must be Christian!

Another interesting differentiation is when one person says their background is Roman Catholic, but their fiancé/e is Christian.  Which begs me to kindly inform them that Catholics are Christians too.

But what the blank line after Church Background really says is that this particular person was probably never exposed to the Christian faith.  No baptism, no first communion, no Sunday School, no confirmation, no attendance at church—with the possible exception of attending friends’ weddings.  This has been a growing trend, I’ve observed.  Many of them were born in the 1970s and ‘80s to parents who were not part of a church, or had rebelled against it, so they did not expose their children to it either.  Or their parents said something like, “They can try it for themselves when they’re ready.”  Again, in my experience, they rarely do.

All of what I’ve just said came to mind when I read today’s portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans, written to a group of unknown people before he made a trip to visit them.  During the first century of the church, people of varying backgrounds and faiths—or no faith at all—began to hear the story of Jesus Christ and wished to follow in the way of this new Savior.  Questions arose about those of no faith:  did they have to follow Jewish custom first before becoming Christian?  So Paul asks the Romans these three successive questions:

“But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?

And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?

And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?”

                                                                                        –Romans 10:14

I thought back to my first Sunday School experiences—kindergarten and first grade at First United Methodist Church in Lakewood.  Then second through fourth grade when my dad was transferred to Calgary, Alberta.  I can still remember going down into the basement of Southminster United Church of Canada.  I can’t remember the teachers’ names, but they were two tall ladies wearing old lady dresses and sensible shoes.  (This was the mid-1950s.)  When we returned to California, our family joined Community Congregational Church in Los Alamitos, where my sisters and I were all confirmed, and I was ordained to Christian ministry.

There were a host of Sunday School teachers there whose names and faces and some of their lessons I still remember.  But the most credit goes to our mother, who made sure we were taken to church and exposed to everything one learns in Sunday School and worship.  I certainly did not become a minister to please my mother, but I readily admit I probably would not be one today had she not undertaken the responsibility of first exposing me, and my two younger sisters, to the Christian faith.

So my question to you today is that of my sermon title:  who taught you the Good News?  Was it your parents who brought you up in the church?  Was it a grandmother who diligently took you?  Was it those legions of dedicated volunteer Sunday School teachers who have been the backbone of Christian education for a hundred years?  Maybe a friend invited you.  Or was it a spouse?  Did you just decide on your own that you needed to know more about God and Jesus, so you sought out a church, knowing very little of what to expect?  Or were you one of the couples who, once they had children, said, “I think our kids ought to go to church.  Let’s look around till we find the right one for us.”  And these were not the parents who dropped their children off at Sunday School and picked them up an hour later.  Although, truth be told, thank goodness they at least did that, and I imagine there’s more than one of you here this morning whose exposure to the church began that way.

Writing on today’s lesson from Romans chapter 10 in the current issue of The Christian Century (7/26/11), UCC pastor Shawnthea Monroe writes:  “Paul explains the necessity of Christian evangelism.  God’s gift of Jesus Christ can be received only through faith, the act of taking the word of God to heart.  But you cannot take the word to heart if you haven’t heard it. …  [Two verses after three questions asked above, Paul writes:] ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.’  For Christians, silence on the subject of Jesus is simply not an option.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that evangelism isn’t as onerous a task as we first make it out to be.  The key is to remember two things.

“First of all, the only story you’re required to share is your own.  In fact, that the only story you can share.  You don’t have to evaluate or criticize other stories of faith, just tell yours with passion and integrity. …

“The second thing to remember is that Christian evangelism is rooted in real-life experience—not sophisticated theological language or abstract theories.  An evangelist is anyone who is willing to give a specific answer to the question, ‘How has Jesus Christ changed your life?’”

Now I’m not suggesting you put on your suit, carry your Bible and some tracts and go door-to-door like a Jehovah’s Witness!  The word evangelism, from the Latin root going back to the original Greek, means sharing the good news.  And if first I ask who taught you the Good News, next how would you answer someone who asked you what difference Jesus Christ has made in your life?  For you can be as scholarly as anyone who has a doctorate in Biblical studies, as trained as anyone who can exegete and explain even the most obscure passage, but if you don’t feel Jesus Christ has made some difference in your life, then you may have heard the Good News, but you haven’t taken it to heart.

But once you have heard the word—meaning both the word of the Bible and Jesus as the Word—it can and should permeate your life.  Here is how Jan Karon, author of the best-selling Mitford novels about small-town Episcopal priest Father Tim, tells what it means for the word to infuse her work:

“God really does love us.  That’s the kernel around which all my stories are wrapped.  It’s the single greatest truth I know and so, I share it in book after book.  C. S. Lewis observed, ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.’  There isn’t any way I can’t write about Christianity in my books because by it, I see everything else.  Consider that a cup of coffee is the human individual and the shot of brandy is the Christian faith.  One pours the brandy into the coffee, and voila! they can’t be separated again.  They can’t be separated.  My faith can’t be separated from my work.  Even if I never mention the name of Jesus Christ, I can’t hide from you who I am and what I am about as an author.  In truth, the work that has no faith is, for me, not a whole work.  It may be an amusing or credible or clever work, but not a whole work.”*

Once we have heard the Good News—and thank the good Lord for those who taught us—the word is near you, Paul says, whether to comfort us or correct us, whether to sustain us or redirect us, whether to aid us in our distress or discipline us in our complacency.  In the end, the word will also perform its final function, for it will also save us.

*(Jan Karon, “The Miracle and the Myth” in Shouts and Whispers: Twenty-one Writers Speak about Their Writing and Their Faith, Edited by Jennifer L. Holman, Eerdmans, 2006, p. 122.)