Who Are We? : Gospel
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Series Intro
When I was in college, I served as a camp counselor for a summer. And one of the games that we’d play with the younger kids involved a giant parachute. Maybe you’ve seen this game before. You roll out this giant circular parachute, and everyone grabs a hold of it. In the middle you put a beach ball, and the challenge is to work together to sling the ball as high into the sky as you can.
Now, what do you think happens when a bunch of first graders get hold of a giant parachute? Chaos happens. Without fail, every session of this game began the same way - kids wildly flapping their end of the parachute, creating incoherent ripples all across its surface. And of course, the ball in the middle just wiggles around until it inevitably falls off one of the sides.
But after some coaching, we could usually get the kids to get in sync with one another and unite around a rhythm of lifting up and pushing down. And sure enough, when they were moving together, the ball in the middle would soar up into the sky. The key to success was to get everyone on the same page.
This morning we’re starting a very important sermon series. As we kick-off a new season of ministry, I want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. And so over the next few weeks, we’re going to re-establish who we are as Redeemer Church. What are our core values? What is our purpose? What is at the center of this church community? We have a lot of people who are new, and you’ve maybe never heard these things laid out before. But even if you’ve been here for years, we’ve experienced so much change as a community that it is more than likely you could use a refresher course yourself. So over the next few weeks we’re going to spend time re-establishing who we are as Redeemer Church.
And to kick things off, this morning we’re going to talk about the absolute center of the center of the center of our church: which is the gospel. The gospel gives definition to every aspect of our church. It gives shape to our worship, our formation, our mission, and our life together in community. Every thing we do and every thing we are flows out from the gospel.
At Redeemer we say it this way: “The gospel grounds who we are and directs what we do.”
So this morning I want to talk about the gospel. I want to talk about three things: First, what is the gospel? Second, how does it ground who we are? And third, how does it direct what we do?
So, what is the gospel? Well, turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15.
15 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.
So the first thing I want you to see here is Paul is really hyping this thing that he’s calling the gospel. He’s really building it up. Melanie makes fun of me, because I have this tendency to overly preface things. I’ll have these really long lead ups to the thing that I actually want to tell her. Well Paul is doing something similar here. He’s got this long lead up to the actual content of his message. And why? Because he’s stressing the incredible importance of his message. What he’s about to say is the most important thing. What he’s about to lay out should define our whole lives. It’s the thing in which we stand. Whatever Paul is about to say, it is the most important thing for us to know.
The second thing that I want you to see is that he calls his message “the gospel.” Now, we’ve taken this word, and we’ve made it a proper noun, and in Christian circles it has a rather specific meaning. But the word that Paul uses was a common and ordinary word in his day. It simply meant good news.
Now, think about what that means. What is news? When you open up the New York Times on your phone and start reading the news, what are you reading? You’re reading a report about something that has happened. The Times is announcing that something has happened in the world that has some kind of an effect on you. This is what news is: an announcement that something has happened. So what is good news? An announcement that something good has happened in the world that will in some way benefit you.
So notice what Paul is saying. The gospel isn’t advice. The most important thing that you need to know - the single greatest thing that you need to orient your life around is not advice. It’s not a list of things to do. It’s not instructions or a moral code. Paul is saying that the most important thing that you need to know and orient your life around is the announcement that something has happened and it spells incredibly good implications for your life. It’s good news.
So what is this good news? What has happened? Well in verse 2, and in the rest of the chapter Paul will proclaim the very same thing that we proclaim every week as we gather around the table together: Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.
That three-fold proclamation is a simplified way of saying that God has begun to redeem and restore all of creation through Christ. What is the gospel? It is the announcement that God has begun to redeem and restore all of creation through Jesus Christ.
Ask anyone one on the street, believer or non-believer, and they will tell you that the world is not as it should be. We can all see the potential goodness of this world. Yesterday, my family went to Helen with Melanie’s parents. And I’ve been to Helen many times, but I hadn’t visited in several years, so it felt kind of new again. And can we just all admit that Helen is weird? That having the experience of sipping hefeweizen in a Bavarian Beer Garden while listening to live music from Jimbo Dixie singing Garth Brooks in a thick southern drawl is just strange?
But anyway, it was an incredibly hot day, and the schnitzel was sitting heavy in our stomachs, so we stopped in at a place called the Mason Jar for some gelato - and oh my word. One taste of that cold creamy goodness, and I was immediately reminded of the potential beauty and wonder and goodness that is latent in this world. And it’s not just with food, but that peace that you feel when you’re having great conversation with friends over dinner, or listening to music around the firepit, or watching your children play with an old box.
Yes, on some level, we all know that the world has been designed with profound goodness, but something is wrong with it. Something is off. And the story of the Bible provides answers for what’s wrong.
You see human beings flourish, families flourish, friendships flourish, life flourishes when we live together in the presence of God, under the authority of God, and for the glory of God. When we’re doing these things, the potential goodness that God built into the world comes out in full. But very early on in the history of humanity, we rejected that God-given way of life, and we opted to live under our own authority and for our own glory, which forced us out of God’s presence, and the result is the world that have today: where the goodness and wonder of creation is evident - we can see it at times - but is always darkened by the ever present shadow of brokenness.
But even as the consequences of sin were being described, God promised that there would come one in the line of humanity who would turn back the tide, and roll back the curse, and establish forever the good life that God intended from the beginning.
And the good news that Paul is saying is of first importance, and the good news that lies at the absolute center of our identity as Redeemer Church is the announcement that the wait is over. The wait is over. God has begun to redeem and restore all of creation through Jesus.
This gospel grounds who we are.
This is the gospel, and it grounds who we are as Redeemer Church. One of the danger that we can encounter whenever we try to define who we are as a community of faith is we can fall into the age-old human error of defining who we are by what we do. This is such a natural thing for us to do. When we’re introducing ourselves to someone, one of the first things we say is what we do for a living. That just makes sense to begin with what we do, because it’s an important part of who we are.
And because of that, we have a tendency to describe who we are as a church according to what we do as a church. So we’re quick to talk about our mission. Who is Redeemer church, well we’re a church that seeks to partner with God to welcome, shape, and send out disciples of Jesus. We’re a church that emphasizes caring for the power, equipping disciples, raising children in the way of Jesus, and planting churches. Question: Who is Redeemer Church? Answer: let me tell you what we do.
But let me tell you: we can’t do that. We must not begin with what we do. If we identify who we are as a church primarily by what we do, then at our core we will become a community of performance. But the church of Jesus Christ is not a community of performance, it is a community of grace.
When we talk about who we are as a church, I pray that we never begin with what we do, but that we’ll always begin with what has been done for us.
By grace you have been saved. By grace you have been pardoned. By grace you have been given new life. By grace you have been adopted into the family of God. None of it has been dependent upon your performance or merit. It has always been the result of God’s grace.
Who are we? We are a community of grace because we are grounded by the gospel of grace. This is our center. And it is of first importance.
Are there any history buffs in the room? We’ve got a lot of Latin teachers, but any history buffs? So, when I was growing up, I loved history. I’ve always found it interesting to see how historical events and movements developed and progressed, and of course as a young boy, the kind of history I thought most interesting was military history. Specifically, the Civil War.
I thought of this the other day, because the YouTube algorithms have decided I should return to my love of military history, and it keeps sending me short animated videos that cover various pivotal battles in American military history. And I have to admit, the algorithms were right; I have found these clips very interesting.
So I’ve learned that most historians point to the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg as the turning point in the war. It’s called the “high water mark,” because it marks the northern most battle in the Civil War. Up to this point, the Confederacy was gaining ground at will. General Robert E. Lee was leading the bulk of the Confederate Army on the warpath to Washington, where he hoped to finally defeat the North, and end the war.
And so in many ways when the Union forces gathered at Gettysburg, they understood it to be their last stand. If they failed here, there would be little resistance left to stop Lee from taking the capitol. So over the course of the first two days of battle, General Lee attacked the right and left of the Union lines, but on both occasions, the attack was repelled.
And so on the third day, Lee decides to launch an all out assault on the very center of the Union lines. It was his belief that if he could break through the center, than it won’t matter anymore what happens on the right or the left, because the battle will be won. If the center falls, the rest of the line will crumble, and it will be over.
So he sends orders to General Longstreet, who passes them on to George Pickett, and what transpires over the course of a few hours on that fateful afternoon came to be know as Pickett’s Charge, and it many historians point to that ill-fated assault as the beginning of the end for the Confederacy.
Because the center of the Union line held strong. And because of the strength of the center, the rest of the line held up to the assault as well; and by days end, the tide of the war had shifted.
Now, I end with this story not to amaze you with my knowledge of the Civil War, but to encourage you that as we kick off a new season of ministry together, we need a strong center that can anchor our identity and purpose. And we have it in the gospel - this announcement that God has done something in the world - through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection - to put an end to sin and brokenness and bring about newness of life - not only in our own hearts, but in all the world. This is our center. And truly if it remains our center, if it remains our anchor and the foundation of our identity, nothing can ever break us.
Over the next few weeks we’ll talk about worship and formation and mission and community: and those are all very important aspects of our identity and purpose - but it is my most consistent prayer that above all we be a community where the gospel grounds who we are and directs what we do.