"What If God Were to Use You?
I Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51
January 15, 2006 (Ordination and Installation of Officers)
Dick Neely

On Epiphany Sunday a week ago, the sermon was concerned with how we present Jesus Christ to the world. We noted how we, as Christians, from within our very own tradition, can affirm that God’s love in Jesus Christ extends to include all the people of the world, regardless of their religious faith or their profession of no religious faith.

We affirmed that God’s love in Christ is so sovereign to lead us to believe God will not condemn good people, regardless of their faith or refusal to hold any faith. At the same time we affirmed that God is a just God and will require every man, woman and child to be accountable to God for the manners by which we live the lives God has given us.

On Epiphany we celebrated the expansiveness and universality of God’s love, revealed within our faith as Christian people.

Today the sermon is concerned with how we present Jesus Christ to the world from our perspective, as people who believe that Jesus Christ is the most excellent way we can know God.

Two Biblical stories seem fitting for us to do this, and the subject, also, seems especially fitting on the Sunday we ordain and install church officers.

The two stories have the same point. They teach us that leaders among God’s people are called to help all people listen for the word of the Lord, to see how God has revealed God’s eternal word in human history.

First the young boy bothers an old priest, named Eli, waking him in the night to tell him that he has heard the old man calling him. Eli sends the boy away, angry that he has disturbed his rest. However, finally on the third awakening he realized that the Lord may be calling the boy, and he tells the youngster, "Go and lie down, and if you here someone calling again, say, "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening." This is a prototype of leadership in Israel, someone who helps the people listen for the word of the Lord. This is what Moses did, when he gave the people the Law of God.

In the second story, Philip told Nathaniel that he had found the man, about whom Moses in the law and the prophets had written long ago. Nathaniel was not impressed with Philip’s invitation, and said sarcastically, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown?" Philip said only one thing more. He said, "Come and see." Again, a leader among God’s people acts to help another person to come and experience the word of God, this time the living word of God.

We might ask one another, as church officers today, "What if God were to use you?" Imagine each of us asking that. I suspect the correct answer is that we should not be totally surprised in view of these two stories, in which God acts through leaders of the people to guide them to hear and respond to God’s word.

And so, how do we Christian present Jesus Christ to the world, so that others may come to hear and know and be freed by God’s love, like we.

First I think we would present Jesus Christ as people who know ourselves as the body of Christ. That is what Paul called the church in his letters to the Romans and Corinthians. There is a very real sense in which we present the very body of Christ to people, when we act toward them and speak with them like we believe Christ has acted and spoken to people in history.

We called her "Bubba.".When her first child tried to say momma, it came out Bubba, and her next born son, all her nephews and nieces, and then her many grandchildren called her Bubba. She was Jesus Christ to me. She showed me who Jesus was, how he behaved toward others. She invited me to listen to him and to come and see who he was.

Martin Luther, the great reformer, said that Christians are "little Christs" to each other. I believe we lead others to listen to the word of God, and to come and see the one in whom God has revealed God’s eternal word, when we present Jesus Christ to them bodily. If that sobers you and me, it very well should. But we profess that we believe God incarnated Gods’ self in this man. Does it not make sense that the body of Christ in the world, and you and I as members of that body, are called to incarnate that word to others, as well?

I believe that we would present Jesus Christ as one who is equal with God and the Holy Spirit. The God who created all that is and provides for and oversees creation is the same God who redeems me and you, and the one by which we are filled with the very Spirit of God. This is how we present Jesus Christ to others.

We present Jesus Christ to others as one who died trying to lead others to be free from their tiny little worlds of self survival. Living was so much more, he said. It was in giving that we would receive, not in worrying always about what there was for us in each transaction with others. Sin, he taught was taking without giving. It was treating others as less than children of God. It was being lost, lost in self absorption. He died because of others’ sins, so people might be freed from the bondage of treating each other, even themselves, as less than the very image of God.

We present Jesus Christ as alive. God gave to his followers a revelation, when they were dejected, afraid, guilt ridden, and despairing. God revealed Jesus alive, after they had left him dead from a public execution by the state. In faith, we believe the stories the first followers told about seeing Jesus alive and receiving from him inspiration and direction to take up his cause, the cause of the cross, and to help others to come and see what God had done in him, to listen for God’s undying word in what he taught.

We have the writings of the Bible that contain not only the sacred writings of ancient Israel, but the writings of the earliest Christians as a testimony to how God has spoken in the history of ancient Israel and in the church that was stared by Jesus’ followers. We present Jesus Christ in the narratives, laws, songs, and letters of the Bible. We teach others how to read the Bible, how to understand it, both for themselves, but also in the traditions of the universal church and our own Reformed tradition as Presbyterians.

Surely we know that we need each other to listen well to God’s word. None of us has perfect hearing. What one Christian hears may help another form a new thought. What one hears may cause another to alter her first interpretation. God’s word is a living word, not one we control, but rather one that molds and fashions us into a more and more obedient people. The church is evidence that God builds relationships with a whole people through God’s promises and God’s keeping of those promises. God’s faithfulness inspires us, then, to relate as people who live in a covenanted relationship, like family members.

At last, we present Jesus Christ to the world as one, who calls out to all people to live in mercy and with justice toward each other. Eli helped young Samuel to listen. Philip told his friend Nathaniel to "come and see." God has done that for us. God calls us to do it for others. This is how we present Jesus Christ to the world.

We present Jesus Christ to the world as the one we believe best reveals what God is like, who God is, and what God expects of us.

Having said these things, I hope it is evident that our presentation of Christ to the world as the way we know that God loves everyone without qualification as to creed, class, color, or culture is through our personal relationship with him as our savior and lord.

And so, we turn to our officers and say to you, modern day Eli’s and Philips, we are pleased to recognize you in a service of ordination and installation.