Pastor Detweiler’s sermon for Sunday, Feb. 8, 2009:

“Putting first things first: The God we know in Jesus should be our No. 1 priority.”

1 Cor. 9:16-23

Last week was the Super Bowl. I bet a lot of sermons are beginning today with comments on it. I want to go back nine years though, to the time Kurt Warner was the winning QB.

That one was interesting enough to be the subject of a pastor’s weekly study of the Sunday Scriptures 3 days later. Cyndi, who was presenting that Wednesday, talked about the halftime, which that year was the Diversity Show, featuring the figure of a goddess with children of every variety coming forth from her womb. Not exactly Christian, or even vaguely Judeo-Christian symbolism, but downright pagan, Pastor Cyndi said.

But, she said, in contrast there were Kurt and Brenda Warner. When Kurt was given the Most Valuable Player award, he gave the credit to Jesus. “First things first: I want to thank Jesus for this” he said. “How many of us, how many of our people, would speak about Jesus when they were on national television, let alone give him credit for their accomplishments?” Cyndi asked.

It makes me think about Paul in today’s second lesson. “I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law ... so that I might win those under the law … I have become all things to all people that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel ...”

Paul was willing to do whatever he had to do in order to win people over to faith in Jesus. He knew what he believed and who it was he proclaimed, so he could change the form, the language of the gospel of Jesus Christ to put it into terms and forms that would be understood by his hearers.

The best of example of that is in Acts 17 where Paul spoke on the Areopagus in Athens. He started by complimenting the Athenians on being religious (even though he was repulsed by their idolatry) and then told them that he noticed an altar with the inscription “To an unknown god.” “What you worship as unknown I proclaim to you - the God who made heaven and earth … does not live in shrines made by human hands ...”

Paul started by taking seriously the culture and what was meaningful for the people of Athens in order to share the gospel of Jesus.

How do we do that today, in our world, in the United States? Denominations like ours, made up of people who are mostly reserved about discussing sex, politics, or religion are not doing real well in other parts of the country. One only has to watch television or listen to Dr. Laura on the radio to understand why: we are a minority. There are a lot of people out there who don’t know when to be embarrassed and will talk in public about all sorts of private matters. I don’t believe that religion is a private matter, but unfortunately lots of us treat it as if it is.

On Oct. 20, 2000 “The Christian Century” magazine published an article by Kenneth Chalker about the so-called mainline churches: “Mainline churches became mainline because men and women who experienced Jesus converted others and dared to love people. This led them to build hospitals, colleges, orphanages, and all kinds of institutions. They spread the gospel through courageous, uplifting deeds that stemmed from faith in a living Lord and spoke to what was happening in American culture.

“Tragedies occur when Christians do not identify with the culture in which they are living.” I’ll stop there: the author goes into some politically-correct arguments about identifying with cultures, missing his original point, but he comes back to it: “Our problem is that we do not identify fully enough with the cultures in which we find ourselves. We have allowed churches to become foreign to that culture ... Where do we begin to sing the Lord’s song and what are the contemporary lyrics? The answers are not easy, but I think they will arise from churches that have a passionate experience of the living Christ and that immerse themselves in the culture and people around them.”

I believe that is something this congregation is doing better than most. One of the purposes of this site was to reach beyond FELC’s original base to engage younger people with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

To work in this culture we have to be passionately something. It takes both passion for the gospel, for Jesus Christ, and engagement with the culture to make disciples.

Paul had both. He says he became all things to all people, but that was not an end in itself, and, knowing what we do about Paul, we know that he didn’t change what he believed, just how he conveyed it. This, though, was motivated by his devotion to Christ. He was so grateful for what God had done for him, for his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, that he felt obligated, compelled to proclaim the gospel: “an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel” he writes.

It is not a surprise that Kurt and Brenda Warner met in a country music club: forthright music for people who say it like it is. If you have read Warner’s story - struggling to stay in pro football for a number of years, even working in a supermarket stocking shelves at night so daytime was free for football, coming to the fore not because his ability was recognized but by accident: the first-string quarterback was injured at the beginning of the season - you can understand why he would be grateful and express that gratitude to God publicly.

One of the pastors at our meeting six years ago said he was suspicious of people who witnessed in public like that. Now he is a very reserved fellow and from the next generation older than I mine, but that attitude summarizes our problem. We don’t all have to be able to witness for Jesus in large gatherings, but we do need to respect the people who do that and learn to share our faith with other individuals.

We can be passionate about sharing God’s love for us so it is not drudgery or duty, but joy and privilege.

It is as we worship regularly, read the Bible and study it with other people, pray together and separately, and give of ourselves and what we have, and serve in Christ’s name that we become more engaged in sharing the good news of God’s love for us in Jesus. When we are speaking and hearing regularly the language of faith we more easily communicate what we believe to other people than when we take it for granted.

After all, it is as Kurt Warner said: a matter of putting first things first. The God we know in Jesus is to be the first thing in our life.

Christ Jesus was first for Paul - that was the source of his passion for the gospel. “I press on to make him my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own” he writes in Philippians.

Although Paul says he became all things to all people, it was not cultural techniques but passion for God’s love in Christ Jesus - putting first things first - that mattered most. It is what matters most for us too. Then we can say with Paul: “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel ...”