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"Standing on the Promises"
Romans 4:12-25
A Sermon preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
June 2, 2002
University Baptist Church
Minneapolis, MN
I know this is the annual meeting day. There are many things to attend to, reports to give, lunch to eat, people to thank, Families Moving Forward to set up for… Translation: "preacher, keep it short."
I will, but let me say this: This is the day that we attend to what is important to us as a church community. This is when we address issues as vexing as budgets and as exciting as the celebration of God's action among us. In this brief sermon time, I would like to look at how we maintain our faith in a largely faithless world.
Now you may say, there are churches that are growing like leaps and bounds. Aside from our church and other like us, perhaps, this is a very faithful land. There are people going to church and making lifetime commitments to God. How can I say this is a faithless world?
Well, that’s where theological differences set us apart. And actions that we do as Christians are reflections of that theology. To put it in simpler terms, It’s about how we put our faith into action.
Last week, I asked if you could find some basic tenet of your faith and put it in an obvious place. With the help of the forum group last week, I came up with my list: "God is truth. God is love. God wants justice. God remembers us all. We are to love God with all our heart should and mind and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. And there are no bad people, only people who do bad things. These are tenets of my faith. These are what I keep in my heart my hand and on my forehead. I also trust in God’s power to modify this list in my understanding.
Paul says that those who keep this faith will receive the promises of God. In other words, those who put their faith into action—showing what we believe—will receive the blessings of God which are the promises of God’s grace, granting us insight, hope and fortitude for the journey ahead.
When we do this, we stand upon the promises and we join in the long line of faithful people who have dared to call themselves followers of Jesus.
It’s hard for us to keep our promises from time to time, despite our best efforts. Emergencies, other commitments and just plain forgetting block our best intentions. This is where a community can help us. This is why the church is so important as a support and as a place where we all strive to keep our promises. The good news is that God promises to be with us through all of our foibles and triumphs.
The old revival hymn of over a century ago says:
"Standing on the promises of Christ I sing
Through eternal ages let his praises ring
Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing
Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises that cannot fail
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail
By the living Word of God I shall prevail
Standing on the promises of God."
Remember that we stand on the promises of God to be with us, even when facing difficulty, hardship and strife.
Buoyed by the support of this congregation, I am putting my faith in action by adding my voice to the forces of inclusion at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in St. Louis. I will start out on Friday through Sunday to learn of nonviolence from Arun Gandhi, James and Phil Lawson, Rodney Powell, Bob and Jeannie Graetz and of course Mel White. On Monday, I am organizing 28 former and present Southern Baptists to give 15 minute testimonies about how Southern Baptist Teachings about gay lesbian, bisexual and transgender people have affected them. We are inviting Southern Baptist leaders to listen to our stories. If they refuse to hear our stories, then over one hundred of us are willing to risk arrest on Tuesday outside of the Americas Center. This is the largest event Soulforce has ever planned.
It is important for us to do this with the Southern Baptists because the untruths preached in many of those churches and accepted by followers cause severe hardship and even death to many in the GLBT communities. We expect to be largely ignored by the SBC leadership. But what we are going to do is stand on the promises and claim that the promises made by God to God’s chosen people includes God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children. I covet your prayers.
In the past 20 years, the national body has changed and I fear that if we are not careful and attentive the ABC may go down a similar road of exclusion, especially if good people say nothing.
For a denomination that once valued Baptist principals of soul freedom and local church autonomy, the Southern Baptist Convention leadership has made unbaptist creedal alliance a hallmark of the price of admission.
This new creedalism started out with the decision that only people who believed in the infallibility of Scripture could teach in the seminaries or hold national office.
Then it said that women should not be Pastors and if they were, their churches would be disfellowshipped.
Then they said any church that is gay-friendly should be disfellowshipped.
Then they said that the only contact they should have with Jews and Muslims was to convert them to their brand of restrictive Christianity.
Then they said that women should be graciously submissive to their husbands, regardless of how their husbands treat them.
Most recently Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said that the GLBT communities were responsible in part for God’s not blessing America and therefore God not protecting the World Trade Center and Pentagon from terrorists.
Jerry has recently said that he wished the Catholic Church would take a lesson from the Boy Scouts, banning all gay leaders as a way to curb pedophilia, as if heterosexuals do not commit pedophilia or as if all gays are pedophiles.
Recently Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, a Southern Baptist, said in a ruling against custody for a lesbian mother, that glbt people should be executed citing chapter and verse of the Bible. No one in the SBC leadership has spoken against Judge Moore’s statement!
So, I mourn for the Southern Baptist Convention and for people growing up in Southern Baptist homes and churches. I go to St. Louis to show that there is another way loved by God and most importantly honored by Jesus. I go to pray for my Southern Baptist sisters and brothers and put my body on the line and risk arrest if they choose to still engage in spiritual violence against my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender sisters and brothers.
That’s one way I live out my faith. But to be faithful, to stand on the promises, we do not have to be anywhere near as dramatic.
We do it by being the church. We do it by serving meals at Loaves and Fishes like we did on Friday night.
We do it by hosting homeless families this week at families moving forward.
We do it by giving a large percentage of our budget toward missions and other justice ministries.
We do this by being a place of inclusion and challenge.
We do this by teaching our children and our adults.
We do it be living in this fragile yet faithful community which keeps us all accountable.
We do this when we celebrate communion, making sure that it is open to everyone and celebrated as a way to gain sustenance for the journey ahead.
Standing on the promises might entail us looking in new dimensions for ways to live out our faith. But as we do so, let us remember that God promises to be with us, like a rainbow arcing across the sky, to grant us hope, peace and grace.
Sisters and brothers, as we celebrate communion, lunch and the great year we have had, let us look forward to the new thing God is doing through us as we live out our faith and stand on the promises of God.
Amen.