Preached · January 3, 2021
Series · Why Bother
Hello, Table Church, it's Anthony Parrott here. Happy New Year. I hope you had a decent holiday season, as best as you can, making your way out of 2020 into 2021, and hopefully lots of lights at the end of lots of tunnels.
I am glad you're here with us today. We're hopping right into a new series to kick off the new year, and it's called Why Bother? Because it is one of the most common questions I have heard, especially since I've moved here to Washington, D.C. Why bother with Christianity? Why bother following Jesus? Why bother with the church and all of this?
And I've heard this question for one of three reasons. Number one: Christians have the same amount of pain and sickness and tragedy and heartache as anybody else in the world. Christians are not particularly immune to bad things happening to them. So following Jesus doesn't make life any easier. Why bother?
Reason number two people might ask this question: look, if God's love is unconditional, if God is always working for the good of everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike; if either hell doesn't exist, or hell isn't like the fire-and-devil-with-a-pitchfork-and-red-tights cartoon that we put in the world; or if we can always leave hell whenever we want in the afterlife; if it's none of that brimstone kind of stuff — God's always good — then why bother following Jesus? We might as well just do what we want now, right?
And the third reason people ask this is that it seems like lots of non-Christians, maybe most non-Christians, seem to be more ethical, more moral, more just — to put more good and beauty and justice into the world — than Christians. So if being a Christian, or being part of a church, or being a Jesus follower doesn't actually help you become a better person or help you make the world a better place, why bother?
We're going to be answering this question in three ways over the next three weeks.
What This Series Is Not
Now, let me tell you what this sermon series is not going to be. First, it's not going to be an exhaustive summary of all of the philosophical and archaeological and scientific and historic proofs of Christianity. Sometimes this discipline is called apologetics — not that you're apologizing for Christianity, "Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm a Christian." Apologia, a Greek word meaning to make a case for, to defend. We're not going to be necessarily doing a lot of that. We just don't have the time, and that kind of apologetics is rarely all that helpful for people. It can be — I'm not saying it's not — but it's often relationships that do that work more than apologetics.
The other thing we're not going to be answering during the sermon series is whether or not Christianity is somehow better or more true than other religions. Personally, I'm willing to say I think Christianity best describes reality. It answers the most important questions that people throughout the ages, throughout geography, have had, and answers those questions in the most accurate ways. And I think it leads to the best possible way to live. But I also recognize I'm like a Midwestern white kid who grew up in a Christian home. I have a lot of biases when I come to this question. And I've spent lots of time studying other philosophies and religions, and I have my own conclusions. But I'm not going to spend enormous amounts of time trying to convince you that Christianity is the most true or the best religion.
I recognize that there are folks part of the Table who follow a different religion than Christianity. You appreciate the community and all that the Table brings, but maybe you don't personally believe that Jesus is the Messiah or something like that. Keep doing that, okay? I'm not here to convince you otherwise. I don't really think that's much of my job. But I will talk about the reasons why I think Christianity is the best possible way for me to live.
Here's what we'll be doing instead over the next three weeks. Number one, this week, we're going to talk about bothering with Christianity because I think it's true. Number two, next week, we're going to talk about bothering with following Jesus because it seems to make the most sense of the world and where the world is going. And then in week three, Pastor Richard is going to answer the question of why he bothers with following Jesus, with Christianity, because it seems to make a difference for the better.
What Is the "It"?
So, this week: I think it's true. Now, what exactly are we talking about when we say "it"? What is the "it" of "it's true"? What exactly is true?
What we're going to be talking about today is the gospel, the good news. In the Greek, it's euangelion. It's where we get the word "evangelize" — to tell others of the euangelion, to tell other people about the good news. It's a word that was used in Roman times and Greek times to talk about military victories and the news about Caesar and the king and who was in charge. Good news that, hey, Caesar won another battle, another war — we need to tell you about it. And Christians eventually began to use this word for what they believed about Jesus.
So the key word here is "news." Good news, euangelion, means that something happened. An event occurred. Now, lots of people confuse the gospel, the good news, with good advice. That's why you see lots of sermons like "six ways to improve your dating life," or "four keys to success in the workplace," or "seven ways to set goals for 2021." We're not going to do that. We're going to talk about the news instead — something that happened.
1 Corinthians 15
So let's go to the Scriptures. We're going to take a look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15. It's in the New Testament, and it's a letter from the Apostle Paul to the church of Corinth. And he is going to remind this church of the good news. Here's what it says, verse 1:
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel — euangelion, good news — that I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you've believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you, this church in Corinth, as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. And after that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. And then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me, as to one abnormally born, or born out of time.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Verse by Verse
So let's just do a little bit of verse-by-verse with this passage here in 1 Corinthians 15.
First of all, verse 1: Paul says, "Let me remind you of the gospel." So we're about to get a gospel definition. Paul is going to remind the church of Corinth. This is a place that Paul had been to. He went to the city of Corinth. He formed an ekklesia, a community of people from all classes of society. He formed this ekklesia, this gathering of people, and taught them the euangelion, the good news — the thing that the Romans said, "Well, good news is that Caesar is king; he's won another battle." Paul says, "No, I've got a different euangelion. I've got a different good news to tell you, which you have received." There is a tradition, a set of teachings, that was passed on from one generation to the next, from one teacher, Paul, to the church of Corinth. And we'll talk more about that in a second.
Verse 2: Paul continues, "By this gospel you are saved." We're about to get this summary. Now, quick reminder: the word "saved" in our day has been spiritualized a lot. Saved today often means something merely private, merely spiritual, merely personal, merely internal. And I suppose all of that is true — being saved is something that is personal and internal. But it's also more than that. To be saved, in Paul's mind, and what the Corinthian church would have heard — to be saved means, literally, to be rescued. That something bad was going to happen, but then this news, this event, occurred, and now that bad thing is not happening anymore. Your body was about to experience danger and harm and trauma, and then — good news — something has changed, and you're not about to experience that.
We hear this phrase, "By this gospel you are saved," and we hear something like, "If you give mental assent to this list of philosophical truths about the divine and the world, then your soul will experience inner peace." But what Paul's original hearers would have heard is, "The events, the news that I'm about to tell you, has already happened, and it has already permanently changed your life." That's what "by this gospel you are saved" means — not just a list of truths to give mental assent to. Something has happened. Something has occurred. Something is different now.
Verse 3: Pay attention to this phrase. Paul says, "What I received, I passed on to you, what was of first importance." So Paul's actually using a technical educational term here. The word is paradidomi — to pass on, to hand off. To paradidomi is taking a body of knowledge, of information, of wisdom, of technique, of ideas, and passing it on to someone else. And it had to do with more than just doctrine and theology. It could also be like a carpenter training a carpenter, or a fisherman training a fisherman. And if you grew up in the Catholic tradition, it's the idea of catechesis: we've got this body of knowledge that we want you to learn, of training up a generation — used of crafts and trades and theology, all sorts of things. And so Paul, in verse 3, says that what he received of this body of knowledge about the gospel, about the good news, about the thing that has happened, he is passing on — he has passed it on, paradidomi-ed it, to the church at Corinth.
So What's the News?
So: "I'm going to remind you of the gospel. By this gospel you are saved." What's the news, Paul? What is it? And this is what Paul says is of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was resurrected, that he appeared. That's it.
Notice the striking lack of theological jargon that that contains. Notice the striking lack of beliefs and ethics and morals and all sorts of peculiarities about this denomination versus that denomination and who can touch whom. Notice that is not what Paul says the gospel is. Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ was resurrected. And then he appeared.
In other words, the gospel, the good news, is news. Something happened. Something occurred. When you turn on the news, if you watch the news or pick up a newspaper — please don't just get your news from social media, I beg of you — if you pick up or watch the news, what are they doing? They are telling you stuff that happened. Now, there's some news that's more advice-y, like, "Here, you should eat 36 things to lose your belly fat in 2021." No, thank you. That's not really news; that's advice. We want news. We want somebody to tell us what has happened in the world today.
And so Paul has given the euangelion, the good news, the gospel, to the church of Corinth: Christ has died, Christ was buried, Christ was resurrected, Christ appeared. Now, that news has implications. It changes things. When we watch the news, when we read the news, we're not just hearing stuff that happened and forgetting about it. Stuff that happens has implications in the world. And so Paul presents this news, the things that have occurred, and they will have ripple effects out into the world.
Not "Is It Useful?" but "Is It True?"
And so, when we ask a question like, "Why bother?" — why bother with this whole Jesus thing, this whole Christianity thing, and with the church and church people and all of that — when we ask a question like, "Why bother?", we have to make sure that we are specific about what exactly it is we're bothering with.
The core question of whether or not to believe the good news is not whether the church is 100% a source of good in the world. It's not. The question is not whether or not people who call themselves Christians are always wonderful and folks that we want to be around. They're not. The question is not whether or not believing in Jesus will somehow protect us from all harm and bad in our lives. It won't.
These questions all bring with them an assumption of utilitarianism. Does it have utility? Is it something that only has value or worth, or is only true, insofar as it is useful? That's what utilitarianism is. But deciding whether or not something is true based solely off of its usefulness can have absolutely disastrous effects. Look no further than a surprisingly large population of people who refuse to accept the results of the presidential election. Why do they refuse? Because it's not useful to them to believe in the results of the presidential election. It's utilitarianism run amok. Look at a group of people who refuse to wear a mask or refuse to socially distance themselves to stop the spread of COVID. "Yeah, well, I won't get sick, so I don't feel the need." Again, utilitarianism strikes. It's only true so far as it's useful, so I don't need to wear a mask; it's not useful for me to.
In the same way, friends, we cannot decide whether or not we should bother with the gospel, bother with the good news, based entirely on whether or not we find it useful. Now, I certainly hope that the gospel is useful. Like I said, good news has implications. We would hope that the good news has good implications — that it brings justice and goodness and beauty into the world, that it shapes human beings into being a more human and authentic version of themselves, that it somehow does something good with my life. Those are all useful things that I want to believe about the gospel, but that cannot alone be the sole thing by which I decide whether or not it's true.
The core question of whether or not we believe the good news is: is it true? Did it happen? That's the question we ought to be asking.
So Is It?
So, is it? Anthony, tell us — is it true? Did it happen? Well, it's not going to be a shock to anyone to hear me say, "Yeah, I think it's true." I mean, we're all gathered here at a church, and I'm a pastor of that church. I have my assumptions that the gospel, the good news — that Jesus was born and lived and died and was buried and was resurrected and appeared and ascended — I believe it's true.
Of course, not everyone agrees. And of course, I do not have perfect knowledge of everything, and neither do you. We come at this world with a certain amount of humility about what we think is true. I think truth exists. I think reality is a real thing that is out there in the world. And I think we have a pretty good idea of what reality is, but I need to be open to being corrected. And that's why the title of this sermon is "It Seems to Be True." It seems. As best as I understand, from my particular perspective and biases and all of that, I think the gospel is true. Many, many people agree with me. A heck of a lot of people don't. But I think it's true.
Something Happened to Make…
So why? Why do I believe it's true? Well, let's make a list of bullet points underneath the heading "Something happened to make."
• Something happened to make first-century Jews, who largely believed in one general bodily resurrection for all people at the end of time, believe that one particular human being named Jesus of Nazareth experienced resurrection in the middle of history — that Jesus of Nazareth, a real historical person, experienced bodily resurrection.
• Something happened to make first-century Jews, who thought their Messiah would come and win a military victory against the Roman Empire, believe that this Jesus was actually their Messiah after all.
• Something happened to make Gentiles, who were largely polytheists and idol worshippers, abandon their polytheism for what was previously thought to be the laughable monotheism and deity of the Jews.
• Something happened to make first-century Jews, who were fiercely monotheistic and anti-idolatry to the point of martyrdom and avoiding any physical representation of their God, begin to call the human being named Jesus of Nazareth divine, and to call Jesus Emmanuel, God in the flesh.
• Something happened to make these first-century Jews — Peter and Paul and James, Mary of Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus — who were fiercely loyal to the temple, to food purity laws, to regulations concerning contact with non-Jews, abandon those principles to the point of death.
• Something happened to make Jews and Greeks, who were trained to believe in the so-called natural order — that males are better than females, and children worst of all, and slaves worse than masters, and that there were different natural orders as to which ethnicities were better than which — form local ekklesias, gatherings, assemblies, churches throughout the ancient Near East, and gather all of these men and women and children and slaves and masters and people from different countries and nations into one home, and call each other equal, and be known for their radical equality — and actually be persecuted for this radical equality, because to claim that women and men were equal, and that slaves and masters were equal, and that Greeks and Scythians were equal, that was worthy of death.
• Something happened to make men and women who were in relatively stable stations of economics and class abandon those stations to proclaim news that was known to be anti-empire and anti-Caesar and pro-kingdom-of-another-world, to the point of persecution and death.
• Something happened to make those ekklesias form the first hospitals, and the first fostering and adoption centers, and the first safe houses for escaped slaves in the ancient world, despite each of those actions heaping huge amounts of shame upon each individual and family and ekklesia.
Something happened to make… What was that something?
Conclusion
There are many ways I could think about my own allegiance to Jesus and Christianity and name all the ways it's been useful to me. I've got a great job — a job that puts me in some position of authority, some level of income. I went to a Christian college, I made some of my best friends there, I met the love of my life, Emily, there. I like history and the humanities and philosophy, and so studying Christianity and religion and getting paid to do so is a great outlet for that.
There are also some ways that my faith lacks usefulness. It doesn't always make sense. The first few years of my life were awful, living with a mentally ill mom who was abusive and neglectful. I grew up poor. I had open-heart surgery. I was part of the foster system. As an adult, I've been hurt by the church — by which I mean people who go to church. Christians can suck, and they can suck the life right out of you, and as a pastor you aren't insulated from that fact. In fact, pastors tend to get the blunt-force trauma of Christians in all of their hypocritical and self-righteous glory. I'm a pretty smart guy; I probably could be getting paid a heck of a lot more doing something else. I chose to do this. And I've had my share of tragedy in my life, not prevented by this supposedly all-good God that I put my trust in. So why freaking bother?
In 2017, I preached an Easter sermon called Comeback Stories. Jesus, of course, in his resurrection, was the ultimate comeback story. And I also told the story of my brother David, who was still alive at the time and had been in and out of jail but had beaten his alcoholism, put his life together, got married, had a daughter. What a great story. And the following year, he died in a car accident. What a sick, dark, cosmic joke, right?
And so I went searching for answers. And I'm not going to regale you with my bibliography and historical research — as my five-year-old daughter likes to say every time my face appears on the television to preach, "Boring." But I will say this: I am utterly convinced that on April 22nd, 33 AD, 1,988 years ago, a real human being named Jesus of Nazareth walked out of a tomb and told some women to go tell some others, who told some others, who told some others, that he was alive, he would never die, and he would come back again to set the world right. And until then, we all were meant to act like divine images, continuing Jesus' work of merging heaven and earth into one.
Which means, for me, that someday I will see my brother again, and all those who have died before me. I will see this world as God intended it to be, as a place where justice can make her home. And all the tragedy, and all the evil, and all the bad churches, and all the bad people who go to bad churches, and all the bad living inside of me that rears its ugly head — all of that will not change my mind about why I bother following Jesus. Because, friends, I think it's true.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
