On May 23, Pentecost Sunday, our FBC family of faith will be baptizing and receiving several new members. A vital part of their preparation is to receive the “family DNA” of our church, to be infected by our identity as a church. I know we all love our church. But sometimes we are so busy doing church that we forget to step back and reflect on our identity as church. Just who are we, anyway? I will preach about this on Pentecost morning, but let me whet your appetite here.
We are first and foremost Christians -- serious disciples of Jesus. In modern terms, we are apprentices learning the trade of our Master. We are training to become like Him as “Living Christ’s”: to do what Jesus did, to love as Jesus loved, to demonstrate in our life together the new reality called God’s Kingdom which He set in motion. Here at FBC, Jesus is not only our Savior, but also our Lord. We must imitate Him!! 2010 has been designated as a year of serious discipleship. For us, discipleship takes on a certain identifiable shape. What does that look like?
We look to Jesus for our identity as disciples. Jesus chose Isaiah 61 as a Scripture dear to the heart of His identity. It set the program for His ministry. He used it in His Luke 4 debut sermon to tell everyone what He was all about. Let’s examine Isaiah 61:1-4 for some identity clues.
We are Spirit-anointed to bring good tidings to the “afflicted”. We are a Spirit-filled church, fully open to the moving of God’s Spirit in our midst. The Spirit was upon Jesus to bring “good tidings” of a brand new life to those “afflicted”. The Spirit’s anointing moves us also to be what we call missional. At FBC we know a thing or two about what it means to be afflicted ourselves, totally lost in life. Therefore, like Jesus, we minister to the poor, prisoner, addict, brokenhearted.
Our special call is to embrace the down and out, the left out, the counted out, the kicked out!! God’s Spirit draws people of all ethnicity, color, language and walk of life to our church, all as equals in our common spiritual search for a new life in Jesus.
We are all about healthy relationships with God and each other. Our human brokenness tends to ruin all of our relationships: with God, the natural world, loved ones, neighbors, even with ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. Jesus came to make “oaks of righteousness.” In the Bible, righteousness is that behavior which is faithful to the demands required of having healthy, right relationships. We look to Scripture for what that looks like in all areas of life.
Part of Jesus’ gift of righteousness is the good tidings of forgiveness for relational failure. Thanks to the dying and rising of Jesus we have a clean slate with God, a new fresh relationship as by grace we are forgiven and deemed righteous – relationally faithful!! We seek to practice this in all of our relationships, forgiving each other as we have been forgiven. But forgiveness does not mean our behavior has changed. We find that we still keep things messing things up.