January 21, 2007 Sermon

Integrity
Luke 6:43-45

I used to play the saxophone. One of the last times I played in public happened at a church conference center where Linda and I worked for a summer. A black gospel group visited one week. They were good technically, and had a powerful spirit. I hung around their rehearsals. I approached their pianist and asked if I could sit in. She gave me one of those “Did you step in dog doo on your way over here?” looks. I persisted. She finally met me in a building with a beat-up piano so far from the rest of the campus nobody could hear us, and tried me out. I guess I did all right. She had me join the group later that afternoon.

On Sunday morning I played with them in worship. After the service that pianist came up to me and said, “For as white a boy as you are, you play pretty good.” That happened nearly thirty years ago, but I remember the moment vividly. It was a great compliment. And it dug down into one of the most powerful truths about human beings: our inner and outer lives do not always match. Sadly, we often hide our true selves. We hide talent, but also darker things, things like anger, hatred, judgmentalism, hypocrisy and the rest of our sins.

Jesus calls us to make our inner and outer lives congruent, to have integrity. He wants us to have such love for God deep within our souls that it pours out into our actions. Jesus calls us to worship God inside and out. Let your true worship show.

Have integrity. Let your true worship show. But first we must have true worship of God in our hearts. We cannot play the music if we do not have it inside. We need to cultivate our love for Christ. We need to cultivate those habits that will help the Holy Spirit grow our love for Christ. Specifically, we need to develop the habits of counting our blessings, of prayer, and of worshipping Jesus regularly with the church.

With whom do you tend to compare yourself? When in a crowd, do you look at people at the Angelina Jolie/Arnold Schwarzenegger end of the scale, or those who look more like Jackie Gleason or Rosanne Barr? When driving around, do you look at BMWs or Dodge Darts? When evaluating our relationships do we compare ourselves to the best marriage we know or the worst? Most of us compare ourselves to the best and brightest. This makes us prone to envy and bitterness.

We need, instead, to cultivate the habit of counting our blessings. We need to focus on the gifts we have, rather than what we have not. Every person listening to (or reading) this sermon lives amidst the greatest prosperity in recorded history. According to the Commerce Department, our standard of living has doubled in thirty years. My parents thought they had arrived when they could afford matching TV trays for their card parties. My grandparents had to worry about putting enough food on the table (never mind television, or trays to set up in front of it). Our biggest food problem is having too much of it.

Counting our blessings means focusing on God’s provision for our every need. We have excellent, safe, abundant food. Thank God for this blessing! We have this church. It is imperfect. Its pastor and leaders make mistakes. Our fellowship occasionally lets people and their needs slip through the cracks. But we have genuine, warm fellowship. We proclaim the Word around here. We support each other through grief. Thank God for this blessing! We have faith and the hope it brings. Thank God for this blessing! Count what you have, not what you have not, and thank God for your blessings. Developing this habit will generate an attitude of worship toward the Great God who gives us all.

As you develop the habit of counting your blessings, develop also your habit of prayer. And do not think the only way to pray is to sit quietly and force yourself to mumble well-meaning words to an Unseen God. Prayer can take many forms. Matt Redman, author of the book The Unquenchable Worshipper, which the Praise Team is studying, mentions how as a teenager one time he “prayed” by running barefoot around the church parking lot after a youth group meeting. In the moment he could find no other adequate way to express his passion for Christ. He ruefully concludes with the question, “Now that I’ve gotten older, would I stop first to put on my shoes, and then decide—upon reflection—not to run at all?”

Pray without ceasing. Pray in thought, word and deed. Pray thanksgiving for all those blessings you just counted. Pray for forgiveness for your hidden sins. Pray for the courage to do the right thing. Pray by hugging your beloved. Pray by weeping with those who weep. Pray by laughing out loud. Just keep praying. Cultivate the habit.

Let us assume that by cultivating the habits of counting blessings and praying, you have created a true sense of worship in your innermost being. You must take one more step: you must make your outer and your inner lives congruent, you must find integrity.

We all need to work on developing the habit of worshipping God regularly and publicly. According the Barna Institute, a Christian demographic company, Americans who do not worship in church overwhelmingly cite one reason. Do people not come to church because they do not believe in God? No. While some struggle to believe in Jesus Christ, a solid majority has faith. Do people not come to church because they have a problem with a church (or The Church)? No. While quite a few can tell stories of how the church has let them down, most people have a surprisingly positive outlook about churches.

No, the main reason people do not come to church—and the numbers for this reason dwarf all others—is that coming to church is inconvenient. It takes effort. It requires planning ahead. In many cases, coming to church means having a family argument. In our fast-food, on-demand culture, greater numbers of people are choosing not to go out of their way to worship Jesus Christ, who is The Way.

Before we get all smug about the fact that we have come to worship today, let us recall that we must develop the habit of worship. We must also develop the habit of worshipping Jesus Christ when we’re not in church. We can worship him in the parking lot, as Matt Redman tells us, and in the streets and stores and in our homes. Until we do, we cannot claim to worship inside and out. We cannot claim to be letting our true worship show. We do not have spiritual integrity.

"No good tree produces bad fruit,” Jesus preached, “nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit.” He said this during his Sermon on the Mount, the great theme statement of his entire ministry. Here, near the start of his public work, he set out the great principles that underlay all his teaching. He proclaimed that God blesses all people who believe—even those who do not look or feel blessed. And he added these words: “The good person out of the treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”

Who we really are comes out of our mouths, our attitudes and our actions. Actually, we cannot help but make our inner and outer lives congruent. Sooner or later, truth will out. Strive, therefore, to store up good treasure in your heart. Develop the habits that produce good fruit: counting blessings, praying without ceasing, and worshipping Jesus regularly and publicly. Cultivate your true worship—and let it show.

We worship the God who saves us from ourselves. We worship the God who blesses us. We worship the God who gives the future meaning—no matter how grim it may seem at times. We need to start running around parking lots and praying out loud to show our worship of this God. We need to play the music. Go on—what are you waiting for?