"Preaching to the Choir is not the Point"

Yesterday, we talked about the importance of not being so concerned with "preaching to the choir" that we forget to reach out to other people with God's love. Sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with others is important in our Christian walk. However, there was more to Jesus message to the Pharisees in Matthew 9:9-13 than just encouraging people to share the good news. One of the lessons that we learn from Jesus calling of Matthew is that all too often people “inside” the church have attitudes that actually discourage others from feeling welcome. The Pharisees objected to Jesus healing the paralyzed man (Matthew 9:1-8) not because the man was made well, but because Jesus had the nerve to claim that the man was forgiven. They did not like not being in charge. They objected to Matthew's dinner party because it wasn’t with the “right people.” We in the church need to recognize that, unfortunately, we more often behave like the Pharisees than like Jesus. We also must recognize that when God’s love and forgiveness are truly present, when people’s lives are genuinely transformed, it may not always look like we think it should. It almost certainly won’t be clean and tidy and manageable. That has never been the way that God has worked.

I also mentioned during the sermon yesterday about the tendency that many people have to be "spiritual but not religious." If you would like to read more about this, follow this link to an article about this topic.