Our morning text comes from Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae. Colossians is a letter written to a church in what is today’s Turkey. His letter focuses on two primary issues confronting the church at the time. You see, some rogue teachers and preachers were infiltrating the church with some bad teaching. On one side, there were those who were using philosophical arguments indicating Jesus was not really who he said he was, i.e., the living embodiment of God – Immanuel. On the other side were those who said that if you want to know Jesus, you had to know “the secret handshake”; in other words, these folks taught in order to have a relationship with Jesus, you must be taught secret knowledge about Jesus. It’s known as the ancient heresy, Gnosticism.

Now at the end of all of Paul’s letters, he takes time to give special encouragement to the letter’s recipients and circles back around to highlight one more time the letter’s key themes. Today, let’s read Colossians 4:2-6. Listen to the Word of the Lord.

The second issue he reminds them of is to be mindful of how they, the Church, present themselves to the larger community. He realizes that people outside the Church will not only judge the Church but more importantly, will judge Jesus by how those of us in the Church act and through what we say or don’t say and how we say it.  The Message paraphrase has verses five and six reads,

Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don’t miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.

American Christianity, insert Church, provides two good contemporary examples of the Church’s failure to make the most of the opportunity in speaking the winsome Gospel of renewal to our culture with appropriate words and with grace. This summer, our sisters and brothers in the Southern Baptist Convention declared that women in the church are to be seen and not heard. Sadly, women can teach Sunday school and head up the nursery but god forbid they stand in the pulpit and declare the Gospel! If they do, the church will be kicked out of the convention. The two largest Baptist churches in the nation left because they valued women’s leadership.^[2]

The other scenario where the Church has not conducted itself wisely with seasoned, appropriate words of grace is with the gay community. The church for centuries has failed miserably and has exchanged the winsome words of love and Christ’s reconciling work for words that build walls of exclusion and hate. There have been former pastors of this very church in years past who had the gall to look at a gay man in the eyes and tell him, “You need to leave this church. Your kind isn’t welcome here.” When I heard this man share his story with me, my heart broke.  What does it communicate to the world when the church says it welcomes the broken, the homeless, the sick, the aged, the migrant but if you’re gay or different than me, there’s no room for you here? I thank God those days are over in this church! One of the things I leave here grateful for is that under our time together, First Presbyterian has become a welcome and affirming congregation for all of God’s children. We are a church whose members follow the banner of Jesus Christ; in the wake created by following Jesus together, we learn to love and better understand one another as we go. The flag we will rally behind, whether you’re gay or straight, is the banner of the Cross of Christ as we take it out in the world in mission!

So, these are some of Paul’s final thoughts directed to the church in Colossae. I want to offer you, beloved, my final thoughts to you. What is it I want you to remember after I am gone?

Whether or not you were aware of it, for the last almost six years I have been sharing the core values I wanted you to marinate in while I was here. If you were astute, you recognized that I do things a little differently as a pastor. As Paul spoke of seasoning our words with salt, I want to share with you six different seasonings I add to every worship service in order to marinate and season your soul with what I think are priorities in our walking the Way of Jesus. This is how I personally, week after week, try to make the most of every opportunity to declare the winsome Word wisely.

How do I start every worship service? Do you remember? “Shhh. Listen!” I always call for us as a community to become silent, still, and expectant. “Shhh. Listen! The Holy Spirit is in this place!” Each week I begin our worship service by reminding us we are now entering God’s time and we are to be alert and aware of the Presence of the Spirit in our midst. I want us to prepare ourselves to expect God to show up and make a difference in our lives.

The second bit of seasoning I add each Sunday is to then remind us of whose Presence we are in: In the Name of the One who is, who was, and who is to come, grace and peace to you in the Name of Jesus Christ, good morning. First, I call us to be silent but then I remind us whom we are to look for: Jesus. We are not looking for “Six Principles for Spiritual Living” or anything like that; no, Church, we are called to look for and encounter our Lord Jesus. Our faith begins and ends with the man from Nazareth.

The third subtle value I have tried to instill in you is that when we say the Lord’s Prayer, we are to end it on a high note, not a low one. It’s a powerful prayer straight from the lips of our Lord and so often Church, we pray it, “for thine is the kingdom, power, and glory…amen.” Friends, the early church made a point of adding doxology at the end of this prayer! It’s to end on a high note because it so succinctly reminds us how we are to live our lives in God and with one another. “For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, FOREVER! AMEN!” It ends on an expectant upbeat!

This fourth one is probably the one you will most remember. How do I greet you from the pulpit each week? “Good morning, saints! Good morning, sinners!” I had one man tell me that my saying this week after week was hackneyed; I smiled and said that’s okay – you’re still in one of the groups!”

Why do I say this each week? Is it simply to get a chuckle out of you before I start preaching? Nope. I greet you that way because I want those of you who feel all high and mighty in your faith to remember you are as much a broken mess as everyone else. I want to those of you who feel you are worthless and unlovable to remember you are a dearly loved adopted child of God. The Church is a microcosm of the larger world but with this one difference: Christ-followers understand and acknowledge who we are as redeemed sinners and that we stand equal with everyone in need of God’s loving grace.

The fifth and sixth values I’ve tried to marinate you in are usually thrown in the rue together. One is an invitation. The other is a blessing. I learned this from the late W. Frank Harrington of the Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. I worked as one of his associates decades ago. He was not the easiest person to work for or get along with, but he did love the Church and those who worked for him learned a lot.

Frank always gave an invitation at the end of the service. We Presbyterians might grumble that it feels too ‘Baptist’ and we are above the need to belabor the obvious that we are invited to come and walk with Jesus. What I have learned over the years is there are very few Mainline pastors, albeit Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, or Episcopalian that invite people to contemplate an offer to follow Jesus or learn what that even means. It doesn’t have to mean Reid plays fifteen stanzas of Just As I Am until someone throws in the towel because they have had enough and grovels down the center aisle and gets “slain in the Spirit.” No! It’s just a simple invitation to you that says, “If your week really sucked, if you are in crisis at home or at work, if you are in the depths of grief and are at your wits-end, Jesus is gently knocking at the door of your heart, and he wants to come and in and visit with you.” In training younger pastors, I remind them if they do this, they will speak to someone in the congregation who now knows it is safe to come and talk about their faith and learn about Jesus.

Coupled with my invitation each week, I give a blessing. The final bit of seasoning I pull out of my cupboard is to declare God’s blessing upon you. “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord shine his face upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face upon you and smile brightly, gently, giving you the peace of Jesus Christ.” 

It drives me nuts when I hear pastors screw up this great Aaronic blessing^[3] when they say, “MAY the Lord bless you and keep you. MAY the Lord Shine his face…MAY the Lord turn his face upon you…” One, they’re quoting it incorrectly but more importantly, they are taking a declarative charge and are making it just a mere possibility.

“God might or might not bless you and keep you. God might or might not shine his face or lift his face upon you.”   Andrew Pervus, Professor of Reformed Theology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary says we have taken a declarative blessing and have watered it down into a vacuous optative maybe or maybe not. By misquoting Moses from the Book of Numbers, pastors have blessed congregations with nothing more than a big, empty “Good luck! Because God may or may not be with you!”

Beloved, I want you to know that you know that you know that as you leave worship, God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost’s blessing is wrapped around you like a warm coat on a cold winter’s night. There’s no maybe about it.

Shhh! Listen! The Spirit of God is in this place! Saints and sinners, with a spirited doxology of gratitude and love, it’s been a privilege to serve you in the Name of the One Who is, Who was, and Who is to come. Amen.

© 2023 Patrick H. Wrisley, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church, 401 SE 15^th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 33301. Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and may not be altered, re-purposed, published, or preached without permission. All rights reserved.

[1]New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

[2] See https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/southern-baptist-convention-bans-female-pastors-ejecting-several-churches-in-the-process#:~:text=Southern%20Baptist%20Convention%20bans%20female%20pastors%2C%20ejecting%20several%20churches%20in%20the%20process,-Jun%2015%2C%202023&text=The%20Southern%20Baptist%20Convention%20moved,leadership%20roles%20in%20its%20churches.

[3] Numbers 6:23-26. The great priestly blessing.