A TRUCKIN' CHURCH
Hebrews 10:19-25 11/16/03
America's love affair with trucks has hit the record books in the last couple of years. We used to crave cars, and weren't so passionate about pickups. Back in the 1960s, Detroit sold a whopping 8.5 million cars for every 1 million light trucks.
But check your rearview mirror today, and you can see a change. Annual sales of light trucks are at the 11 million mark and have surpassed car sales for the first time in history.
I found that fact curious, given that 100 years ago people had a hard time figuring out what the point of a truck was. In 1898, the Winton Motor Carriage Company produced the first American truck, a gas-powered delivery wagon. But 12 years later, there were only 11,000 trucks on the road, compared to 450,000 cars.
How come? One reason was that business people couldn't see the advantage. A truck was often more expensive to operate than a horse-drawn wagon. Several dairies in New York City found that trucks were inferior for home milk delivery because the ordinary milk horse was a well-trained and intelligent animal, able to move unattended from door to door while the driver was delivering the bottles.
Could a truck do this? No way.
Another reason was that businesses already had a vast network of investments in horse-drawn transportation. They owned not only horses, but stables, wagons, tack and other gear. Businesses didn't want to chuck that investment for something unproved, and expensive. In 1910, however, the Mack Truck Company figured out that trucks were great for hauling telephone poles, using augers to drill the holes for the poles and winches to string the wire between the poles - and the trucking revolution was on!
Now we see more pickup trucks on the road than cars, pickup trucks as the family vehicle, and pickup trucks that will probably never haul anything but people.
It's been a couple thousand years since the church came into being. And unfortunately, you don't have to go very far to find people who will argue that the church hasn't been much good - in fact, they'll say it's done more harm than good. Like early critics of gas-powered delivery wagons, they'll point out that the church is expensive ... and inefficient ... and subject to breakdowns ... and noisy ... and sometimes even rather foul-smelling.
But, like the Mack Truck Company, we know what the church is good for: Carrying stuff.
Today's passage from Hebrews reveals that the essence of what the church does is carry cargo. We get this mission from Jesus Christ, the one who was the prototype trucker - the Savior who took the heavy load of our guilt upon himself and hauled the full weight of our sins into oblivion.
Because Christ "offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:12), we don't have to haul that particular load any longer. We can fly past life's weigh stations and blow through its tollbooths. But still, our call is to carry cargo in the truck called the church. Our own church is not a finely tuned sports car or a luxuriously appointed sedan, but is instead a mud-flapped, roll-barred, banged-up, load-hauling truck. In today’s passage from Hebrews 10 verses 19-25, we're to use this vehicle to drive ourselves to God in faith and worship (vv. 22 and 25), to carry forward the full weight of our hope (v. 23) and to do the hard work of helping others in love (v. 24). Listen to these instructions as written in Hebrews: “Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Our job is to perform good deeds, meet together regularly, encourage one another and do whatever we can to help each other function in love as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Perhaps it's time to confess we have not been a truckin' church. We haven't carried out our responsibilities to lift up the oppressed, to bring hope to the hopeless and to bear one another's burdens. We have failed to respond to the mandate that is at the heart of Christianity - namely, the commandment of Christ to "love one another" (John 13:34).
There's nothing plush about this love. It's not a ride in a luxury sedan with stereo sound and soft leather seats. This is the down-and-dirty love that Jesus showed when he grabbed a towel, hit the floor and washed the disciples' feet.
Truckin' love. This is a key commandment in the New Testament concerning our behavior as a church. It involves carrying stuff, working hard and getting ourselves dirty in the process. A comfy little four-door car of a church simply won't get the job done.
Unfortunately, people miss this divine directive - both inside and outside the community of faith. Insiders are like the enthusiastic car buyers of the 1960s, folks who want their own set of wheels so they can scoot around town in their own private and personal relationship with Jesus. They fall into the trap of "neglecting to meet together" - which Hebrews warns us about (v. 25) – and don’t do many good deeds or loving themselves, let alone look for ways to encourage others to do the same.
Outsiders don't do much better. They see the church as a cumbersome contraption and criticize it in the same language used by opponents of early trucks, saying it is expensive, inefficient and unreliable. And both these critics—the outsiders—as well as the insiders, miss the power and versatility of the church. They ignore what a community of faith can do – and do so much better than any other collection of people.
It is in the worship of the church that we find forgiveness, being reminded on every trip here that Christ has hauled away our sins. It is in the fellowship of the church that we find encouragement, as we "provoke one another to love and good deeds" (v. 24). It is in the mission of the church that we help others in love, reaching out to meet their physical, emotional, relational, mental and spiritual needs.
That's heavy hauling. And there's no better vehicle for it than the church.
"To have a faith without any good works is no faith at all," says Patrick Morley in his best-selling book The Man in the Mirror. Faith alone is just a pleasure ride - far from the truckin' experience of Christian faith combined with good works. God didn't give us salvation for our benefit alone. God has a job description for every one of us, which includes the challenge of good works. The areas in which God wants our service are evangelism, disciple-making and caring for the poor and needy.
"This is God's agenda," insists Morley. "We try to make it more complicated, but these are the three tasks God wants us to help him with."
Now let me clarify something here. As individuals, we each have been given at least one spiritual gift by God to use for the building up of His Kingdom. The Bible tells us that those gifts include teaching, preaching, prophesy, healing, wisdom and so on. 1 Corinthians chapter 12 explains this. And verse 7 says we were all given these gifts “for the common good.”
The areas of evangelism, disciple-making and caring for the poor and needy are too much for just individuals. These are big jobs, jobs that only a community can do. Jobs that require a church to do, a truckin' church.
Evangelism. Go back to the Mack truck of 1910. Remember that the new Mack truck was great for hauling telephone poles using augers to drill the holes for the poles, and winches to string the wire between the poles. These trucks went out on the nation's highways and dug holes. That's the truckin' dimension of evangelism - preparing the ground for something needed and new.
Disciple-making. The poles were set in the ground with a built-in crane. That's the second function of a church that's on a mission: helping others to learn about Christ and follow him. Setting and grounding disciples in a "new and living way" (v. 20).
Caring for the poor and needy. The 1910-era Mack truck also had a power winch that would string wires from pole to pole, connecting the community and enabling the entire system to perform its mission. Christians - like telephone poles - need to be tied tightly together before they can do the job they've been created to do. We need to get to know each other real well, like the family of God that we are, so we can be tied tightly together.
Of course, both trucks and churches can do more than this. What's also true is that too often, they can do a whole lot less. Think about it. Trucks used to be all about hard work, getting' the job done. My Grandpa used to talk about his red 1952 Chevy with vinyl seat, 4-speed stick shift and a radio. No power steering or power brakes. He would always say, “Now that was a truck!”
Now we have $40,000 pickups, a cowboy Cadillac that's fully automated with power steering, brakes, windows and things you’ve never even thought of. It's air-conditioned with a CD player, and you sit in leather seats. It has four doors, a full back seat and you put a protector in the back so the flatbed won't get scratched. But it probably wouldn’t get scratched anyway because you would be horrified to even think about putting something in the bed! And, of course, there're a couple cup holders and a pouch for your cell phone.
Girls are even driving trucks that are lavender and smell pretty. Thing is, trucks used to be all about blood, sweat and tears. Now it's about show and tell.
This is a fate that we in the church must avoid. We need to remember our purpose and mission. The church is a workhorse, not a quarter horse; a truck, not a car with pretensions of truckness.
If that's not true of us, then we as a community, a family of faith, the Body of Christ, then we've got sins to confess and commandments to obey. Let us Pray:
Precious Lord Jesus, You became human and walked on the same earth we inhabit. May we walk as you intended—to make more disciples for your Kingdom, to share your Good News of salvation with those you place in our paths, and to find ways of caring for the poor and needy. Help us to live by faith, as individuals and as your community. Amen.
BENEDICTION: As we share dinner together in the next hour, let us remember that our hearts are sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water through the death of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Remember the words of Hebrews 10:25, that we are :not to neglect meeting together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.” Consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds.
Sources:
Evanoff, Ted. "Light trucks
may soon pass cars in sales."
Detroit Free Press, January 5, 1998.
Morley, Patrick. The Man in the Mirror.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1997,
212-213.
Reich, Leonard. "The dawn of the truck." Invention & Technology. Fall, 2000, 18-25.
