This morning, we had the opportunity to celebrate a baptism. Not very long ago, Daniel, Pamela and Landon came before us, and promises were made – promises that were, essentially, pledges to live a life that would honour Christ. In fact one of the questions we always ask parents who present their children for baptism is pretty specific about this: “will you so pattern your lives that your child may come to know Christ as his or her Lord and Saviour.” Will you, in other words, model Christian faith for the child you present? I certainly don't want Daniel and Pamela to think that they're being put on the spot here this morning because that question (or a variation on it) is asked of everyone who presents a child for baptism in the United Church. The idea that we need to instruct and teach our children is a given – as is the idea that we have to model behaviour for them. We know that children learn about how to conduct relationships by observing the relationships they see being lived out around them. In the same way, children learn what it is to be a Christian by seeing Christian faith lived out among them. They don't become Christians by seeing that – the decision to become a Christian is a personal one – but they learn about Christian faith by what they see and by what they're told. We have a responsibility to our children to model Christian behaviour. Surely, though, our responsibility to model Christian behaviour goes beyond simply what happens within our homes. Surely we have a responsibility as Christians to model Christian behaviour in everything we do – at home and in school and at work and in church and in the various clubs and organizations we belong to. In short, we're always Christians. We can't compartmentalize that spiritual part of our lives so that it only gets displayed in certain limited settings. Last week, I spoke about that new name of “Christian” being bestowed upon some of the early disciples in Antioch, because they acted in ways that impressed the people of Antioch – so much so that a new name was needed to give meaning to their way of life. The name stuck, and got passed on to future generations down to our own. Now, we're Christians too – and we're always Christians. And, because people know we're Christians, we take on a great deal of responsibility. In another of his letters, Paul told Christians that “we are … Christ's ambassadors.” We represent Christ to the world, and by our actions we demonstrate whether there's anything of substance to this Christian faith we claim as ours. As a former professor of mine once said: “remember – you may be the only Christ a person ever meets.” Think about that - people may accept or reject Christ on the basis of our words or actions. The responsibility is great and the stakes are high. The question is – are we up to it?

 

     Over the last few weeks I've been speaking a great deal about the purpose of the church, the church's mission and how it is that we're empowered and equipped to engage in that mission. Last week, I suggested that the mission of the church was to offer the good news to all we encounter that they are beloved children of God, and I suggested that to do that we have to get ourselves and our faith out of the building and into the world, rather than waiting for the world to come to us. Assuming that we can do that – assuming that we can make that shift in mindset and embrace the idea that our mission is to get ourselves into the world rather than to get the world into the church – we have to ask ourselves how our witness can be effective. There's no point going into the world as a representative of Christ unless we know how to represent Him well. That's a significant issue today. We live in a world that loves to scandal-monger. No matter how much good a person does, if there's a skeleton in their closet, it will come out and it will smear their reputation. That applies to Christians just as much as it applies to politicians or anyone else. We have to have integrity in how we live. We have to have consistency between what we say and how we act. The church has taken its share of deserved shots over the years – because of evangelical televangelists whose desire seems to be to get money out of people's hands for their own benefit; because of mainline churches who often make it painfully clear that their goal is to get people into the pews without any real sense of what we have to offer; because of the recent and ongoing sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church. There's inconsistency and even hypocrisy among Christians of all stripes, and that hurts our witness, because although I believe that on balance the church has done far more good than harm, to many unchurched people, it's the harm the church has done that stands out. We don't always practice what we preach, and when Christian people – clergy or laity – act in ways that's not consistent with the teaching and standard of Jesus, the world has a right to say “why should we pay any attention to you?” As the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “What you are speaks so loudly I can't hear what you say.” 

 

     As I said earlier, Christians represent Christ to the world, and the world makes its decisions about Christ based largely on how well we represent Him. So what do we have to do, what do we have to say and how do we have to live in order to represent Christ well? I found the passage from Galatians this morning interesting. In that passage, Paul isn't really talking about representing Christ to the world. He has a more immediate problem. Apparently there are some people in Galatia calling into question whether he's a legitimate apostle. In other words, in this context he's having to defend his own reputation within the Christian community rather than to bear witness to Christ outside the Christian community. But there are important things we learn, nevertheless, about how to present ourselves to others. Paul doesn't offer external credentials to the Galatians. In fact, he downplays external credentials. The credentials he has to be an apostle of Christ are the obvious signs of a changed and transformed life. “I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ,” he wrote. “They only heard the report: 'The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.' And they praised God because of me.” If we try to go into the world as untransformed people – as people who still try to live by the values and standards of the world rather than by the values and standards of Christ - then we have no hope of living out the mission of God. There are, unfortunately, people who seem to feel that it's sufficient to be a “Sunday morning Christian” - that it's fine just to go to church on Sunday, but then show no evidence at all the rest of the week that the gospel (the very message of Christ Himself) has had any impact. Sunday morning Christianity doesn't work. The Monday to Saturday Christianity is what really counts. What we're doing here on Sunday morning is only meaningful if it encourages and empowers us to engage in that bigger, tougher and more challenging task – living as Christians the rest of the week.

 

     What I'm pleading for is integrity – the integrity of living as Christians and not just talking about being Christians, because that's the only way that we can possibly bear effective witness to Christ. Paul had enough trouble convincing his fellow Christians that he possessed that integrity. He had to practically beg them to believe in what he was telling them - “I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.” If the Christian community itself had doubts about Paul, how many more doubts will the world have about us? That's why it is indeed a high calling we've been given as Christians – to represent Christ as His ambassadors to the world. The good news is that we're not doing this by ourselves. Even now, the Holy Spirit is working inside each of us, already transforming us into what God wants us to be – but we have to be willing to be transformed. That transformation – that new and different way of life Christ leads us to adopt – is what the world will see in us, and it's how the world will become convinced that Christ does make a difference in us, and that Christ can make a difference in them. The world will make its final judgment about Christ by watching us. That's why, for His sake, it's important that we be Christians of good character!