To our good fortune, we stopped to ask directions from an old-timer who lived nearby and who, as it turned out, had lived there all his life and still knew the way to the old campsite.  It was a miserably hot summer day and the old man was in frail health.  My father worried that it might not be good for him to take us on what turned out to be a pretty good hike.  But, he led us anyway, like it was important for him to help someone find a place they wouldn’t otherwise.  And, after stumbling through the overgrowth, the thorns and thickets we found our way, deep in the woods, to the very place where my father’s life began. 

Other than the ruts of the old abandoned railroad tracks, there was nothing there except some poignant memories that still wandered very much alive through those woods for my father.  I remember my father’s gratitude for the old man who, at some risk to his own life, helped us find the way.  I remember, too, the whole event as something of a spiritual experience, physically going back to the place of my father’s birth, the place that had a great deal to do with my own coming into the world. 

There is just something about not ever being able to go forward in life until you’ve learned the story about where and how you got started.  The apostle Peter wrote the letter from which we’ve read this morning.  He addressed it to Christians who had, by that time, been scattered to the four corners of the known world.  He called them “strangers in the world (NIV).”  They were people without much of a place to call home anymore. 

Since they had come to Christ, they were learning that their real home didn’t have much of anything to do with zip-coded addresses.  And, life had not been easy for them.  Life isn’t easy, anyway.  Life is hard.  Life is hard no matter who you, when you’re born or where you live.  But, life had become particularly difficult for these believers, as it always does, for people whose values and lifestyle are radically altered by a life-changing obedience to Jesus. 

Jesus’ way is a harder way.  He told us it would be.  “‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow me (Matthew 16:24).’”  We don’t like it messy.  But, crosses, back then weren’t 14K gold hung on chain-link strands for jewelry.  They were instruments of torture, fashioned out of crude wood, and people were hung on them for only one reason, to die slow, miserable deaths.  When life gets really hard because we choose faith in Christ as our compass, at least we can’t sue Jesus for false advertising.  “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” Bono sings.  Neither will we if what we’re looking for is a place to finally settle down in the journey with Jesus, a journey that’s always more about where we’re willing to follow him than where we are at any given moment. 

Peter was writing to people who had chosen faith in the risen Christ as their compass and discovered that the road they traveled was full of “grief in all kinds of trials (NIV).”  And, not just the trials that come with the territory of being human, of just being alive.  Like getting sick or injured in an accident or losing your job to a bad economy.  You don’t get sick or injured in an accident or lose your job to a bad economy because you are a Christian.  All you have to do to get sick, injured or fired just is just be alive long enough. 

The trials these people were facing came to them specifically because they had chosen faith in Jesus as their moral and spiritual compass.  Peter was looking for some way to help them find their way through the grief of choosing faith and getting burned for it.  In order to help find their way through the grief of trusting Jesus, Peter first took them back to their place of their birth.  There is just something about not ever being able to go forward in life until we’ve learned the story about where and how we got started. 

The place my dad was born isn’t a place anymore.  It doesn’t have a name or even a spot on the map.  The place of our spiritual birth may or may not have a point on the map or even a date on the calendar we can recall.  But, according to Peter, it does have a name.  “God . . . by his great mercy has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” 

If we want to go back to the place of our physical birth, we may have to travel to places with strange names.  On our way to our Thanksgiving family reunion every year, we go through a place called Buck Snort, Tennessee.  Where are you from?  Buck Snort.  Or, Toad Suck, Arkansas, a real place, not far down the road from Buck Snort.  But, if someone ever asks us about our place of birth as a follower of Jesus, we can all take them back to that moment in time when Jesus walked out of the tomb to give us “a new birth into a living hope.”  Where are you from?  A place called “Living Hope.” 

We are now moving into some of the most exciting and challenging days of our church’s journey toward what we are calling a “values-based” ministry.  We have committed ourselves to a new mission, “Sharing Christ Through Caring Relationships.”  We’ve chosen that mission because, we believe, it was chosen for us by the commission of Jesus.  We’re operating out of some fundamental assumptions we’re not willing to take for granted. 

Jesus has commissioned this church, the church on this corner, to make disciples for his Kingdom.  To lead people to follow him.  Since February, we’re not assuming that anymore.  We’ve put it up high on banners.  We’re driving that to the center of all that we do.  We’re saying that all the money we spend, all the energy we expend, all the investment of our time and talents, is about helping other people find the hope we’ve found in Jesus. 

The most interesting thing is that, the more and more we’ve struggled with how we should do church on this corner, the more and more that struggle has led us back to why we do it at all.  And, all of that is leading us to discover a way of doing church that is really more ancient than modern.  Sharing Christ, we are coming to discover, is always more an issue of why than how.  Kind of like marriage or parenting.  If you stay in touch with why you love someone, you’ll always find a way “how” to love them. 

I’ll never forget the first time I changed a diaper.  I’d never known how to do that.  Never cared to know how.  Until it meant learning how to care for my firstborn.  It only took me about sixty seconds to learn, not just because, when it comes to changing diapers time is of the essence, but because, for the first time in my life, it meant caring for someone I loved.  I had a reason to know how that had more to do with why than how. 

I’ve had conversations this week with people who are giving care to loved ones who can no longer care for themselves.  I marvel at their sacrifice, their courage and their strength.  Yet again, I’ve learned from watching them, when you love someone you always find a way “how to do show it. 

Our good friend Kenny Wood stepped out of a hospital elevator one day only to see a man come running out of a patient’s room down the hall toward him.  He’d never met this man before, but this guy ran all the way to Kenny and picked him up in a huge bear hug and swung him completely around.  Tears were streaming down his face and all he could say over and over again was, “Her fever has broken!  Her fever has broken!”  Just as suddenly, the man ran on down the hall and Kenny never saw him again.  Kenny said that it was one of the most beautiful pictures of what we church people call evangelism, finding out such good news that you can’t wait to tell the very first person you see. 

If we are going to share Christ through caring relationships, even if that means hugging total strangers, it is going to mean finding our hope again.  Getting back in touch with the first time, or last time, we were so overwhelmed by grace and hope that we just can’t wait to tell the first person we see.  Getting back to that place may not be as easy, or as comfortable, as some would like.  We don’t like it messy.  For some, it’s not been easy to hear your pastor’s confession of his own humanity over these years.  But, if I can’t or won’t tell others of what it was like to be hopeless, I can’t tell others what it is like to have hope. 

When Nancy and I got lost on the way to the Marriage Enrichment retreat this weekend we started giving each other directions.  Husbands and wives who give each other directions when they are lost only need one thing when they finish, marriage enrichment.  When we got there, we found out we weren’t the only ones who couldn’t read the map.  We were as enriched as much as anything by being with a bunch of other people who had not only been lost themselves, but had been willing to admit it.

Churches should be places where people who are lost can come and find their souls enriched by the confession of others who know what it is like to be lost.  We are not ineffective in sharing Christ because we don’t know the gospel story.  More often, we are not as effective as we could be because we aren’t willing to share the story of how his grace met our sin and became personally real to us. 

I’m a broken sinner who found grace, or better, who was found by grace and nothing gives me greater joy than sharing that.  Peter’s confession of finding a “new birth into a living hope” only means what it does because we know his other story, the one where his betrayal of Jesus makes CIA agents who sell secrets to Russians look comical in comparison. 

The apostle Paul made a similar confession.  “Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.  But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life (1 Timothy 1:15-16, NIV).” 

This table (pointing to Lord’s Supper table) is yet another witness.  This table not only tells us what God did in Christ to save us, it models for us grace that comes only through brokenness.  If we want to share Christ, we’ll have to be willing to bleed a little, like Jesus did.  We are going to have to care enough to take others back to our place of birth, that place where God’s grace and our sin first did battle and grace won by giving birth to new hope in us.

Mark Grace tells of falling into chest deep snow just off a ski run in Colorado once.  Chest deep.  He couldn’t move.  He was stuck.  People would ski by just looking at him, stuck in the snow.  Every now and then, Mark said, someone would stop and ask, “How’d you get stuck down there?”  But, not one of them, not one, ever stopped to ask, “Can I help you?”  Mark finally got out, no thanks to those who passed by on the other side of the road. 

Perhaps you think I’m about to say that evangelism means caring enough to stop and help stranded people.  But, I’m not going to let you off that easy.  I don’t want you to remember the last time you passed by on the other side and let someone else play the good Samaritan.  I’m not taking you to that guilt this morning.  That’s too easy.  I want you to walk back through the thickets and thorns, deep into the woods, to the place you were born into grace. 

I want you to remember the last time you were stuck, chest-deep, and couldn’t get out on your own.  Do you remember what that felt like?  How many just passed on by?  How many laughed or just asked, mockingly, “How could you be so stupid?  If you’d just stayed on the trail you’d be o.k.”  Now, I want you to remember what it felt like when someone finally stopped and asked, “Can I help you?”  and reached down and grasped your hand and helped you out. 

Do you remember his voice?  Whose voice was that?  Do you remember what his hand felt like?  It was scarred, remember?  Do you remember?  Do you remember the last time your despair and God’s grace met and grace gave birth to living hope?