The very first thing I must do this morning is confess that I have borrowed the title for the message from Philip Yancey’s very popular book by the same name, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995).  Yancey started out to write a book about Jesus.  In his research, he claims, he found a Jesus that was quite different from the one his traditional Christian experience had revealed to him.  In his willingness to discover where truth transcends tradition, even the most sacred traditions of us upbringing, Yancey has written a book that has made it possible for other people to discover a Jesus they never knew, a Jesus they can actually trust, vs. a Jesus clouded in religious traditions that don’t have anything to do with Jesus.

Maybe, before this morning is over, we will also discover that, if we are truly committed to bringing people to Jesus, we will have to help them discover a Jesus we never knew.  A Jesus they will discover only if we are willing to allow them to bypass most of what we would consider traditional Christianity. 

In the text we have read from John’s gospel, Jesus has found a man who will become one of his disciples, Philip.  The experience of being found and called by Jesus apparently so overwhelms Philip that he can’t bear to go wherever Jesus is taking him alone.  So, Philip goes and finds Nathaniel.  This is what Philip tells Nathaniel, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

For centuries, the Jewish people had been anticipating the Messiah.  Philip is now telling Nathaniel that the Messiah has come, and his name is Jesus and he is from a backwater town called Nazareth.  It’s not that Nathaniel is unwilling to believe the Messiah has come or that his name is Jesus.  What is hard for Nathaniel to swallow is that the Messiah hails from Nazareth.  All of the traditions in Nathaniel’s mind that have anything to do with the Messiah have led him to believe that Jesus would be someone more special and prominent than just someone from, of all places, Nazareth.  He asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  That would be like asking a longtime, prominent Dallas socialite to believe that the next mover and shaker in Dallas society and politics would have come from some place like, Brownfield!  It’s just a little hard to swallow.  You know, you can take the boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the boy.  He probably doesn’t even know which side of the plate the fork and knife go on or to chew with his mouth closed!

Philip was asking Nathaniel to meet a Jesus that had very little to do with Nathaniel’s traditional understanding of what a Messiah would look like or where he’d come from.  It took courage on both Philip’s and Nathaniel’s part to take the next step.  We owe no small amount of gratitude for our faith history to them because they did.  Once Nathaniel finally had a personal encounter with Jesus, he was able to make this profession of faith, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!”

All of which leads me to ask this one question.  If we are going to bring people to Jesus, is it possible that we will discover what Philip did?  That many people will never discover Jesus unless they are given the chance to meet him in ways that have nothing to do with our traditional understanding of Christianity?

Just recently, I had a conversation with a young man who has been raised in the church but has come to reject pretty much everything the church asked him to believe, including Jesus and even the fact that there is a God.  It’s more than just an intellectual struggle for him.  You see, from those who first exposed him to Christianity, and even from those who represent themselves to him as Christian, he has experienced nothing but judgment and condemnation, as far back as he can remember.

Even when he was much younger, he didn’t behave in ways, and still doesn’t, that most Christians find acceptable.  Though the gospel says absolutely nothing about getting your life perfectly in order before you come to faith in Jesus, they led him to believe that, unless he straightened up and flew right, first, he wasn’t loved by God. 

Whether or not they intended that to be what he heard, that’s what he heard them say in tone, at least, if not in word.  It is true, isn’t it, that when we speak to others, there is what we are saying with our words and there is what we are saying with our tone of voice and attitude.  A loving word spoken in a condemning tone never comes off as loving.

The Jesus this young man was asked to believe in, because of the tone of voice used by those who told him about Jesus, was a Jesus who would not accept him the way he was and never could accept him.  That Jesus was condemning, judgmental, unforgiving. 

This young man would now claim to be an atheist, actually.  I’ve been asking him to consider the possibility that the Jesus he was first asked to believe in had more to do with religious tradition than the Jesus that Philip and Nathaniel first met.  I’ve been asking him to do what Philip asked of Nathaniel when Nathaniel was skeptical about Jesus being the Messiah and asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  “Come and see,” Philip said. 

What if the Jesus people need is not the Jesus our religious tradition tends to communicate?  What if what are saying to people with our words is, “God loves you, no matter what,” but, with our tone of voice and tone of tradition we are saying something more like, “He will love you more if you dress right, behave properly, especially at church, and respect our understanding of faith and behave with dignity toward our faith traditions first?”  Is that possible?

Just recently, a young lady told me of how difficult it was when she was at a church youth camp years ago and the counselor kept beating her over the head with words like these.  “If you don’t make a public profession of faith this week in front of these people you will go to hell.”  Was the counselor telling the gospel truth, or was the counselor enforcing a religious tradition that had nothing to do with the real Jesus, the Jesus that apparently even she never knew?  The Jesus of compassion and understanding and forgiveness and hope and the Jesus who came on behalf of his Father to say “I love you, just like you are!”  If we are going to be faithful to our calling to bring people to Jesus, we are going to have to be willing to let them come to him in ways that have very little to do with our traditional understanding of Christianity. 

As recorded in Luke’s gospel, Jesus had been invited to a party (Luke 14:1-14).  Jesus was a people watcher.  He saw a man with a terrible and potentially lethal physical affliction that caused his body to swell to abnormal proportions.  Jesus healed the man and used it as an opportunity to explain that helping people in need was more important than honoring religious tradition.  Then, he saw more.  He saw the most prominent guests, as was their tradition, taking the most prominent seats at the banquet table, leaving everyone else to settle for what was left over.

It was a banquet to which the host had been certain to invite prominent people because, as is still the custom today, it was the custom then to take care of people who could later do you a favor.  It was definitely a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” kind of world.  Jesus, this commoner from Nazareth, someone others might have accused of just having a middle class chip on his shoulder and not knowing that he would someday shoulder a cross, saw all of this.  Just as he had when he healed the man, he now used the seating chart to teach a lesson about how the Kingdom of God on earth should function.  “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (vv. 12-14, NIV).

Did I hear Jesus correctly?  Did he say that our primary mission should be to invite people to the Kingdom banquet on earth, the church, first, who will not be able to pay us back and then trust God to make up the difference when it matters most?  Did I hear Jesus saying that we should cut against the grain of tradition by making those people that our traditions would say are the least deserving our most honored guests at the banquet?  Do we really, truly, honestly trust God to pay us back whatever we need if we will be faithful to his mission, even if it destroys our tradition?

I need to have a very straightforward, gracious yet honest conversation with you this morning, please.  This is not going to be comfortable.  I know that.  I’m just asking you to listen and to pray before you shoot me.  It’s just that I don’t like talking about things that skirt the real issues.  It’s important to talk about the elephant in the room before he sits on you. 

I’ve heard some barking lately, and not from my backyard where Beau resides.  It’s been in God’s house, where we have invited this community to share God’s blessings with us.  A little background, first. 

As I’m sure many of you can appreciate personally, I grew up when going to church meant putting on what we traditionally called our Sunday best.  I grew up being taught that such things as chewing gum in church or talking during the sermon were simply unacceptable behaviors.  I grew up being taught that the only place to run was in the gym and the worst word you could ever say, especially at church, was something like, “Gosh!”  I was taught that the church house was where God abides.  Which is true, just not totally true.  It wasn’t until later that I discovered that this is my Father’s world and there is no place where God does not abide.

In the meantime, when you came into the church, you entered the presence of God as though you had not been in his presence anywhere else and therefore, the very buildings of the church took on a sacred meaning.  Today, I am absolutely certain that when Jesus first mentioned what we know of as the church, he didn’t have anything like this (gesturing toward the sanctuary) in mind.  I grew up believing that the only way a person could become a Christian was to walk an aisle, in a dignified manner and preferably at the youngest age possible, in a Baptist church, make a public profession of faith and then be baptized in a Baptist baptistery.  My view of the Kingdom of God was so narrow that I was in college before most all of my doubts that anyone other than a Baptist would go to heaven!  I am not overstating the case.  Most of us were raised the same way.

Over time, it became virtually impossible to distinguish between my middle-class social niceties and what was defined to me at church as Christian morality.  They simply melted together so that it got to the point that anyone who came to church without a suit on was looked upon as being disrespectful of the God we had gathered in our suits to worship. 

Over time, I’ve come to discover, among others, two very important things.  First, the kingdom of God is bigger than the Baptist church.  Our primary mission is not that of making more people Baptists but making more disciples for the Kingdom of God, Baptist or not.  I’ve also come to discover that, if we are going to be faithful to that Kingdom calling, we are going to increasingly find ourselves welcoming people into this church who have absolutely no understanding of or appreciation for our faith traditions.  Put simply, especially with regard to the community children and youth who are now crowding our buildings, they are not going to come into our buildings behaving like we were taught to behave when we first went to church. 

If we are not very, very careful this is what will happen.  From the pulpit or from their teacher they will hear words spoken about God’s unconditional love.  But, if we bark at them for behaving in ways that, to us, seem disrespectful of our faith traditions, the message they will get is, “You really aren’t welcome at the banquet because you can’t pay your own way.”

Certainly, this should be a place where boundaries are set so that children and youth learn basic human dignity and respect and where the safety of all is protected.  Beyond that, if we are not willing to suffer some injuries and insults to our traditions, our buildings and even our dignity, we will forfeit the privilege of hosting those people Jesus would call his honored guests.  You see, it is his church, not ours.  It is his banquet, not ours.  It is his table, not ours.  It is his feast, not ours.  We are the waiters at the table serving those Jesus calls his honored guests.

Please, join me in welcoming Jesus’ honored guests, even if they don’t behave the way we were taught to behave.  This is a good rule of thumb.  We should never bark at someone unless we have first introduced ourselves to them and extended to them the dignity of asking their name.  We should bark unto others as we would have them bark unto us. 

No matter what, we must never, ever forget that these children, these youth, these wonderful people, are Jesus’ honored guests.  Hear Jesus again, please.  “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.  But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Sandra Martinez, our Buckner Director of Community Ministries, presented her findings, based on a community needs assessment done over the last several months, to our church leadership yesterday at a retreat.  She discovered that the single greatest unmet need, as defined by the people of this community, is help with parenting skills.  The people of this community, sometimes seen in the behavior of these kids, are pleading for our help.  They don’t often know how to ask and don’t even know that we care to answer.  We’ll have to take the lead.

One among us has shown us the way.  Our own Sonny Phillips has served as a volunteer in our After School Ministry since its inception eighteen months ago.  Just this week, not knowing the subject of my message, he told me about an incident in the program recently.  Some of the After School kids were throwing gravel at each other on the playground and he had to step in and provide some discipline.  Even though he tried to be gentle, it bothered him.  Eighty-five percent of the children in this program come from homes at poverty level or below and live with all the things that go with that every day.  Sonny is trying to be sensitive.  He was bothered that he had to discipline the kids, for just being kids. 

Sonny said, “I even prayed about it.  I prayed, ‘Lord, either change them or change me.’”  I dare you to join me in praying that prayer with Sonny!  “Lord, change them or change me.”  Then, we should be prepared that God may not answer the way we first hoped.

Sonny said that the next day, four of those kids sought him out and said, “Mr. Phillips, we love you.”  One little boy in particular came to him and said, “My mommy made my daddy leave,” and started crying.  Who else would that little boy have told, had Sonny not proved his love over the past eighteen months? 

We must always remember this foundational truth of all that we are about.  They will know we are Christians, not by the size of our buildings or the pristine beauty of our stained glass.  They will know we are Christians by our love, both in word, in deed and in tone.  Getting people into the Kingdom banquet is going to demand that we make room for them at the table in ways that do not conform to our traditional understanding of Christianity.

Are we ready to send out invitations?  Invitations that read, “Come and see, the Jesus you never knew!”