As many of you noted, the front page newspaper article last weekend made clear that some local unbelievers are very unhappy about the influence that our church is having in the community. We are grateful that we are having enough influence to be noticed, and we are equally grateful that our opponents have been judicially blinded so that they do not understand the nature of our influence. They worship the god of politics, and so they think that we love that idol too.
At the same time, we are concerned that we do not fall into the same trap. Politics will be saved, but politics is no savior. It is true that members of our congregation do hold political office, and they want to honor God there, but this only has happened for the same reason that you run into kirkers at Les Schwab or WalMart.
We are culturally engaged, but never forget the principal weapons of that engagement. We are seeking to transform our community by worshipping God rightly on the Lord’s Day, a day of rest and gladness. By God’s grace, we will transform our community through Sabbath observance. But we still have a long way to go here—some of us still disregard the obligations of the Sabbath. Others honor it, but it is an impotent honor; they are still concerned about what we can’t do on this day, rather than on what we get to do. Reject Sabbath crankiness. Why? Because it is inconsistent with the festival.
Secondly, we want to transform our community by truly loving our wives, genuinely respecting our husbands, sacrificing for our children—all done in gladness and humility. Reject all arid formalism in catechism and education. Your little ones need breast milk, not doctrinal grape nuts without any milk at all.
Third, we want to transform our community by learning and singing the psalms. The history of the church is replete with stories about the culture-transforming power of the psalms. We are not pursuing these psalms in order to develop a weird sectarian quirk. We know that these Stinger missiles are a little more complicated to operate than the rocks and sticks we used to throw. But there is a reason for that.