The Rev. Dr. Harold Englund
(Guest Preacher)
First Presbyterian Church of Santa Barbara
April 20, 2008
“PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION” IPeter2:2-17
I have borrowed for my sermon title, the title of a great piece of music by Mussorgsky, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” which the composer wrote to celebrate the paintings of his friend , Victor Hartman.
In our lesson from I Peter, I find pictures of a Christian. Some of us put favorite pictures on our refrigerator door, or on a bedroom wall. Here are pictures of us, taken from this lovely letter written by the Apostle Peter, with the help of Silas, written to Gentile Christians beginning to feel the sting of state persecution.
Peter is pastoral, understanding, tender, encouraging. It’s easy to feel he is writing to us!
1. The first picture is that of a baby nursing at its mother’s breast. “Be like newborn babies, always thirsting for the pure spiritual milk (of God’s Word), so that by drinking it you may grow up and be saved.”
The picture of God’s care for us as like that of a nursing mother is found in both testaments. Paul thinks of himself as the nurse who cares for the infant Christians at Thessalonica. Again, as feeding the Corinthians with milk for they are not yet able to handle meat. Now, Peter urges Christians under state pressure to yearn (!) for the pure milk of God’s Word.
Some time ago, the news carried a story of a young mother on a crowded plane with a very small baby. She sat next to the window. After take-off, the infant began crying, and she modestly undertook to nurse it. The man next to her was offended, and called the stewardess to stop this indecency! The stewardess tried to explain that tiny babies did not get hungry by airplane schedules, but to no avail. When she told him he could move, he said the plane was full.
Then a man about three rows back offered to exchange seats with the critic. They switched. And the girl’s new fellow-passenger said, “My dear, you just take care of that baby. I’m a father and a grandfather — and a dairyman — and I know all about it.”
Rembrandt thought such a scene tender and moving, and he gave us Mary nursing the baby Jesus, one of his most popular paintings.
Our Christian life is supported, kept alive, by our feeding on the Word of God. This is especially true when times are difficult for Christians. No, we do not fear a Nero. But in Christian heartlands, such as Germany, France, England, Scotland, the church is being smothered by secularity. Only a tiny percentage of the population worships in church on Sunday. And church attendance is declining also in America.
To be a real Christian in a social minority, we need to be nurtured by our life-giving stories of our founding salvation events, by the Gospel! So, let the first picture of us be symbolized by the baby in the arms of its nursing mother. And if you are in your “second childhood,” the great Scripture passages become even more precious. Take time to sit back and read them, and hear them at the level of the heart.
2. The second picture is that of a great building for worship rising at a building site. “Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building God’s spiritual temple.” Christ, the great cornerstone, is firmly in place. The rest of us are living stones built on him.
But pity the lone, individual stone lying on the ground unused. People step around it, trying not to trip on it. But the destiny of stones is to become part of the building.
Most of us knew of individuals who never become part of Christ’s church. They can give you reasons. But the result is the same: their potential is never realized. We need one another. We need to live in the faith community. We need to be nourished by life together in the church. And we need the solid foundation of Christ himself, the great Cornerstone!
Y our pastors and elders this weekend are meeting to study ways by which this congregation can include friends and neighbors in Santa Barbara in the life of First Presbyterian Church. Make sure your welcome is “felt and tellt” so the spiritual building can continue to form!
3. Now the third picture. It comes to us with an abrupt, “But you!” In spite of a frowning Emperor Nero, in spite of surrounding indifference and even occasional scorn, remember who you are! “You are a chosen people, the Great King’s priests, a holy company, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts God who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” This picture of Christians at work all over the world sees them as active, mature, engaged, sharing the faith, serving the world.
I don’t know how to describe this picture. Perhaps it is just a map of the world, with every continent and island quivering, vibrating, with life, with love, with joyous achievement, with incessant struggle against all that is dehumanizing and cruel. For, unlike Peter’s day, today the church is everywhere!
It has been my joy as a pastor to serve the church in many lands — to lead missionary retreats in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and to worship with God’s people in Scotland, in England, in Canada, in the Middle East, and South Africa, and with military chaplains from North Africa and Europe and Alaska.
Ours is a vast, international Christian family! What a picture. But let me focus it a bit. Come with me to the island of Jamaica, in the Caribbean Sea. Up in the mountains, in a village called Brownstown, is a lovely church. My wife’s uncle, the Rev. Jack Bee, from England, became the pastor of that church many years ago. Tourists never get up to Brownstown.
During his years there, Uncle Jack helped to start the Union Theological Seminary at Kingston, the capital, so that young pastors from all over the Caribbean could be trained there. He chaired the Board and raised funds to establish it. Uncle Jack served his church there for 50 years! And he is buried on the church’s grounds.
Near his grave is that of his predecessor, another pastor from England who served there for 50 years. And to one side is the grave of the founding pastor, also from England, who served that church for 50 years. Three pastors — over 150 years! That’s a long obedience in one direction!
So our third picture, that of the whole world, should have little inset pictures, all along the edge, each telling a story of what Peter calls “God’s own people, called out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The Church being itself, fulfilling its divinely-given purpose. And you here in Santa Barbara are part of that picture!
4. Now the fourth picture. And this one is a surprise. Peter describes Christians as “strangers and refugees in the world.” We see a sight so familiar in our time: refugees straggling out in a long line, moving slowly toward some unseen destination. What is this picture all about?
The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” State persecution made our Christian sisters and brothers look forward to their destination with Christ. But we have the same destination too. And this last picture reminds us of that expectation.
But I sometimes ask myself, “Will I arrive in Christ’s presence with all my assigned homework completed?” Was there some purpose I was put on earth to do that is not yet done? Something in God’s plan I have not yet finished? Some old broken relationship still un-repaired? Some apology not offered? Some risk not ventured?
Or, to put it another way? Have I thought about leaving a footprint on the trail for those who follow me? Some letters to my grandchildren? Or some little fund that could help young people in my church attend a Christian summer camp? A fertile imagination can come up with a variety of footprints! Why not give it some thought?
“Pictures at an exhibition!” Sometimes, they come in sequence. And sometimes they are all true at the same time. Peter, you have helped us all — how we began this Christian journey, what we’re about, and whither we’re bound. Thank you! And, thanks be to God! Amen!