Underground Movement

Scripture: 1 Peter 1.17-23; Luke 24.13-35;


You are members of an underground movement. You are the original counter-culture. And you are the only counter-culture the really matters. What am I talking about? The Apostle Peter writes to the church as “exiles of the Dispersion” in the Mediterranean Rim. The first exiles of Dispersion were Jews who journeyed to countries outside their ancestral Palestine. They settled in places like Rome, Athens, Ephesus and became known as Jews of the Dispersion. Peter writes to Jewish converts and to Gentile followers of Christ as a Dispersion. Later he tells them that during their “time of exile” they should live in reverent fear.

They should fear God, not the culture or the country in which they are living. An important point. They should fear God who will someday return them to the Promised Land. This second Promised Land is not Palestine or Zion, but the Heavenly Zion, the New Jerusalem. Peter is reminding them of who they are in Christ. You are exiles in a foreign land. You are Salt and Light in a bland and dreary world. You are to live in the world but be not of the world. You are underground agents of God’s Kingdom in the kingdom of this world dominated by the ruler of this world, who is the Devil.

Upon the recent death of Pope John Paul II there has been much remembering and appraising of his value as a Pope and a person. Much thanksgiving. One of the historic things that this Pope accomplished is his quiet challenging of one of the twentieth century’s biggest blights upon humankind, atheistic Communism. Pope John Paul is credited by all who really know best with really starting the revolution that would bring down the Wall in Berlin and Communism in Poland and the whole Eastern Bloc with his visits to Poland after becoming Pope. This Polish Pope reminded his countrymen of who they really are in contrast to who the Communists had been telling them they were for the past seventy years. Pope John Paul told them that above all, they belonged to God, no matter what their militant atheistic leaders said. And the Pope’s words became Lech Walesa’s words that ignited a peaceful revolution in Gdansk and then the world.

Church don’t you know we are the hope of the world? We are a movement that changes lives, changes cultures, changes the very foundations of society. John Wesley and the early Methodists knew this. They were a movement. They brought the power of the Word of God in freshness and confidence to a people hungry for change. And since then the Methodist Church has always been this unique combination of an Evangelical/Confessional Church and a Sacramental Church. There is no other branch of the Body of Christ in the world quite like it. We are evangelical because we know lives don’t change without the transforming power of the Word and Spirit of God. And people can’t believe what they haven’t heard. We are Sacramental in that we see all of life as sacred. All that is in the creation is good and has been hallowed by the Creator for us to enjoy and serve Him in. Everywhere we go is holy ground.

And yet this Creation, this world has been usurped by Evil powers. People are more and more falling away from the truth of God and living a lie. We are losing our spiritual and moral center. Community is breaking down.

Robert Putnam reports, as does Barna and Pew and virtually every reputed source that tracks such things, that our community life has become significantly weaker on virtually all fronts. Putnam notes that we are becoming a more secular country than we were twenty or thirty years ago. “The country is becoming ever more clearly divided into two groups –the devoutly observant and the entirely unchurched.” What’s more, all the good things in community life that the church used to be the locus for are suffering as well. Americans volunteer less, give less, visit less, join less, serve less. We don’t get together and play cards with friends as much, break bread together as much, visit as much. “Over the course of the 1990’s the average American came to spend nearly 15 percent more time on child care or pet care and roughly 5-7 percent more time each on personal grooming, entertainment, sleep, exercise, and transportation.” By contrast, Barna reports, “the largest changes of all involve time spent at worship and visiting with friends, both of which fell by more than 20 percent.”

Friends these are not the kind of changes that make for community. This evidence, however, should tell us that the time is now for an underground movement. The time is now for a revolution of habits, what Tocqueville once called, “the habits of the heart.”

If you listened carefully to what Putnam reported changed in the last 15 years, you notice that largely we spend more time on ourselves and less time with and for others. It’s all about Me. Only, as a follower of Jesus, you know and I know that it’s not about Me. For the Church to become an Underground, counter-cultural movement once again we must be able to speak the language of the culture but bring a totally different message. We must tell them – It’s not about Me, It’s not about Self. It’s about loving God and loving our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. It’s about Christ and His kingdom. It’s about living as a community of faith, a new people formed for Him.

There’s a scene from that epic cultural movie The Godfather II in which Michael Corleone is in Havana, Cuba. And he’s riding in a car through the streets and witnesses a political insurgent blow himself up rather than submit to questioning by the police. Michael Corleone concludes that if the insurgents are willing to die for what they believe, then they can win.

Another kind of revolutionary once put it this way, “If a grain of wheat falls to the ground dies, it will produce much fruit.”

If we really want a community, if we really want a life we are proud to live, it’s gonna take some effort. It’s gonna take sacrifice. We will have to die to some old and current ways of living. It costs something to follow Jesus.
But I would also ask you to consider this: What will it cost us, and our children, and our communities if we don’t give us ourselves completely to this underground, countercultural movement that is the Church of Jesus Christ?