Be honest. We all have an eccentric aunt, crazy uncle or weird cousin in the family (or we ARE that person!). You know the type: they say weird, off-the-wall things and do strange stuff. They are embarrassing to us and we don’t want people to judge our entire family by this strange one. We’d like to keep these embarrassing relatives in the back room when company comes over, but sometimes they pop their heads out and start talking!

 

There are all kinds of Baptists in the world, and they don’t all speak for me. When someone tries to pin on me and my church the un-Christ-like speech or behavior of some other group, I think I’ll start explaining it this way—I’ll call it “the nutty relative theory.” A pastor in Kansas brags that he hates homosexual persons. The press reports that he is a Baptist minister. Another spokesman is on some TV talk show and uses hate speech to describe Muslims. The graphic at the bottom of the screen identifies this person as a Baptist. Lots of folks are Baptist. But they don’t speak for me. 

 

Someone once said that a baseball team is never as good as they look during a winning streak but never as bad as they look during a losing streak. I’d like to suggest that Baptists aren’t as great as our most obnoxious bragging, nor as bad as our worst detractors make out. Let me show you what I mean. At our best, Baptists are LIBERTY-LOVING. In last week’s sermon we talked about Walter Shurden’s book, The Baptist Identity, in which he describes “four fragile freedoms” that Baptists have championed: Bible freedom, soul freedom, church freedom and religious freedom. That last one is what we’re looking at now. Note the references in vv. 18-19 to liberty, freedom and casting off the oppressive weight of authorities imposing religious choices onto others.

 

Thomas Helwys, one of the founders of the Baptist movement 400 years ago, wrote a document defending the religious rights of Muslims to believe as they chose. Think about it. If you want freedom for your self and your kind, but not for others, it’s not really freedom. It’s big, fat, ugly selfishness. Jesus preached and lived what any Baptist knows: liberty is not a right to be earned, nor an inconvenience to be tolerated. It is a gift from God to all people.

 

Jesus cared about the total person. It was all one fabric to him. The Luke 4 passage was Jesus’ inaugural sermon, launching his public ministry. In vv. 18-19, Jesus quoted from Isaiah (chs. 58 and 61). Jesus announced that we are to “bring good news to the poor.” And poverty is not only about a lack of money; it’s about a lack of choices in life. People can be poor regarding money, regarding life choices, regarding eternal hope. With Christ, we are to “let the oppressed go free…”. The oppressed are the bruised and broken lives, those battered by life. It’s interesting that the same Greek word is used for “release” and “free” in v. 18, and it has the dual usage of liberating slaves and forgiving sins. Do you see? Setting people free is Jesus’ theme. Jesus is interested in every area of life.

One of the reasons we scheduled our ShareFest to occur yesterday was that we wanted to underline the missional focus of our church during this 400^th anniversary of Baptists. We care about the total person. Our church partners with Habitat, too, because we want affordable housing in this world, just as we want people to know about the eternal home with God. We offer community meals, summer feeding programs, a Thanksgiving dinner, benevolence offerings and partnering with South Elementary School, Kenya, Dominican Republic, Lithuania —all because we believe we are in the grace-sharing, Jesus-setting-free business. Jesus is our liberator!

 

At our best, Baptists are ECUMENICAL. We believe that the Spirit of God is working in other movements, other churches, other denominations. I heard a man once say (teasing, of course), “I don’t think only Baptists are going to heaven. I think once we get there, God will turn us all into Baptists!” But healthy Baptists don’t believe that. Regarding other Christians, let me just tell you that I have grown in my faith, I’m a lot more humble about other denominations. We have much more in common than we have that divides. We have things we can learn from them. God’s truth is sprinkled throughout the world.

 

Once when I was in Washington, D.C., I saw an ad in the newspaper. The First Baptist Church of D.C. announced it was “Ecumenical in perspective with a Baptist tradition.” Not bad! When I was in Vail, Colorado last year, we were hiking and came across a unique church and even more unique sign outside: each Sunday morning hour listed a different denomination’s services: Presbyterians, 8:00am, Baptist, 9:30am, Lutheran, 11:30am (notice they block out two hours for Baptists!), Catholic, 5:30pm. They even list a phone number if you’re interested in Jewish services!

 

Nazareth, the city where Jesus’ Luke 4 sermon happened, was a place with many Jews, but many non-Jews, too. You can imagine how shocking Jesus’ words were after he read the scripture from Isaiah. He told stories of how God’s grace is not bottled up and limited to our kind of people (vv. 25ff). He told about God working with “those people over there whose skin is different or who use a different language or who worship differently than we do.” And telling those stories nearly got Jesus killed right there, at the beginning of his ministry. Because there’s something in us that wants to believe God likes us better than he likes other folks.

 

In the year 1569, the Dutch Anabaptist Dirk Willems was arrested for his faith (Anabaptists were the forerunners of the Baptist movement). Willems was being hounded by authorities because he had come to accept believers’ baptism and broken with the state church. He was running across a frozen lake. He made it across but the policeman that was chasing him fell through the ice. Willems, being a Christian, went back and rescued the man. What do you suppose happened next? They arrested Dirk Willems, tried him for heresy and he was tortured and burnt alive for his faith! I believe this story captures the essence of being Baptist. It shows our love for liberty, our love for others, and our regard for people who differ from us. And it shows we are about GIVING OURSELVES AWAY, not GETTING our own way. Jesus followers, with Baptist flavoring!