A Christ-Centered Church, "Dilly dilly!"

Today, I am beginning a sermon series titled “Five Marks of the Church” based on Romans chapter 15 verses 1-6.  We read the text earlier, and within it, we see five marks of the church and of the individual Christian.  The text presents them in this order: 1) Outward focused on building up our neighbor.  2) Christ centered. 3) Deeply rooted in the Bible. 4) Living in harmony.  And 5) Doing everything for God’s glory.

This morning, I am going to concentrate on the most important of these marks because it forms the foundation of all that is to come.  It forms the foundation of the church itself.  It is the one mark that is above all other marks: a church must be Christ centered.

Now, what does Christ centered mean?  Let me begin answering this question by turning to those sages of wisdom in advertizing: Bud Light.  For those of you who have heard about or who heard my Christmas Eve sermon, you know that I raised an empty bottle of Bud Light and spoke of the first “Dilly Dilly” commercial.  During that snippet of the sermon, I discovered that while it is nearly impossible to get Lutherans to say “Amen” in a sermon, some will gladly say, “Dilly Dilly!”  It was quite the experience.  But, the thing is, Bud Light did not stop with one commercial, there have been several others that have been done for this campaign, and one of them is very pertinent to the discussion of what it means to be Christ centered.  The commercial that I am speaking of is the one titled, “Wizard.”  How many of you have seen it?

This commercial begins in the king’s throne room.  A large crowd has gathered to watch a wizard perform his magic.  The wizard points his staff at a chair, and poof!, the chair becomes a case of Bud Light!

The king responds, “Well done, wizard!  You are a true friend of the crown!” And holding up his bottle of Bud Light, the king says, “Dilly, dilly!”

The wizard bows as the rest of the crowd raises their bottles and resoundingly responds, “Dilly dilly!”

The wizard then says, “What would you have me do now, your majesty?”

The queen points her finger, and the king says, “Turn that into Bud Light.”

The wizard says, “Okay,” as he points his staff at a candle stand.

Poof!  The crowd gasps as it turns into several stacked cases of Bud Light with a single bottle on top.

The king then says, “Now, turn that statue into Bud Light!”

The wizard then looks at the king and says, “You know, your highness, I can do other things.  I can put a curse on your enemies.  I can make you immortal!”

The king looks at his queen for just a second and then responds, “Yeah, no, just the Bud Light thing.”

The wizard, with a bit of a frustrated look, nods his head, points his staff, and the statue turns into a bunch of cases of Bud Light.

A member of the crowd then raises his bottle and says, “Dilly dilly!”

And everyone else says, “Dilly dilly!!”

When I first saw this commercial, I laughed rather heartily and loudly!  Everyone knows, and I mean everyone knows that the power to put a curse on one’s enemies or to grant immortality is tremendously better than beer!  Everyone get that.  Everyone understands that.  And yet, yet, this king is so consumed and focused on Bud Light, that he would give up immortality to see a statue turned into his favorite beer.  It makes for brilliant advertizing!!

And it makes for brilliant advertizing because it picks up on something in human nature–our own willingness to settle for far less and desire things that are of far less value.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I would like to use the example of the church to begin with.  Throughout my years, I have heard numerous reasons that people have given to invite people to come to church.  I have heard numerous reasons for the church to want to get members.  Some of them are good.  Some, not so much.

Here’s one of the not so much ones: the church needs to get members to keep the lights on and the bills paid.  That’s really not a good reason to have people join the church–that’s simply about survival, but there are congregations that actually function with this mentality.

Some folks invite people to come to church to hear a particular pastor.  “Our pastor preaches fantastic sermons, you should come and hear him or her!”  This is an okay reason, but in the long run, we pastors will always disappoint.  We’re human.  We mess up.  We retire.  We leave for other congregations.  Having a church centered on a pastor is really not the best of ideas. Because as one pastor said in a sermon, “We are not here to follow the messenger, we are here to follow the message.”

Here’s a better reason: you should join a church because the church provides a place of community.  We are social creatures, there is no doubt about that.  We need one another as well as needing to be individuals.  The church is a place where you can find community.  Not a bad thing.

Here’s another good reason: you should join a church because you can work together with others for justice and peace.  The world is full of injustice.  The world is full of division and hatred.  The church provides an avenue where people can come together to challenge the status quo and show a different way of living.  That’s a good thing!

Here’s a final one: you should go to church because you will be encouraged to be a better person.  You will be taught right and wrong.  You will be given examples of people who lived a good life, and you will receive encouragement to go and do likewise.

Now, these are just a few reasons, and the list is not exhaustive.  Most of these things are good–except a couple, and there is nothing wrong with such things.  But let me now offer you the most important reason for coming to church.  Let me now offer you the most important thing that the church offers, and let’s see how it compares with the things that I have just listed.  The church is here to bring people Jesus.  The church is here to give people the Gospel–the Good news of what Jesus has done for them in His death and resurrection–so that Jesus may come into their hearts and they may be filled with the Spirit of God.

How does that compare with all of those other things?  Here, in this hand, you have all of those things, and here in this other hand, you have Jesus Himself, in all of His glory, in all His divinity.  You have Jesus who loved you with an unimaginable love; who stretched out His arms and died for you when you least deserved it.  You have the God who took your sin upon himself; who took your place on the cross; who suffered what you should have suffered; and who gave you what He earned–eternal life; the endless love of the Heavenly Father; the knowledge that you no longer have to look to any other thing for your value and self-worth.  You have Jesus who shines light into the darkness; who lives in you and clothes you with Himself; who gives you the everlasting promises that no matter what may befall you–no matter what trial you may undergo, He is waiting to bring you through it and transform whatever wrong into goodness and light.  Can anything else compare?  Can anything else even come close?  Bud Light or immortality; is there even a choice?  Jesus or all that other stuff, is there even a choice?

The greatest and most important mark of any church is that it is Christ centered.  Everything that church does points to Jesus.  Everything that occurs is done with the mind set of helping others see who Jesus is and what Jesus has done for the world because Jesus is the greatest treasure that we could ever have.

But, there is a catch of sorts.  I was listening to a sermon by a pastor in Austin, TX by the name of Matt Carter.  I was struck by something he said in that sermon.  He said, “We will never be a Christ centered church until we are full of Christ centered people.  We will never be a Christ centered church until Jesus is all of our first love.”  When I heard that statement, I knew it was the truth.  I knew that if the Church is to be Christ centered, its pastor must be Christ-centered and its people must be Christ centered.  We must have Christ as our first love.  We must have experienced His grace and His mercy in our lives.  We must have found ourselves at the foot of the cross thanking Him for what He has done for us by dying for us and making us right with God the Father.  We must have found the true treasure of Jesus and have had Him claim us as His own.

Have you been grasped by the love of Jesus?  Does He sit enthroned in your heart?  Have you found the endless love, peace, and joy that He can bring?  Today, Jesus looks at you and says, “I will give myself to you.  I will pour myself into you and into your heart.  I will never let you down.”  Will we open our hearts to him, or will we say, “Yeah, no, just the Bud Light thing.  Yeah, no, just the worldly thing.  Yeah, no just the community thing.  Yeah, no just the whatever thing.”?  If we are to be a Christ centered Church, let us be Christ centered people and with the great hymn writer, let us also sing:

Give me Jesus.
Give me Jesus.
You can have all of the rest.
Give me Jesus.  Amen.

Merry Christmas, Dilly Dilly!!

I’m going to start off this sermon with a little bit of a disclaimer: I don’t watch much television anymore.  Hardly any at all, in fact.  That’s an important bit of information to understand as I lead into my next point.

A few months ago, I started seeing some folks on my Facebook feed posting all sorts of things followed by the words, “Dilly dilly.”  “The Houston Astros won the World Series!  Dilly dilly!”  “Jose Altuve won the MVP! Dilly dilly!”  I’m like, “What is this dilly dilly stuff?”  And I was too embarrassed to say anything either.

Then one day, as I was browsing an internet blog that I frequent called Intellectual Takeout, I saw an article titled, “Bud Light's 'Dilly Dilly' Commercial is Ingenious.”  Well, that explained why I didn’t know what was going on.  No television.  But there was a link to the commercial on YouTube, so I watched it.  Now, I am curious.  How many of you have seen the “Dilly Dilly” Bud Light commercial?

Several.  Cool.  For those of you who were like me and clueless, let me give you a brief description. 

        The scene opens in a castle where a banquet is taking place.  A guy walks up to the king and puts a six pack of Bud Light on the table in front of the king.  The King says, “Sir Jeremy, you are a true friend of the crown. Dilly dilly.” 

Everyone else in the room raises a bottle of Bud Light and says, “Dilly dilly.”

Then a lady walks up to the king and places a 20 pack of Bud Light on the table.  The king says, “Madam Susan, you are an even truer friend of the crown.  Dilly dilly.”  The rest of the crowd raises their bottles and says, “Dilly dilly.”

The next person in line walks up and with gusto places this capped wine bottle in front of the king.  The music stops.  The king quizzically says, “What is this?”

The guy responds, “This is a spiced honey mead wine that I have really been into lately.”  There is a slight pause until the guy shakes his head with a little smile and says, “So...dilly dilly?”

The king instead looks at the guy and says, “Please follow Sir Brad. He is going to give you a tour of the Pit of Misery.”

The guy looks at the king and says, “I’m sorry, what?” But before anything else can be said, one of the party guests yells out, “Pit of misery.  Dilly dilly.”  And everyone else says, “Dilly dilly!”

Then there is the ending credits where Bud Light is advertised.

Now, some of you might just be wondering what a beer commercial might have to do with Christmas and the arrival of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on earth.  The two things seem to be miles upon miles apart and have nothing to do with one another.

But let me read to you an excerpt from the article that Intellectual Takeout posted:

When I first saw this, I laughed so hard to the point of nearly crying. This one ad brilliantly calls out the snobbery of craft brew culture and all the pomp that goes with it. Nowhere does it make a direct pitch for Bud Light. It just says exactly what we think but never say: Bud Light is a people’s beer, and that’s just fine because now the people rule.
So embedded in this commercial is a bit of the story [that]...  No longer would the elite of the past determine the tastes of the kingdom and the way resources would be used. There would be mass production for the masses of people. It was a revolution in history, and one that would never stop.
And from a marketing point of view, this commercial deals directly with Bud Light’s real competition in the craft brew industry, which is making inroads by the day. Bud Light obviously cannot claim to have a better product. And guess what? Everyone knows that. Everyone knows what a Bud Light is: it is a beer-like drink that is watery but let’s you drink a six pack in an evening without any great disaster the next day. Sorry snobs, but the people like this feature.
...If you are in the know, you are starting to get the sense of a whole world in which the tastes and habits of regular people have become the prevailing cultural sense. No more ... top-down cultural impositions.

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/bud-lights-dilly-dilly-commercial-ingenious

Now, I’m not advocating that it is perfectly okay to go home and down a six pack of Bud Light.  Please don’t take that away from this sermon–unless maybe you are a Bud Light representative and would like to thank me for advertising your beer and would like to pay me for it.  No. Just joking.  JUST JOKING!!!  What I am trying to call your attention to is the idea the last thought expressed by the author of this article.  No more top-down cultural impositions.  No more imposing one’s will by power or force.  No more living a life of fear of punishment for failing to obey the ruler of the land.

You see, the fact of the matter of Christmas is that God could have chosen to come to earth with all sorts of power and might.  God could have chosen to come to earth being born to a king enthroned in power and wealth and majesty.  Jesus could have been born and raised in such an environment.  He could have become powerful beyond any king ever known.  He could have wielded the power of God from His thone, and, of course, He could have been very, very good.  He could have fed His people and ensured that no one ever be touched by hunger.  He could have healed His people from all disease and sickness.  He could have brought peace and prosperity to His entire realm with His godly wisdom.  But He also would have had to institute swift and immediate justice.  He would have had to use His power to impose strict punishment upon those who failed to obey His commands.  He would have had to harshly deal with those who stole or murdered.  He would have had to swiftly uphold His statutes and laws lest someone try to take advantage of Him.  He would have had to protect His people and unleash His power upon their enemies, striking them dead or rendering them helpless with a simple word.  While everyone would love this king’s power for good, they would have feared His power and punishment against those who wronged Him.  They would greatly love, but also greatly fear His reprisal for their failure.  This is what happens when you have a top down imposition of culture.  And while God does want us to obey His commands, He does not want us to do so in fear.

And so, instead of coming to earth as the baby of a king, God came to earth as the baby of an ordinary young woman engaged to an ordinary man.  God did not arrive in a castle but instead in a stable.  He did not arrive cuddled in warm blankets by a roaring fireplace, but He was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger surrounded by warm hay.  His birth announcement was not given by state employees to the nobility, but was given by angels on a hill side to common shepherds.  God’s arrival on earth was not meant to impose fear, but to cause wonder–a wonder that would begin opening our hearts so that eventually we may see God’s great love for us.

And that love would be most visible, not in Jesus’ healing or teaching or providing food.  That love would be most visible on the cross when He died for our sins.  For this is truly how our fear of God is taken away.  When you break the law, you deserve punishment; you deserve justice.  And each and every one of us has broken God’s law–we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.  We have not loved God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.  We have pursued other idols; other desires and not kept God in His proper place.  We have tried to justify ourselves and our actions saying that circumstances made us act a certain way or that other people caused us to fall into temptation.  God’s anger burns hot against us because of these things.  But Jesus, on our behalf says to the Father, “I will pay for what they have done.  I will bear the cost of their sins.”

It’s not such a strange thought.  I mean, what parent whose child accidentally breaks something in the store will have the store manager call the police to arrest the child for his or her carelessness?  No parent that I know of.  Most of us pay for the item that our child broke even though we were innocent.  We paid our child’s debt because we love our child.  The question becomes, does that child live in thankfulness for what the parent has done, or does the child continue with his or her reckless behavior?

You see, for us who believe in Jesus Christ, we look up at the cross, and we see what Jesus is doing for us.  We see how He is dying for our sin; for the sin of the world.  We understand that we are the ones who should be hanging there, and our hearts melt.  Our hearts break with sadness for our sin, but then they are filled with wonder and admiration for the One who would give Himself for us.  And we seek to put an end to our reckless behavior.  We seek to put an end to our chasing after our idols.  We seek to love and honor our King Jesus because instead of sitting in a throne in a castle, He has become enthroned in our hearts.  We seek to follow His will and His law not because of fear of a top down punishment, but because we love Him so much for what He did that we do not want to dishonor Him and His sacrifice. 

This love–this grace, is for the whole world.  It’s for kings and shepherds.  It’s for rich and poor.  It’s for parents and children.  It’s for Republicans and Democrats.  It’s for craft beer drinkers and Bud Light drinkers.  It’s for you and for me.  This love begins being poured out on this night as we welcome baby Jesus in the town of Bethlehem.  Let us rejoice that our Savior has come.  I am awful tempted to end this sermon with “Dilly dilly!”, but instead I’ll say, “Merry Christmas and Amen.”