Final Sermon in Afghanistan

So yesterday was my closing sermon for Chapel NeXt. I have been blessed this year with God's powerful Presence each time I have spoken and I do not doubt that any success I have had ministering in this service has been wholly because of Him. The worship team has always set the table beautifully, making it hard NOT to preach once I take the podium. It was an emotional sermon for me, as it expresses the great love I have felt for our warriors here in Afghanistan, just as Paul expressed that love for the Thessalonians in his ministry. There will be some who might be a bit offended with how I treat rather roughly both television ministers and church pastors in this message. I would apologize, but I believe the critiques are accurate, to a degree. Own them, fix them, move on. I love the pastors at home with whom I work, but sometimes I see a degree of distance between them and the real world that belies a cloistering against which Jesus spoke when he derided the Pharisees. I, too, am a church pastor at home and have to watch this for myself. So, without apology, here is the text, with outline, of the message I gave on Sunday, 31 January, 2010, at Chapel NeXt in Bagram, Afghanistan.

1 Thess. 2:6-12/19,20 - We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.
As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, 7 but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. 8 We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. 9 Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.
10 You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. 11 For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, 12 encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.
19 For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? 20 Indeed, you are our glory and joy.

YOUR CHAPLAINS / PASTORS

It is my great privilege today to share with you a parting sermon. However, what God has given me today, I believe, is not necessarily to speak to each of you, but rather to our chaplains. Since I am leaving in a week, I believe I can pass along some words both of encouragement and of praise for the workers in the field who continue to toil for you, bearing the same load, living in the same conditions, pouring themselves out for your good. I can do this because I will not be here to reap the benefits and, because of their humility, they will never brag on themselves.

I. OUR LOVE
Paul has given us in this passage perhaps some of the most beautiful statements about pastoring in all of Scripture. He speaks of HIS LOVE, HIS EXAMPLE and HIS GLORY. Perhaps you already know this about your chaplains, or maybe you believe this about your pastors at home. Maybe you’re new to the faith – or maybe God is calling you to it today – and you need to know about why we do what we do as pastors and chaplains.
I have had many people say, usually in the midst of dealing with a tragic event: “I could never do what you do.” I say this to each of you, as well, for we are all gifted differently, and many of those gifts are lauded the rest of the year. But I want today to offer praise to the men and women to whom have been given the awesome and fearful calling of pastoring, for James has warned us: “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” (James 3:1) Paul has also taught that Jesus gave leadership to the Church: “It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.” (Eph. 4:11) Note that some were called to be “pastors AND teachers.” These are inseparable callings. One cannot be one without the other.

But the calling is evident in the leadership you have been given when you see these characteristics Paul has listed in the pastors and teachers who lead you into the Spiritual Battle. If these are not evident in them, I would dare say you ought not to go into battle with such a one. Indeed, in a society where the T.V. preacher is thought to be the apex of the pastoral profession, Paul calls us to the reality that it is not the fiery, well-spoken, good-looking orator that grows the Christian, but the pastor – the one who nurtures and cares for them at the personal, individual level that forges the mature, healthy adult believer.

a. Like a Mother, caring for her little children
Paul points out about his apostolic cadre that they “were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children.” This sounds a little odd, especially when you consider the implications of what he means by “mothering” the Thessalonians.
i. Nurse-maid, “pure spiritual milk”
The technical terms that Paul uses here, “Gentle” and “Mother”, are terms that evoke a patient, nurturing care with a depth of love that is best seen in the example of the mother, literally nursing her child. In fact, one of the translations renders this passage as “a mother feeds her infants.” It’s a bit odd in our cultural context to think of the pastoral relationship in terms of nursing, but in a culture such as his own, where mothers openly nursed their babes, the image is clear.

There is a beauty and a tenderness in the mother-infant relationships that Paul clearly feels in his heart for the new converts at Thessalonica. He fed them “pure, spiritual milk.” Peter puts it thus: “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.” What image better carries the impact of that pastoral heart than this? Brothers and sisters, if you are following a pastor for his or her charisma, rethink your understanding of spiritual leadership. It is the gentle, soft-spoken man or woman of God who gives you the Word of God in daily portions – the one with whom you have a personal relationship – that helps you attain the image of God found in Christ Jesus our Lord.
ii. Protection
What else is a mother but a protector of that infant? There is no bottle-feeding of some substitute milk that will do. There is no predator that can swoop in on that child and steal it from its mother’s arms without a fight to the death by a mother. When Solomon judged between the two women who each claimed the child was her own, he knew that the TRUE mother would sooner give up her child than see it split in two. He rightly judged that the mother who was quick to agree to kill the child was not the true mother. Paul was a protector of his flock, guarding them against spiritual apostasy and all falsehood.
iii. Nurture in our arms
The mother and baby bond with an indissoluble union during the nursing phase of infancy. The one who has shared the milk of the Word of God with the new-born Christian cradles the very soul of that believer in their arms with a nurturing care that provides security, comfort and assurance no other can match. The beauty of God’s design in nature is exhibited with this image in a way that I believe no other can match. Paul has chosen this image specifically to convey what I believe is in the heart of every good chaplain – they have a love for you, individually, that makes it quite painful when we move on to the next ministry, the next unit, or to retirement.

These chaplains here have exhibited that nurturing care for each of you. Brothers and sisters, if your pastor or chaplain is not caring for you in such a way, beware. But it is your unit chaplain, and the chaplains who pastor here, who are growing you in ways that no Billy Graham, Rick Warren or Charles Stanley can. Paul reminds the Thessalonians, faced with oppression from pretend mothers in the Judaizers of his day, that he and his fellow apostles have provided that care and nurture in their arms, just as your pastors here at Chapel NeXt and your unit chaplains are providing.

b. We loved you so much
As I have aged and grown into these roles of chaplain and pastor, I have found a deeper love for soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines than I knew I would at the beginning. I picture an aged Paul, already gifted of God with the power to divide the Word of God rightly even before his conversion, now feeling the weight of his work, the burden of starting up new churches by sharing the Gospel in hostile territories, with enemies constantly at his heels…I picture that Paul, writing as his children endure terrible persecution, wanting to express the deep love of God that had been infused in his own heart for the Thessalonians whom he had nursed into some level of maturity before the Spirit called him on to his next work.
i. Sharing the Gospel of God
Paul’s first love was the sharing of the Gospel of God. Brothers and Sisters, please understand that it is not self-centered gain that drives these chaplains here to be with you in the war zone. We carry no weapons. We bear no command authority. But “the weapons we fight with are not of this world – yet they are powerful for demolishing strongholds.” The only authority we wield is the authority that God Himself gives to us in our calling before Christ Jesus – and our use of that authority is borne in gentleness and patience, a meekness that is not weak, but is bold, yet soft on your behalf. These chaplains with whom I have served share no greater aspiration than to bring to you the Good News of the Mystery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that you “Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” a Gospel that is a certain assurance of your salvation. “How lovely on the mountain are the feet of them who bring Good News…who proclaim that OUR GOD REIGNS!” (Eph. 3:6 and Is. 52:7)
ii. Sharing our lives
But it is not enough simply to share words to express such a love. With that love comes compassion – not in the sense we think of it today, but in the sense of the true meaning of the word: “com” = “with” and “passion,” from the Latin “passio,” which means “to suffer.” We who bring you the Good News of Salvation in Jesus Christ, like Paul, suffer with you. We have shared not only the Gospel itself, but we delight to share our lives with you. Brothers and Sisters, all you know of the televangelist is what his or her handlers allow you to see. Slick promotions and carefully edited sermons do not lead to the end of which Paul speaks. True love is shown in the sharing of life together. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred for his faith by Hitler in 1945, wrote in his book Life Together: “He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions my be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” (p. 27.)

Brothers and Sisters, and fellow Chaplains, to live in the world of the T.V. preacher is to deny the calling of God to the Community of Christ. Paul understood this and placed in and among us pastors to not only preach and teach the word of God, but to share life with the community. Our lives are laid out for all to see – both our gifts and our imperfections. For you to have true faith in the One who called you into His Kingdom, you must always be pointed to Him by the frail, the tempestuous, the sometimes odd…God’s “jars of clay,” earthen and sometimes earthly vessels who carry this treasure of the Kingdom in order “to show that THIS all-surpassing greatness is from God and not from ourselves.”

Any desire for the image of a perfect man or woman to bring to you the infallible and inerrant Word of God is a false desire for a new kind of King, like the ones for which the Israelites clamored. Our weaknesses as pastors are to His glory, that you might know that you, too, can access God’s Kingdom, not because you may attain to any perfection yourself, but that you might know that such perfection was bought by His perfect sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary, though it may be meted out in fallible but diligent men and women. We are not called, us chaplains, because we are perfect, but His Perfection is revealed as we preach His perfect Word and live it out in community with you, suffering with you, striving with you and needing also to repent alongside you. We are the ultimate hypocrites, for we proclaim a holiness to which we cannot obtain – and yet it is a holiness which Christ Himself has imputed to us by his blood, a promise that is as good for you as it is for us.
iii. Love is the driving factor of all leadership
And Love can be the only power that equips us for such leadership in the Church. Paul’s words to the Corinthians resound for me here, in that all of our efforts, all of our words, all of our remonstrances, are like the sound of clanging cymbals, if we have not love. Indeed, I challenge the leaders I serve in the military with this regularly: If you do not love your soldiers, you cannot lead them. Retired US Army COL Scott Snook, whose son, I understand, is now serving in RC South, wrote in a November 2009 article for the Washington Post’s On Leadership column:

In 1948, sociologists Edward Shils and Morris Janowitz published a classic study titled, "Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II." In an attempt to understand why the German army fought so stubbornly to the bitter end, Shils and Janowitz uncovered one of the fundamental truths of military leadership: A soldier continued to fight well beyond the point when the battle or war was lost "as long as the group possessed leadership with which he could identify himself, and as long as he gave affection to and received affection from the other members of his squad or platoon." The giving and receiving of affection, not only philia (phileo)or brotherly love, but also the deeper and more profound agape or selfless love lies at the heart of military leadership.

How much more love, then, is required for a man or woman of God to serve the warrior? Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend.” While He was speaking ultimately of His impending sentence of death on behalf of all of mankind, His was a call to each of us who follow the apostles to be ready to lay down our lives out of this agape love. It is not a call to jump in front of a bullet as much as a call to live the kind of love that daily lays down its life…a life that forfeits its own desires, its own luxuries, its own preferences for comfort, in order to selflessly serve the people of God.

c. Like a father, caring for his children
And such a love is further exemplified by Paul in the image of a Father, caring for his children. As a father, I identify closely with this kind of love. Note the change Paul makes from the mother nurturing her infant child now to the father who cares for his older children. It is both types of love that are necessary to create the mature, powerful follower of Christ.
i. Encouraging, comforting and urging
The chaplain is called to a ministry of “encouraging, comforting and urging.” We are not told to manipulate, cajole and brow-beat you into submission to God. Rather, as I will soon go home to train my children to live upright and Godly lives, we are to be encouragers of the brethren. We are called to comfort – and how often I have had to do that on this tour, with four memorial services that have tasked me to my core as I’ve worked relentlessly to bring comfort to the teammates of brave men who have given their last full measure of devotion on the battlefield. And what words of comfort can I offer, save those that God has given us in Scripture of a love in Christ from which “neither death nor life, angels nor demons, nor any powers” can separate us. In this ministry, we cannot be foreigners to the pain and sense of loss, the anguish which grips the hearts and souls of our fellow warriors.
ii. To live lives worthy of God
And it is our fatherly duty to provide this encouragement, to comfort in loss and affliction, but it is also our duty to urge each one of you “to live lives worthy of God.” While a mother is a nurturer of the young child, the father is viewed here as the one who provides the training, the instruction…the urging, to the older child to face the hard lessons of life, to not only partake in the milk that built their infant bodies, but to engage them with the meat that would grow in them the strength to face the battles ahead. Paul chastised the Corinthians for their immaturity: “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly.” (1 Cor. 3:1-2)

The writer of Hebrews similarly chastises some in the Church for remaining infants in their faith: “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Heb. 5:12-14)

1. Be Holy
The key toward which the Spiritual Father is to lead his maturing children, the meat of the life in Christ, is the solid food of holiness – “the teaching about righteousness.” Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.” (Eph. 1:4) And we are told, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am Holy.” (Lev. 19:2 and 1 Peter 1:16) And while we are not yet perfected in our own personal holiness, the goal of the Christian life is to grow steadily on the solid food of the word, to “purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” (2 Cor. 7:1)

2. Living for the prize for which he has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus
Paul himself did not view this as something that calls us to a heady perfection, but rather to a constant striving in life. To the Philippians he wrote:“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. 15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things.” (Philippians 3:12-15)

3. His Kingdom and Glory
And the end of our encouragement, comfort and urging toward you is this, that you should attain that goal, God’s Kingdom and His glory. Brothers and Sisters, I have pressed you before in this: Do you desire His Kingdom? Or are the things of this world beckoning you, drawing you away and enticing you toward earthly things? These brethren here are charged with fixing your eyes on what is eternal, not perishable.

II. OUR EXAMPLE
a. Our toil and hardship
i. Living in and among you, incarnate ministry
Paul stresses the example of his life among the Thessalonians. I have already spoken of how us chaplains are called to live in the same toil and hardship that you endure daily, but note that this is different from the pastoral call in the civilian world. Civilian pastors have a joke they sometimes pull on chaplains, asking us, “So, when did you leave the ministry?” There is a constant worry that chaplains identify too much with the non-Christians with whom they live and work daily. It is almost as if the confines of the church’s four walls create an atmosphere more conducive to the kind of holiness that is necessary to shepherd the flock.

I would contend that it is us chaplains who minister more in the fashion of Jesus. We do not encase ourselves with the comfortable environs of the church, conversing daily only with other Christians. Rather, we go into the world, suffering as you do the constant temptations, the occasional persecutions and the trials of the flesh. It is what we call and incarnational ministry, taking on the likeness of those for whom we are called daily to die to ourselves. Bonhoeffer also said, “When Christ calls us, He bids us come and die.” It is not in the comforts of the church garrison that the warrior is forged, but on the front lines of the spiritual battle, where the lost are seeking a savior.

b. Not to be a burden
i. Not putting you in a position to care for us, but being responsible to carry our own load
Your pastors here at BAF and throughout Afghanistan seek, like Paul, not to be a burden on the troops, not to have to be cared for and coddled, but working alongside you, bearing a portion of the load that is war. We encourage, comfort and urge in ways that make us force multipliers, not drains on the system. No televangelist does this. Neither does the civilian pastor who stays in his comfortable office, staining himself only occasionally among the unchurched, unwashed. These men are to be applauded for the ways that they endure what no other clergy at home must endure in order to bring the Gospel of Christ to you. A soft, easy pastorate in the States is not the call of these missionaries to the warfront.

c. How holy, righteous and blameless we were
And the call to be holy is not only a call we make to you. It is also a call to which we must attain, ourselves. There is no substitute for a witness to holiness other than that we, as Paul, live holy, righteous and blameless lives. And this is perhaps our toughest task. All too often it is forgotten that the chaplain is just as fallible, just as tempted, just as human as the next guy or gal. We get put on a pedestal by both Christians and non-Christians alike, and the expectations for our moral performance are high. As I have said, we are the ultimate hypocrites, for we must uphold a standard that we are destined to fall short of at times. Yet we recognize that it is part of our daily dying to ourselves that we must do our best to succeed, that the Gospel of Christ might not be hindered. It is our duty to “clear the way to the cross,” and to not become a stumbling block for those who are seeking a savior.

Ultimately, however, we too are in need of that same savior. We too, must repent and bounce back daily.

I like the image, just as the infantry motto proclaims: "Follow me!" that Paul gives us when he says, "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ." He is not saying, in essence, that you can substitute your obedience to Christ by following me. I am no surrogate. Rather, he is saying, whatever you see in me that is from Christ, emulate that in your lives. Christ is the supreme example, but He has given us such leaders as immediate examples of what it is to live a life wholly devoted to Christ Himself.

III. OUR GLORY

Finally, what is it that we do this for? After all, some of the great rewards offered by the military include promotions, accolades before your peers, the many ribbons we amass through years of faithful service...but in reality, these are not the praise for which the chaplain does his job. Paul offers "bookends" to this passage, the first of which is at verse six...

a. BOOKENDS: 6. “We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else…19. For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.”

Brothers and sisters, YOU are our glory and our joy. The burdens you carry into the hardest job this world has to offer - that of waging war - are immense. You not only carry the hopes and dreams of a nation, but you carry your own trials and pains with you. Whether it is a struggling marriage, a dying loved one, young children left at home, or any of the other myriad of things that weigh on the heart, you bring to the warfront a weight that alone is trial enough. Then you take on the weight of the war itself.

To be here for you, to help you with the weight of all of these burdens, and yet to see you grow in Christ, to mature and develop into mature believers - to have a part in your lives and to share our own with you - all of this makes you our personal glory and our joy. And to present you before Christ on that day, holy and blameless, knowing that we played a part in your faith...this is our crown and the reward which we seek.

b. The Prize at Christ’s Return – A Crown of Righteousness

Yes, we will receive that crown of righteousness that Christ promises to all those who have longed for and loved his appearing. But it is you that comprise the jewels of that crown. Brothers and sisters, we are here for you, and we long to hear those words from the mouth of Christ Himself, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter in to the joy of the Lord.”


IV. Prayer over the chaplains

I would like to close in a special way today. First, I would like the chaplains to come forward. Everyone look to your right and your left. If the person next to you bears a cross on their collar or chest, please push them forward - don't let any of them hide. Second, if you are a leader in this service, if you are a prayer warrior, or if you are a leader in your church at home, I would like for you to come forward and lay a hand on each of these chaplains as I say a closing prayer for them, followed by a commissioning I will read from Paul's letter to Timothy.

a. Prayer and CLOSING SCRIPTURE: ADMONISHMENT TO CHS

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.