Saint Luke 6:17-26
“I hardly ever expect such a cosmic question over the first drink before dinner. Usually, profound questions like these are saved until both parties are well fed, well satiated, and very tired. But there it was forcing me to take my eyes off the hockey game playing on the big screen and pay some attention to what was going on at our table.
Why do we exist is a theological question that was best answered by our Presbyterian friends in the first Q&A of their Westminister Catachism. In ancient language it is asked: “What is the chief end of man?” And the answer is: “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.”1
That! I thought to myself, refraining from adding Luther’s famous “This is most certainly true!” for emphasis, is why we exist. I thought that would have been more than enough for me to get back to reading the menu and end this deep dive into theological waters.
“No,” my dinner companion asked, “why does our church exist?”
I don’t remember saying anything intelligible at the moment but the great thing about being a pastor is that you can bounce around the Caribbean for a couple of weeks and think about the question for a while and then try to answer it.
Body
My first thought came from an article in Time Magazine called “Cultivating a Third Life” that reminded the reader of sociologist Ray Odenberg’s concept of “‘third places’ informal spots to gather for socializing outside of home and work.”
We know of these places. They are health clubs, coffee shops, bars, restaurants, where friends can gather to catch up on each other's lives. These also can be places where we meet new people who are not like us. Maybe they don’t go to church. Maybe they don’t vote the way we vote. Their ethnicity or sexual orientation may be different than ours, but they are there.
However, Oldenburg noticed: “As we shifted our lives online, there are now fewer and fewer third places that provide opportunities to engage in low stakes hangs and chance encounters.” Therefore, he pointed out that “American are going through their days with hardly any interactions with people who are different from them, be it demographically, economically, or politically.”2
For many, the reason churches exist is to be their “third place.”
But we are more than that. We are third places that have a vastly different, I would say radical message to bring to society. And none is more radical than what we have before us this day from the lips of Jesus.
“Blessed are you who are poor.... Blessed are you who are hungry... Blessed are you who weep... Blessed are you when people exclude you, revile you, defame you, hate you.”
While Jesus’ words in Saint Luke’s version of the Beatitudes are poetically beautiful, and comforting as one of my preaching heros Dr. John McCormick Buchanan who died on February 3 of this year reminded us in a sermon, “they are radically subversive.
They challenge, head on, the values and ethical structures of the world in which we live. You don’t get ahead in this world by being poor in spirit or poor in anything. In fact the defining value of a consumer culture is to not be poor but to earn, buy, accumulate, consume. The meek don’t get anywhere in this world; the aggressive do. Can you imagine a job interview that begins with the applicant saying, “Actually, I’m rather meek”? And peacemakers are not blessed; they are ignored, if they’re not being roughed up by bullies in the employment of the powerful.3
And some, within the churches who have swallowed the great America again slogan with such gusto that they don’t even believe Jesus words work anymore.
Dr. Russell Moore, former leader in The Southern Baptist Convention and now editor of Christianity Today reported “that multiple pastors had told him they would quote [something that Jesus said] when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
“What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’”4
They have sold their souls to leaders who can’t remember the last time they ever asked for forgiveness. They have hitched their wagons to leaders who will spend billions launching rockets into space but then will attempt to cut funds from social service agencies like Lutheran Social Services in America “that reaches 1 in 50 people in the U.S. every year—with services, and support and sacrifices, not for profit, not for power, but because it is what the Gospel commands.”5
Mel Brooks once said in an interview with Salon Magazine.
I just thought the only weapon I’ve really got is comedy. And if I can make {somebody look} ludicrous, if I can make you laugh at him, then it’s a victory of sorts. You can’t get on a soapbox with these orators, because they’re very good at convincing the masses that they’re right. But if you can make them look ridiculous, you can win over the people.”6 “You have to bring them down with ridicule.”7
Brooks is right which is why I had to laugh when I heard that the anti-work, woe-warriors, were charging Lutheran with money laundering.
Lutherans in a money laundering scheme? Listen my friends, the only way most Lutherans I know how to launder money is when two fives and a ten gets stuck in the pocket of their jeans before being thrown into the washing machine. And, when they find it a couple of days later in the dryer they don’t shout: “Hey look! I just defrauded the federal government!” But rather, “Hey! Looks like I just won the laundry lotto!”
Lutheran’s have bigger things to think about which is why churches exists. We are outposts in the wilderness of a crazy culture that offer something different, something really important, something life changing.
Dr. Thomas G. Long, told the story of a new members class he and his wife were attending at First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.
They did what almost every new member's class does.
We were in the fellowship hall around a square table and ... the pastor said, I would like to go around ... and each person ... say why you are joining this church. Well, we did and you heard the kind of things that you would expect. One person said, I’m a musician; this church has the finest music program in the city and therefore I’m joining. Another one said, I’ve got two teenage daughters, and the youth program is fantastic here and that’s why we’re joining. Another person said, I didn’t like the minister in the church I belong to and I like the minister here fine, I’m going to join. And then it got around to Marshall. His story was he was high on crack cocaine in the streets, stumbled into the outreach centre and begged to be helped. The director said, I’m out of money. {Government cutback, don’t you know} I can’t get you in a treatment program ...but you will stay with us, we will stay with you. And he said {to the group} I’ve been sober for three years now and the reason I’m joining this church is that God saved me in this church.
The rest of us looked at each other sheepishly. We were there for the music and the parking; he’s there for the salvation.9
It happens here too you know.
Last year at the Academy’s gala parents of one of our children told me that one night she was colouring pictures of people and on every picture where she thought the heart should be she drew another picture of a man. Her parents asked her about it and she replied, “That’s Jesus! He lives in everybody’s heart.”
Blessed are those who come to this place and places like this and meet Jesus and then believe even as one of our little people does, that somehow, someway, he lives in everybody’s heart.
You won’t find Marshall’s answer and our student's affirmation in every place you go but they found it in a church.
So, why do we exist? That’s why.
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1. “Westminster Shorter Catechism,” The Westminster Standard, June 10, 2019, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-shorter-catechism/.
2. Adam Chandler, “‘Cultivating a “Third Life,’” Time Magazine, January 27, 2025, 25.
3. John M. Buchanan, “Blessed are You.” Sermon preached at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago February 6. 2011.
5. Tori Otten, “Christianity Today Editor: Evangelicals Call Jesus ‘Liberal’ and ‘Weak,’” The New Republic, August 10, 2023, https://newrepublic.com/post/174950/christianity-today-editor-evangelicals-call-jesus-liberal-weak.
6. Stephen Deusner, “Mel Brooks: ‘The Only Weapon I’ve Got Is Comedy,’” Salon, November 14, 2012, https://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/mel_brooks_the_only_weapon_ive_got_is_comedy/.
7. Mike Wallace, Mel Brooks on Anti-Semitism.” 60 Minutes. April 21,2001.
8. Thomas G. Long, untitled sermon preached at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., June 1, 2008.
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