The Fellowship of Service

       In September, 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland crossed the border from southern Tennessee into northern Georgia . They believed they were pursuing a Confederate Army that was in full retreat.

       They were wrong. On September 20, General Bragg’s Confederate Army struck the Federals a shattering blow at Chickamauga Creek. The Federal’s retreated back through the mountain passes into the city of Chattanooga , Tennessee . The victorious Confederates occupied the high ground above and around the city and waited until the Federals surrendered from lack of food. The Confederates were where they could not be attacked and the Federals were where they could not retreat.

       Abraham Lincoln reacted with vigor. Troops were taken from the Army of the Potomac and sent by railroad to Tennessee . The Army of the Tennessee under General Sherman was ordered to help. General Ulysses Grant was placed in command of the whole force.  Grant wasted no time. He took the ground needed to open a supply road into Chattanooga . But Grant wasn’t interested in just saving the army. He wanted to reopen the door into Georgia that had been so abruptly slammed shut.

       But how was he to do it? The Confederates were where he wanted to go and they were solidly entrenched along a steep rise called Missionary Ridge .

       The Army of the Potomac troops were sent against Lookout Mountain and captured it. But nothing was changed by the victory. The main Confederate line was unbroken. Sherman ’s Army of the Tennessee was sent against the northern end of Missionary Ridge but gained not a thing for their blood. Finally Grant ordered the Cumberland ’s to take the pressure off Sherman by pretending to attack the center of the Confederate position. It was only supposed to be a "pretend attack" to keep Confederate soldiers pinned to the center.

       But that wasn’t what happened. The Cumberland ’s 89 regiments had had enough of that Confederate line. They took the positions at the base of Missionary Ridge and then, completely against orders, kept going right up that steep ridge in the face of the cannon and the rifles of some of the best soldiers in the Confederacy -- soldiers who had many times demonstrated that they knew what to do with a rifle when they got a Yankee in their sights. It was suicide. General Grant chewed on his cigar and muttered that "someone was going to sweat for it if the charge ended in disaster." And disaster was inevitable.

       In his book That Hallowed Ground, historian Bruce Catton writes: "If justice existed on earth and under the heavens, (Confederate General) Braxton Bragg would have been right. His position was impregnable. Missionary Ridge rose five hundred feet above the plain, sparse trees and underbrush littering its steep, rocky slope. It ran for five miles and the Confederates had all of it. At its base, fronting the plain, they had a stout line of trenches, and on the crest they had another line studded with cannon. Halfway up, at all the proper places, there were other trenches and rifle pits manned by tough Confederate veterans. Bragg was right, by any standard anyone could use. His main position could not be taken by assault." The Federals were charging into a death trap.

       But then the incredible happened. That impregnable Confederate line cracked wide open.   The Yankees went streaming over the top of the ridge, swamping the Confederate guns, capturing 8,000 men and routing the Confederate survivors back across the border into Georgia . From that moment on it was just a matter of time for the Confederacy. Sherman would set out from Chattanooga for the capture of Atlanta and the devastating march to the sea. The Confederates were forced into a defensive fight they could not finally win. Their line had fallen apart. Soldiers who had never fled the enemy in scores of desperate fights inexplicably gave up an impregnable position and ran away.

       Why did I tell you this story? Well, it’s a Civil War story and I’m fascinated by that liberating period of our history.  I’ve used this story before in a sermon but that was years and years ago.  Since then, Carol drove me around the Chickamauga and Chattanooga battlefields – which is a very loving to do for someone like me.  But the greater reason is because I believe it has something to teach us about the importance of knowing that we are not alone as we seek to serve the Lord.  We’ll get to that.

       During these Sundays before Easter, in our sermons and small groups, we are looking at the theme, “The Community You’ve Always Wanted.”  We will look at six wonderful aspects of Christian fellowship that Paul models in his Letter to the Philippians.  Today we are going to look at what it means to be joined together in the service of Jesus Christ.

        We are connected.  Paul writes in Philippians 1 that the Philippians are partners with him in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. As Christians, we don’t just only share a community.  We share a task.  I like the way Pastor Stuart Bond from Emmanuel Presbyterian in Thousand Oaks said it when he spoke to our elders, deacons and staff last spring – that we aren’t just a family.  We are a family with a mission.

      In Philippians 1:27 Paul writes that we are called to live in a way that is worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  The literal words in the Greek text say that we are to live as worthy citizens.  He uses the word politeuesthai which is the same root as chapter 3 verse 20 where Paul reminds us that “our true citizenship is in heaven.” 

       This word “citizenship” resonates very strongly with Paul’s friends in Philippi .  Remember that Philippi is a colony of Rome founded by Roman veterans and their families.  They live in Macedonia but they dress and conduct themselves as Romans.  They speak the Latin language, wear Latin dress and call their leaders by Latin titles.

       Paul says that even though we are here on earth we are to demonstrate the life of heaven.  And one key way to do that, he writes in the next verse, is by the way we partner with each other.  We need to stand firm side by side with one spirit.  We need to strive with one mind for the faith of the gospel. 

       The word Paul uses here comes from the sport of team wrestling.  In those days wrestling wasn’t done as a series of individual matches which took place while the teammates just looked on and cheered.  The competing teams would line up facing each other, with each team member shoulder to shoulder with his colleagues and facing his opponents.  At a given signal, both teams would leap into action as a group.  Soon there would be one great sweating, writhing wrestling mass of humanity.  Paul says that this “wrestling together” should characterize our shared efforts for the gospel.  Our efforts should produce considerable output of what Winston Churchill called “blood, sweat and tears” – each of our blood, each of our sweat, each of our tears. 

       “Striving side by side” is the teamwork vocabulary of athletes and soldiers.  It’s not just sharing the event.  It’s sharing a determination to win.   It’s knowing that we are not alone. We are joined together as a body of Christ and it is as a body that we live.

       In Elia Kazan’s The Arrangement, we hear this passage from the main character: "I realized, I did not have and never had any friends. My relationships were either professional or functional. I had a boss and an editor or two or three, several servants, a wife, many former mistresses, a literary agent, several secretaries, several professional collaborators, and 300 people to whom I sent cards every Christmas. I knew some people in my office who either feared me or flattered me, but whom I did not meet outside of our functional relationships. I had sponsors, and clients, PR men, account executives, and district managers.

       "I knew an even greater host of service people, the men who fixed the hi-fi, the TV, the icebox, disposal, electric stove, air conditioner, pool circulator, the three cars. There were those people who sold me books and records (for you kids, that’s a primitive form of CD), the tailor who cut my suits, and the haberdasher who made my shirts.

       "But you couldn’t call those friendships. I hadn’t talked or related to any of these people, except for some use or function. I hadn’t touched any of them humanly. They were things to me."

       We are not to be things to each other – not us, not here.. We are brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. We are to touch each other humanly. We are to know each other’s needs and intercede for each other in prayer.

       Lee Iacocca once asked legendary football coach Vince Lombardi what it took to make a winning team. Lombardi said, "There are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline but who still don’t win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient: If you’re going to play together as a team, you’ve got to care for one another. You’ve got to love each other. Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself: If I don’t block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his. The difference between mediocrity and greatness is the feeling these guys have for each other."

       We know that here.  Moorpark Presbyterian is not one of those sad congregations where twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work – with the work defined as keeping the other eighty percent happy.  Here the ministry is much better shared and is focused on a much bigger goal.  We aren’t country club.  We are a team.  We are a family with a mission.

       We are now close to the end of a lengthy building program that has involved the expenditure of time, money and relationship energy. Large building programs are hard on everyone but they are especially hard on pastors. I have known several pastors who became so burned out that they left the congregation soon after the building was finished. 

       I, on the other hand, am no where close to burnout.  It’s not that I’m a special case.  I’m not.  It’s that other people carried the load.  Your Building Committee met almost every week for three years to get us where we are today.  I may have participated in no more than five percent of those meetings.   At the same time the stewardship people did their job and you as a congregation have stepped up to do yours.  As you know, we are looking to raise the last $150,000 to move into the building.  We have already raised $36,000 – and that was before the pledge cards even went out.  That’s the kind of church this is.

       The result is that we experience the joy of shared accomplishment.  That’s the foundation of true fellowship. Conversation over coffee after worship is good but it is not the fellowship Paul describes in Philippians.  Yes, it is fellowship among Christians but it is not the fellowship Paul celebrates in this letter.  If you are looking for true biblical fellowship, give yourself to the gospel and home and around the world.  Serve together with others in women’s Bible studies, children’s ministry, youth ministry. Do short-term missions.  Join a band of brothers and sisters to pray for the world.

       Paul is talking in Philippians about a fellowship that far exceeds any earthly fellowship.  Our fellowship in the gospel is rooted in God and is a quest that can only be described as eternal. 

       So, what went wrong for the Confederate Army at Missionary Ridge ? Why did those brave veterans retreat from a position that would certainly have been impregnable if only they had stayed in the line?

       Bruce Catton explores this question in That Hallowed Ground: "Maybe the real trouble was that the battle was too theatrical," he writes. "People could see too much; most particularly, the Confederates could see too much. They were up in the balconies, the Federals were down in the orchestra pits, and when the battle began, every move down on the plain was clearly visible to the Southerners on the heights. Perhaps just watching it did something to them."

       But the problem was not just that the Southerners could see too much of the enemy. The greater problem was that he could see too little of his own army. This is the key. 

       Catton writes of the assault up the ridge: "Looking down from the crest, the Confederates kept on firing, but the foreknowledge of defeat was beginning to grip them. The crest was uneven, and no defender could see more than a small part of his own line; but each defender could see all of the charging Federal army, and it suddenly looked irresistible. The defensive fire slackened here and there; men began to back from the firing line, irresolute. Bragg’s line -- the center of his whole army, the hard core of his entire defensive position -- suddenly and inexplicably went to pieces. By ones and two and then by companies and battalions, gray-clad soldiers who had proven their valor in a great many desperate fights, turned and took to their heels. Something about that incredible scaling of the mountainside had been just too much for them."

       The Confederate army snatched defeat from the jaws of victory that decisive day because each soldier suddenly believed that he was on the ridge by himself -- facing the onslaught of the entire Federal Army all alone. He didn’t see his comrades about him. He didn’t see his commander. He just saw himself and the advancing enemy and suddenly he felt very small and powerless. He thought he had to fight the battle alone.

       Our position as the people of Jesus Christ is impregnable. We cannot be forced from it by any assault or any devious trick as long as we remember who we are and who surrounds us. The only way we can lose, is if we stop trusting our Lord and our brothers and sisters beside us and start thinking that we are doing it all alone.

        We aren’t doing it all alone and we don’t have to.  We wrestle together.