Passwords

Zechariah 3: 8-9

Hebrews 12: 1-3

Mark 8: 27-30

Passwords

"I want to change my password," said the man who for two years had a secure savings account that required a password to access.”

Very well," replied the man in charge. "What is the old one?"

"Gladys."

"And what do you wish the new one to be?"

"Mabel. Gladys has gone to Vegas."

I know a lot of you are on Facebook. Facebook was created to help you connect and share with the people in your life. There are several ways that it can help you connect, but there can be a problem of connecting with people if you cannot get onto your Facebook account. That happens when you forget your password. But if you forget your password you just click on the "forgot your password" link and Facebook will help you reset your password so you can get back into your account.

I had not really thought much about it, but we live in a password happy world don’t we? At least if you use technology there are many passwords out there that you need to remember. You may have passwords at work to get onto computers or access certain files. We have passwords or pin numbers for our debit cards. Your social security number is a password. I have passwords for both my cell phone and home phone accounts. If you buy things on-line you have passwords for those accounts. I have ones for Amazon, email, and several others. All of that is for good reason, it is for security, but it still can be tough to remember everything. You are warned to not use the same one for everything, because if you do and someone manages to steal one, they have access to all the others, and you could be a victim of identity theft.

And the fun part is not just remembering the passwords, but the user names as well. Some accounts use my email address, which is nice. But other accounts I am known by other user names, but not my own real name. It can be hard to keep it all straight and online places realize that and this is why most, if not all, accounts have a "forgot your password" button.

There are applications you can install on your computer that give you a place to store all your passwords securely. But then, you have to remember the password to the password vault.

Of course, you don’t need a password if you don’t have an account and don’t care to open one.

By now you may be wondering what in the world does all of this have to do with our faith as Christians. Some organizations have secret passwords, some have secret codes. I was in a college fraternity once, and there was a secret handshake. Well, let me first say there are no secret passwords in Christianity. There are no secret codes, and God already knows your name. Nothing in our faith is meant to be kept secret from others.

However, if there is one password in Christianity, it is the name of Jesus, but that name should be made known to all. It should not be a secret. There is power in the name of Jesus.

So I am not going to share a password with you today or ask you to come up with one. What I want us to do is work on remembering. See, if you are a Christian that means you are already signed up. You made your profession of faith, accepted the terms that Jesus is both your Savior and your Lord. You have been there, done that, but perhaps you have forgotten something. This is what happened to the church in Ephesus according to the book of Revelation. Ephesus is a town in modern day Turkey. Let me read from Revelation 2.

The passage started out by saying some positive things about this church. It said that this church was hard working and persevered in the midst of hardships. When there was persecution this church stood its ground and pulled through. It also said this church tested the teachings of people that came along to see if their teaching matched the Scriptures and Jesus. They did not want to be led astray. They held true to the Gospel and were not distracted.

But then it goes on to say, even with the good going on, there was one thing missing. It was said they had forsaken their first love. They were going through the motions, but were an empty shell no longer filled with the love for Christ.

You see this church was doing good things. They endured hard times and pressed on, but they had forgotten something. They had forgotten their first love. They had forgotten the reason they endured hardships. It seems to me that they were doing many of the right things on the outside, but were missing the internal passion and reason for their actions.  They had forgotten that Jesus is the password to vitality.

Too many churches today have forgotten their reason for existence. They do good things, but they have forgotten the only reason a church exists is to make disciples for Christ, teach them all he taught, and to serve others as he served. Jesus did not preach from a pulpit, or build a building, or create an institution—he created a movement, to take his message to all people. Too many churches have turned inward, becoming institutions rather than missionary movements, Sunday morning clubs of fellowship rather than bases for outreach. They have forgotten their password, Jesus.

As individuals we sometimes get that way as well. Do you remember when you first realized God’s presence with you? As Christians, we sometimes forget why we believe in God or we forget that God has a purpose for us. We too often take it for granted and just keep doing what we have always done. But this is not what God wants for our lives. God wants more than just the action or outward appearance of faith. God wants that internal passion to be living and the Holy Spirit our guide. So we need to reconnect. We need a reminder. We need to relearn that Jesus is our password to understanding God’s purpose for our lives.

And that is the message for today. Remember why you first fell in love with God. We dare not forget. We dare not forget why we first started to follow Christ. We dare not forget those times God has really touched us and changed us. We dare not forget that God has set us free from sin to live our lives. We need reminders of God’s love and purpose for us, and that Jesus as Savior and Lord is our password to everlasting life.

Amen