This sermon has intimidated me all week long because I knew that I was going to speak about Guatemala. And I knew that whatever I said this morning would be woefully inadequate in describing all that we experienced. It would be like taking a cup to the sea, bringing it back, and saying the cup contained the ocean. What do you say when you know what you say will fall short? I needed help. Thankfully on our final night at the Unbound Center, I and a few of our adult chaperones found ourselves sitting around the dinner table talking with Chico, the head of the Center. Was there any message that he wanted us to share with Woodmont? What did he want me to say?

Chico thought for a moment and then through Yovany, who translated for him, expressed that the first thing he wanted to express was gratitude. This congregation has done so much for the people in Guatemala from sponsoring scores of children and the elderly to raising the funds to build multiple houses for families that needed reliable shelter. Through Unbound, Woodmont has given so much to the Guatemalan people and he wanted you to know that he was profoundly grateful for that generosity.

The second thing he told me was to extend an invitation to come and see what Unbound was doing in Guatemala. It echoed a theme present among the staff throughout the week. They truly wanted people to experience what was going on first hand: to see the people and talk to them, to walk the dirt and gravel roads of their villages, to get a sense of what life is like and how this organization is trying to partner with families to empower them. Chico wanted me ask that you would consider coming down and seeing for yourselves what is happening in Guatemala.

Remember your baptism. We have to start there. Twenty-nine students are being baptized upstairs today and that is a huge cause for celebration. It’s a mark of these young students desiring to follow the way of Jesus. And as we celebrate their commitment, we remember our own. I have been to a few weddings where married couples are asked to remember their vows as the bride and groom exchange their own. There can be renewal in returning to the start.

And so I want you to take a moment, if you can, to remember your baptism. Now for some of you that might be hard. Maybe you were baptized as a baby. Maybe you have never been physically been baptized. But in baptism we celebrate the fact that it is possible for us to be born anew in God. That the old can be left behind for something new and beautiful. The Christian faith is all about new beginnings. And so as we celebrate the new beginning for over two dozen students upstairs, we recommit ourselves today to walking in the ways of Jesus.

If you want to know what one is supposed to do as a Christian, today’s verses are an outstanding place to begin that journey. As followers of Jesus we are to make disciples wherever we go. We don’t do this as some sort of religious colonialism, but because we believe the way of Jesus is life-giving in a world that often takes and takes. The Great Commission—as the Matthew passage is often called—tells us that we are to obey what Jesus taught and reminds us that he is with us always even to the very end.

It was one of the rare beautiful days that we have had lately. The sun was shining and it was warm enough that five seniors in our youth group and I were eating lunch on the patio at SATCo. In trying to find some semblance of a theme for Youth Sunday in May, I was listening to their collective story of their time at Woodmont. Houston, Macy, Grace, Grace, and Emeline shared tales of weeklong lock-ins, read text messages that were older than one of my children, and relayed the highs and lows of their times together. I asked them why they had stayed. What made them stick around through the various changes that would have chased others away? I don’t remember who answered, but they said that they had stayed because of each other. That community, that group of friends was a safe place in a world of change, a solid rock in a churning sea.

Since the new year began, we have been doing a series called “Back to the Basics.” Our pastor has done a great job going over some of the basic building blocks of our faith. And as we wrap up that series, I want us to talk about community because it is one of the glues that hold those building blocks together. Community is the context from which most of scripture is told. The Bible is the story of a family, then tribes, then a nation, then a group of disciples, and then the early church. All of which makes sense. Community is unavoidable. You can try to do life alone, but that is nearly impossible. Relationships with other people are a fact of our reality.

I grew up in a faith tradition that prized answers. Knowledge was king. It mattered what you knew. I think I’ve said this before but my childhood pastor was fond of saying, “Do you know that you know that you know that you know where you will spend eternity?” And I don’t think that was done for nefarious reasons. I don’t think it was any sort of 1984-esque thought police trying to crack down on us. But when you are in that sort of environment, you become a lot more concerned with finding the right answers rather than learning how to ask good questions. As I got into high school, we talked a good deal about apologetics and in that context, questions were the domain of people who didn’t have the answers.

My name is William Christopher Cox. The William is after my dad who goes by Bill, my Granddad who also goes by Bill—which, side note: my granddad’s name is Bill Williams and it absolutely blew my six year old mind when I figured out that his name was William Williams—and also my dad’s maternal grandfather. The Christopher in my name is because I was born in the early 1980s and it was federal law at the time that every fifth male child born in the United States would be named Christopher. Seriously, though, part of the reason my mom and dad gave me that name is because of what it means. Anyone who has rifled through those name bookmarks at Cracker Barrel can tell you that Christopher means “bearer or follower of Christ.” Faith has always been important to my family and my parents put that value into my very name.

There are bits and pieces of our parents and their histories in the name of myself and my siblings. My brother Taylor shares a middle name with my dad and his first name is a tribute to the South Carolina town where my parents met, fell in love, and served in a church. My sister Shari is named because it is a combination of Sharon and Mary—our two grandmothers—and her middle name Katherine is our mom’s name. We have the legacy of our parents’ lives in our very names, but it is remixed and rearranged into something that is unique. 

I was running the 5.8 Trail at Percy Warner Park because I didn’t know what to do. Honestly, it had been a crappy few days. Sunday had been my birthday. Now birthdays for adults are not filled with the same amount of excitement as birthdays are for kids. Still you want to have a good day. Mine started with a two-week old hot water heater spraying water into our laundry room to the tune of 3 inches of flooding. On top of that, our children—probably because of some combination of the flooding, being displaced for a night, and the end of the school year—had gone full Lord of the Flies on us.

This one-two punch combined with a few other things to send me into an existential tailspin. None of it was big, but it was enough to snowball into this response of “Oh no, I’m horrible at life! I’m not a good parent. Am I good at my job? Am I even passable for an adult?” None of which is a a good headspace to be in when you’re supposed to be coming up with a sermon for the next Sunday.

The following is my sermon manuscript from my message The Bridge worship service at Woodmont Christian Church on March 19. This is not necessarily what I said, but it's kind of close.

Let me start off by just laying it out there. The title of this sermon is “The Walking Dead.” I do not like scary movies or TV shows. At all. “Well, Chris, that’s silly. Scary movies aren’t real.” I know that. I know that the odds of being chased by a chainsaw-wielding maniac are infinitesimally small. But that doesn't mean I want to sit down and willing submit myself to be scared by that scant probability. When The Walking Dead first premiered, people told me, “It’s so cool that it takes place in Atlanta. You recognize so many places.” I don’t want the image of terrifying things happening in familiar places. That seems like a horrible idea. Whenever I drive through Atlanta, I’m already convinced the apocalypse is about to break out. I don’t need to add zombies to the mix.

I only remember three songs that were played in the cafeteria that day. This was around 1990, so every third girl wanted to play “Right Stuff” by New Kids on the Block. I brought a Disney cassette and requested “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” because no matter how far I travel back in my memory, I’m still a dork. And then the third song was one that I apologize for mentioning because for the rest of the day it will be trapped inside the brains of those who know it: Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

I bring up that ode to positivity because, as we continue in our series on the Sermon on the Mount, we come to Jesus’ admonishment to not worry. I think that we sometimes we gloss over the passage and water it down to where Jesus is standing on the mountain singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” And that song is a lovely sentiment, but it often doesn’t stand up to the things in this life that truly cause us concerns: job pressures, financial stress, challenges in family, a rancorous political season, your pastor asking you to preach a sermon when you haven’t even figured out how to operate voicemail on your phone.