When I was about five years old, my dad was attending seminary and pastoring a church in a tiny town north of Dayton, Ohio named Lockington. Now my hometown of Johnstown was primarily Catholic and I can only assume that influence was the reason behind my parents not allowing me to take communion as a child. Now, on Sunday mornings, my dad was in the pulpit and my mother was in the choir loft. And, if that sounds to you like a risky arrangement, let me affirm that it was on more than one occasion. As an adult I now realize my mom must have really enjoyed singing to take those kinds of chances every week. Now, at that time in my childhood, I spent most Sunday services sitting with the Mohler family – their pew was front and center – because they had a little girl named Lori who was my age. Lori’s parents permitted her to commune and so one Sunday, here’s what happened. They served communion in the pews from the trays. A tray of bread came by me and Lori plucked up one of those little square cubes of bread. Then, noticing that I had no bread, she eyed hers carefully, then broke that tiny cube into two pieces and handed one half to me. I didn’t know what else to do, so I ate it. A few moments later, the tray of juice came by with those tiny little cups. Lori picked up a cup; she took a tiny sip, eyed the cup and handed the rest to me. I didn’t know what else to do, so I drank it. Now that little incident with Holy Communion may have been one of my earliest experiences of something the first century Church defined with a special Greek word, koinonia. It’s a word that can be translated a number of ways, including: community, fellowship, sharing and joint participation. The word can also be used to describe a financial collection that is gathered as an embodiment or expression of fellowship. In other words, the impetus for the offering or collection is a desire to express and to strengthen fellowship; a monetary demonstration of a “one for all and all for one” mindset. To exhibit koinonia is to share one heart and one soul. This week I’m continuing my sermon series called “Six Ways to Sunday” that explores the vows we take or the promises we make when we join a United Methodist congregation. A couple of weeks ago, I preached on the vow of prayer. Last Sunday, I preached on the vow of presence. I talked about the fact that the early Christians were united not so much through an initial attraction or fondness as they were through an affection that developed over time as a direct result of their unifying belief in Jesus and their common interest in both proclaiming and exhibiting the gospel, the good news of Jesus as Lord and Savior. Those early Christians shared koinonia; they were of one heart and soul. Now, whoever put those United Methodist membership vows together must have known what they were doing because the third promise we make is a vow to support the church with our giving. And in relation to the Book of Acts (which tells the story of the development of the early Church), the vow of giving is a promise utterly, entirely dependent upon the manner of fellowship we share with one another. In other words, giving to the church is not, at its root, about money at all. Giving to the church is really about relationships and the value we place on those relationships. Supporting the church with our financial gifts ought to come from a deep connection to and love for Christ and one another. Our giving to the Church says far less about our income and financial status than it does about our commitment to Christ and to one another. [Repeat] Certainly many churches, including the United Methodist Church, continue to encourage our members to follow the Old Testament guidelines of tithing, of giving ten percent of our income. But over the years I have seen clearly that United Methodist giving is all over the map. And the percentage of money people give is dramatically influenced not by their paycheck but by their relationship with Jesus and their understanding of what the Church is called to do and to be with and for one another. If you were in worship last Sunday, you may have noticed that the scripture readings from last week and this week sound awfully familiar. The two passages – one from Acts, chapter 2 and the other from Acts, chapter 4 – are summary statements about what life was like in the early Church and in each of those two summaries, our bible writer tells us that one clear and consistent characteristic of the early Church was their willingness to share with one another. As I’ve already mentioned, that sharing, just like the “togetherness” or fellowship I spoke of last Sunday, wasn’t about warm, chummy feelings. Their relationship with one another was the direct result of their relationship with Jesus. So, their relationship with Jesus defined the nature of their relationships with one another. As followers of Jesus, they lived out – they embodied – the teachings of Jesus; teachings about what it means to be a part of a community where mercy and generosity are the rule of life. In fact, the writer of Acts reveals that they lived out, they fulfilled, the promises God gave to the Israelite people way back in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy, chapter 15, it says, “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community… within the land the Lord you God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted… Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord you God will bless you…” In fact, the Israelites are told, if they will follow this instruction from God, there will be no one in need among them. Now, it sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? God basically told the Israelites: when people in your community are in need, take care of them because, if you do, no one will ever be in need. It’s kind of counterintuitive, isn’t it? Yet it is exactly that very scenario that we see revealed in the early Church. There is, just as God promised the Israelites, not a needy person among them because, when need arises, someone voluntarily sells their own property to be distributed to those in need. And thus, there is no need because every need, as it appears, is addressed directly through the generosity of another member of the community. So the message here is that, if we want to never be in need, we need to always give. Whereas, saving (even hoarding) seems to be the logical behavior to prevent want or shortage; we are shown that it is exactly the opposite. If you don’t want to be in want, be a generous, one might even say reckless, giver not a careful saver. Now friends, I should tell you that there are some people, even some bible scholars or theologians, who may try and tell you that this teaching in Acts is fantasy, an idyllic picture with no basis in reality. But one would be hard-pressed to try and escape the early Church’s clear teaching and clear expectation of risk-taking generosity. You have in your bulletin this morning some early Christian teaching outside the Book of Acts that makes clear this kind of communal living, this mindset of fellowship and sharing, this koinonia, was perhaps as rampant, as ubiquitous, in the early Church as was the confession of Jesus as Lord. Justin Martyr, an early Christian teacher and defender of the faith wrote this of the early Church: “We who formerly treasured money and possessions more than anything else now hand over everything we have to a treasury for all and share it with everyone who needs it.” In the Didache, an early Christian writing with such authority it came close to being included in the New Testament, we find this quote, “Do not turn away from those who are in need, but share all things in common with your brother. Do not claim anything as your own…” And in an early second century Christian writing, we find these words: “Love your neighbor more than your own soul. Share everything with your neighbor and call nothing your own…” Friends, as I mentioned last Sunday, the promises we make when we join a Methodist congregation reflect the practices of Christians in the earliest days of our faith. They are nothing new or original. They are ancient and deeply woven into the DNA of what it means to be a church. The Church is not a place where we do our own thing and mind our own business and let people take care of themselves. Church is a place where we take care of one another. Church is a place where we share one heart and soul. Some of you may remember the first sermon series I did here at Trinity on the book “Questions God Asks Us.” If you do, I wonder if you can remember the first question a human asks in our scripture. The first question any person asks in the bible is the question Cain sarcastically poses to God about his brother Abel. Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Brothers and sisters, our God is a God who desires fellowship with us. Our God is a God who desires to bless us and care for us. And we are made in God’s image. So, are we our brother’s keeper? Absolutely; you bet we are. We follow a Savior who gave up even his life for us. Our membership vow to support the church with our giving is not, ultimately, a promise about money. It is a promise to be in community with one another; Christian community; a community structured not according to the world’s standards but according to God’s standards. We have all heard the cliché that you can’t just talk the talk you have to walk the walk. And our giving to the church to support its missions and ministry is the walk behind our talk. Few things proclaim the gospel as dramatically or as powerfully as the simple acts of giving and sharing. You know, I don’t have any idea what my little friend Lori Mohler was thinking that day decades ago when she shared her communion bread and juice with me. We were only five, so I can’t imagine she was inspired by any lofty, philosophical thought. I suspect it was this simple: She had something that I, her friend, did not have; something that symbolized the love of Jesus, and she wanted me, her friend, to have it too. And so she shared. And so we share – one heart, one soul, one bread, one body, one Savior, one Lord.
0 Comments
Unfortunately, in my usual fashion, I have forgotten where or from whom I recently heard this story of a young child. Desperate to get the full attention of her distracted mother, who she could clearly tell had “tuned out” based on her rhythmic and monotone “um-hm”s, the child walked over to where her mother was seated and placed both of her chubby little hands on the mother’s cheeks. Then, guiding her mother’s face so it lined up with her own, the child looked her mother in the eyes and said with slow deliberateness, “Pay attention.” Today we find ourselves in a culture where multi-tasking is considered an art. As we rush to get the most out of every minute of the day, the gift of presence, still and reverent attention, has become a rare treasure.
This morning I’m continuing a sermon series on the membership vows we take as United Methodists when we join a local congregation. Those Methodist vows are very much rooted in the practices of the early Church, although they may take a somewhat different shape in our contemporary culture. The membership promises we make are reflective of the core tenets that New Testament scriptures reveal to us about how church is done. Last week I spoke on the vow of supporting the church with our prayers. Looking at a story from Acts I addressed how, when the early Church faced persecution or challenges, they did not pray for the challenges to go away but, rather, their common prayer was that God would make them bold in the face of those challenges. Today I’ll be talking about the vow of presence. Now, my guess would be that, when we hear that statement about supporting the church with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness, we interpret presence as “showing up.” In other words, we equate presence with good attendance. I remember during my freshman year of high school we had a sled-riding party that probably should have been cancelled due to a very low wind chill temperature. As it turned out, a young man who was a senior in the group suffered a bad case of frostbite. Steve had a perfect attendance record all the way through high school. As it turned out, school was cancelled the next day due to the weather. Otherwise that unfortunate event would have ruined Steve’s chances of receiving a perfect attendance award at graduation. I don’t even know if schools give out perfect attendance awards anymore. Nowadays, we are not a very attendance driven culture. A few years back, I had a receptionist who asked me if she could work from home. There are church leadership blogs a plenty addressing the widespread decline not only in church membership; but a significant drop in the number of Sundays per year the average worshipper attends church. Now, while I want to encourage strong church attendance and participation, that little opening story I told about the child and her mother make clear that presence has to be about more than attendance. For our physical bodies to be collectively gathered in one space does not, by itself, guarantee that we are present to one another; or that we are together in the New Testament sense of the term. That Greek word for “together” that we heard in our scripture reading from Acts is a frequent word in Acts, but is only found in one other place in our whole New Testament. It was also used in my scripture from last Sunday in Acts, chapter 3. When Peter and John were released from prison and returned to tell the other disciples what had happened to them, Luke tells us that “when [the other disciples] heard it, they raised their voices together to God.” The early Church, my friends, prayed together, they worshipped together, they learned together, and they just plain hung out together. Now that Greek word for “together” was used often in a political context in the first century Roman dominated world. It refers to those who are united not so much through a mutual affection as it does to those who develop a common affection because they share a common belief and a common interest. Together, they share a like-minded trust and hope. I loved one commentator I read this week who said of this early Church “togetherness” that it was “not based upon a similarity of inclination or disposition but upon an event which comes [up]on a group from without and provokes a common reaction.1 [repeat] That event, my friends, was the Christ event: the life, death, resurrection, and ministry commission of Jesus Christ. The 1st century Christians shared a common trust in Jesus; they shared a common concern in proclaiming and exhibiting the good news of Jesus, their Lord and Savior. In other words, our relationships with one another aren’t simply about warm, chummy feelings. We don’t – or at least we shouldn’t – pick a church because we judge its members to be the most like us; or the wittiest or the most charming. Instead, the drawing power of a church ought to be about how well the gospel message becomes incarnate among us. [repeat] Now there is a big theological sentence for you. But it’s really pretty simple. While church is the place where we should hear about, learn about, talk about the good news of Jesus our Lord and Savior; church must – even more importantly – be the place where we experience the love and the saving grace of Jesus through one another. Let me put it this way. Church is a place where we must hear the story of Jesus. We are drawn to the good news of Jesus Christ. And yet, it’s not enough for us to tell the story; we have to be the story. And to be the story, we have to know the story. In other words, Church is a place where we find ourselves caught up in this wonderful, spectacular cycle in which we hear Jesus proclaimed; then we behave in a certain way in response to that proclamation. And then, as we reflect, or live out, that message toward one another, we learn even more. Our ideas and behaviors are shaped not only by what we hear from the preacher and bible study teachers and church leaders; but they are also shaped by how we respond to what we see in the preacher, the teachers and church leaders. As we are present with one another – through bible studies and mission work and fellowship over meals – as we are present with one another, what we do and say, how we behave toward one another becomes an active, living, contextual expression of the gospel of Jesus. Our presence, our togetherness with one another, proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ. Our presence presents the Jesus of our gospels. Friends, we do need to show up at church; not only in worship but in all the other church contexts that communicate the gospel to us (so, small group studies, serving those in need, praying together, just spending time hanging out with each other). All of those activities work together as a living expression of the gospel of Jesus. And we truly need them all. We experience the gospel message differently in those different contexts of study and worship and service and fellowship. So, we need to show up for all those things. We need to present ourselves so that we can celebrate the presence of Jesus among us. But it must go deeper than our physical presence; a mere “showing up.” We need to pay attention. We don’t come to church to put in our time or just carry out a duty. We show up ready and expecting to be engaged. We pay attention so we can truly enter into the presence of Jesus, experienced through one another. Over the years I have heard people say that they believe in God; they just don’t believe in the church. They don’t think it’s necessary. Well, I do think someone can believe in God’s existence without going to church. But believing in God’s existence, even believing in Jesus’ existence, is not the same as being a disciple of Jesus. Being a disciple requires being in a relationship not only with Jesus, but also with a church because church is the place where we learn and grow together; church is the place where we present Jesus to one another. Now again, church may not always look like our experience of traditional church. It can be experienced in different ways among different people. But you can’t take the people out of discipleship. Our growing in our relationship with Jesus can’t happen if we are not doing the “together” things that the early Christians did – if we are not praying together, and learning God’s Word together, and serving those in need together, worshipping together and just having fun together. To pay attention to Jesus, we have to pay attention to one another. And friends, here’s the last thing. Although I have another Sunday in this series devoted to witness, sometimes presence is the most powerful witness we can bring. Perhaps you’ve heard the cliché that people need to know that you care before they can care about what you know. Beginning this Saturday, May 2, for three Saturdays in a row, we’re going to walk around our Centennial neighborhood to get to know our neighbors. We’ve been encouraged to engage in this ministry both by our church consultant, Dan Bonner, and also by what we have learned about Broadway UMC in Indy. Broadway actually has an individual in their congregation who is designated as their roving listener. Folks we live in a world where someone is always talking at us – on TV, on the radio, online through blogs and social media, in workshops and training sessions. And for some of us, we feel like that little girl in my opening story. We may feel like even those closest to us – our family, our friends, our co-workers – are still talking at us. But what we all long for, what we all crave, is someone who will listen to us; someone who will push aside distractions, turn off their TV, put down their phone and be present with us. God loved us so much that he sent his Son. Perhaps there is no simpler way of explaining the incarnation than to say that in Jesus, God came to be present with us. If we are disciples of Jesus, if the Spirit of the risen Christ lives within us, then our presence can present Jesus to others. This morning, I want to leave you with a challenge. I hope as many of you as possible will come out and walk around the neighborhood with us on Saturday. But if you can’t do that, then I want to challenge you to have at least one interaction this week in which you are fully present to someone else. Maybe there is a friend or family member that you realize you’ve been doing more “talking at” than “listening to;” maybe it’s that annoying neighbor that always wants to chat when you’re trying to get somewhere on time; maybe it’s that gossipy co-worker… in which listening is definitely a better choice than talking; or maybe it’s that parent behind you in the checkout line who’s struggling to keep the kid in the cart and the candy out of the cart. Whoever it is, give to them your presence. All you really need to do is pay attention. [1] Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 186. |
Sermon videos are currently available on our homepage.
Pastor Tracey
On a lifelong journey of seeking to live out God's call on my life and to reflect His grace. 10 Minute SermonsCategories
All
Sermon Archives
September 2022
|