Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
Church #7: WHY CHURCH? (Purposes)
2/16/20 Epiphany 6A Acts 2:37-47
Why is
there a church? Why do we gather in
groups like this? What are we supposed
to do? How are we more than just another
society or club? How do we decide what
kinds of activities fit in with our purpose?
Why do you come to this congregation and not another one? Why is being a part of a local church
important to your faith walk? Why do we
need church anymore?
These are
great questions to ponder in a transitional time, these kinds of purpose
questions and why-do-we-do-what-we-do questions. We can get stuck, you know,
just doing things because we ALWAYS did them! You all know that story about the
young couple that were hosting their first larger family dinner? Well the wife goes to put a ham in the oven
and first hacks off the smaller end where it comes down closer to the bone, and
the husband asks her why she’s doing that, it’s hard work. She says, “That’s how my mom did it - I’m
copying her.” So the husband asks his
mother-in-law why she always cut that end off the ham, as his mom never did
it. The mom says, “That’s how I learned
it from MY mom.” So the husband
approaches the grandmother now and asks why she cut the end off the ham like
that. She answers, “Well, I didn’t have
a big enough pan for the whole thing and we were too poor to buy another
one.”
See, there
are lots of things in our lives that we never question - it’s just the way it’s
done, period. Why do churches worship at
10 or 11 on Sundays, when the rest of our work days start ? earlier? Yes, it gives us more leisure for a nice
breakfast together - but the original reason was so the farmer folks could get
morning chores done before cleaning up for church. Back when the countrysides were more
agricultural…. They moved to the
cities, yes, and kept the old church time - there’s no holy reason why church
is at 10 or 11. Why do we put the sermon and the offering where they are in our
worship service? Why are we organized like we are? There IS a theological
reason why we worship on Sundays - it’s because every Sunday is a “little
Easter,” the day Jesus was raised.
So I chose
this week’s scripture that describe the very first gatherings of Christ-followers,
those who came to faith in Jesus from Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost -
the day the Holy Spirit of God came on those apostles and filled them with the
power to speak the gospel. And what does
it say about their gathering after they were baptized?
-
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching ie
learning
-
They devoted themselves to fellowship - ie being together
-
They devoted themselves to the breaking of bread (eating,
maybe the Lord’s Supper, too)
-
They devoted themselves to praying
-
They held all things in common, selling their possessions
and distributing the proceeds to each one as they had need - wow, a radical
re-distribution of goods so that everyone had enough.
-
They spent much time together in the temple - again, together,
and at a worship spot
-
They praised God - probably reading Scripture, singing,
praying more
-
They had the goodwill of the people ie they got along
-
Day by day, God added to their number those who were being
saved. GOD added.. I think that’s an
important way of describing how they grew.
On through
the book called The Acts of the Apostles, and in the letters of Paul,more is
told about these early gatherings of believers. Their situation was this - they
were a real small minority and doing something brand new. Their faith and way was not the way of the
culture - they were mixing slaves and owners, Jews and Gentiles, and looking
out for the poor. They followed a man
who had been killed by the Romans. They had a real need for supporting one
another in this new path, this new WAY.
Most of them hadn’t known Jesus, and had to learn. They had to work out what following Jesus
would look like in their countries and cities.
They were breaking family & religious traditions. That made their connections important and
close.
The ways of
faith and church that we know have a long history, and have been important in
our western culture; in fact some Christians today confuse being Christian with
being American. In some countries, the
culture and the faith are more visible distinct - and our culture might yet be
that way pretty soon. But by and large the church hasn’t been persecuted much
here, and we haven’t been a minority, ...although that’s changing, too. By and large, Christ-followers haven’t had
too much difficulty being both a believer and an American. If anything, the
affluence of white Christians and Americans, and the confluence of interests in
our civic lives and religious lives, has often made us pretty comfortable and
complacent in our faith. It really hasn’t been a huge challenge….. Maybe this situation is actually as
dangerous to our faith as was the persecution of the early church by the
Romans.
And once again, my prediction is that this
complacency is already having to change.
I think the whole capital-C Church is going to have to re-look at how we
follow the WAY of Christ in our era, how we practice our faith, how we see
ourselves as church, and what it means to us to be Christ-followers. The era that we live in now is not the era of
my parent’s life, nor really the era of most of my life, at least the era that
seminary prepared me for 35 years ago.
We can’t expect to do the same things, in the same way, and have church
be like it was. We face challenges now
that weren’t imagined in earlier days. Like those early believers who had to
figure out how to live in Jesus’ way in their culture, we have to do this,
too. Every age does, actually, because
the world is always changing. We need to
think about what following Christ looks like in 2020, and how we are going to
live the gospel in this time.
We can’t blame the Boomers, and we
can’t blame the Millennials or the Gen Xers, or any specific generation. No blame throwing… but the situation exists for us now, whatever
generation we re in - THIS is the time of our following of Christ, THIS is our
leg of the race; and we need to hear and heed the leading and guiding of God’s
Spirit.
Well, okay, I got a little carried
away. It’s just that I mourn the decline
of Bible literacy, I mourn the decline of church attenders, I mourn the lack of
a distinct word of love and faith spoken to the world.
I think it's the time for some
creative re-imagining, a time for asking God to help us take a new look, a time
for us older leaders, in our wisdom, to listen to upcoming leaders. I think it’s time to get past things like
racism and sexism in the church, a time to try some innovative structures. As well as a time to dig into our Holy
Scriptures and the experiences of our faith ancestors, and listen for God.
We don’t, of course, have to
reinvent the wheel - many of our forebears have combed the Scriptures before us
and attempted to distill what is said of “why church”, ie our purposes. One telling I like is called THE GREAT ENDS
OF THE CHURCH, which has been a part of the Presbyterian constitution since
1910, and found to be a helpful statement when we consider what we are to be
about. So I made a slide of them, too -
and not surprisingly, they look a good bit like the things the early believers
did when they gathered:
- the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation
of humankind;
- the shelter, nurture, and spiritual
fellowship of the children of God;
- the maintenance of divine worship;
- the preservation of the truth;
- the promotion of social
righteousness;
- and the exhibition of the Kingdom of
Heaven to the world.
We’re going
to look at these in the next weeks, as we begin our Interim tasks gathering in
small groups to talk, looking at our community, hearing from local leaders,
listening for God’s Spirit to speak to our hearts about our future. I’m hoping that these sermons will work with
the tasks, and the tasks with the sermons, to help move us forward. I hope you will talk with me and each other
about these ideas. AMEN.
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