What It Really Means to be the Church (Part 1)

What It Really Means to be the Church (Part 1)

1 Thessalonians 5:13-15

I’ve been pointing out to folks lately that I am terrible at predicting the future.   “Everyone owning their own computer?”  No way that ever happens!  Some, “World Wide Web” that connects everyone around the world?  Ya…right.  Free long distance calling from phones that we just carry around in our pockets, no cords and no rotary dialing? Wow…how many fights would that have solved in our house when my sisters and I would harass whoever was on the phone to get off the phone because we needed the phone, now!  I remember loading up on quarters for weeks to use a payphone to call my girlfriend in California:  “That will be twenty five cents for the next three minutes.”  Huge changes have happened in my lifetime.  I’ve either not seen them coming or just dismissed them out of hand.

My lack of clairvoyance isn’t just about cultural trends.  I would have never guessed that this country would be as divided as we now are.  I would never have guessed that people would speak in such mean ways about one another and speak to each other in such mean ways.  I would never have guessed that teachers and librarians and school principals would be treated like suspects who somehow pose a danger to our children and youth.  In our public life now, there is very little grace, almost no sense of shame, and an almost total absence of kindness.  For a guy who walked to school in Iowa, greeting neighbors all along the way, I never would have guessed that I would walk in a world where you have to be on your toes all the time.  Somebody is waiting for you to mess up.  When you do, people can be ruthless.

Of course, I’m no better at predicting the future of our little church, either.  When I came, we worried in Trustees’ meetings about whether we were going to make it through the year.  It would have been unbelievable if someone had told me how stable the church’s finances would become.  We’ve prospered in ways that would have left the Trustees in 1995 slack jawed.  We’ve grown so much in the hands-on-outreach that we do, as well.  We’ve become a church that gathers to get things done—good things for people in need.  No one would have imagined this courtyard, much less not one, but two amazing musicians who lead us in our courtyard worship.

Most recently, none of us saw the pandemic coming.  I remember standing at Pat Bruce’s memorial service, two days before we would shut down.  We had no idea what was coming. When we did shut down, I remember saying to Tracy, “This may last a couple of weeks…Maybe even a month.”  If you had told me how essential it would be to figure out the technology of live streaming worship, I would have said, “God help us all!”  And then I would have asked, “Who’s going to ‘play’ me, because no one is going to want to watch me.” There were discouraging days and lonely days and anxious days.  Yet, somehow, we are still here.

So, after 28 years here and 38 years of ministry, if you ask me about the future—the future of our church, the future of our village or our country, you’re asking the wrong guy.  A much better question to ask me may be this:  “Hey, Mark…regardless of what’s happening in the future, what will you and the Union Church be doing in the present?”  The truth is that I’ve never spent that much time thinking about the future because almost everything that I care about is going to be lived not a week from now or a month from now or a year from now.  Rather, right now is what matters most.

If you need a moment to catch up to that thought, consider this:  Paul would totally understand the point that I’m making this morning.  Paul’s daily life was spent essentially “planting” house churches and then helping them grow.  This was incredibly important work for several reasons.  Let me explain…

This work was immediately important because to be a Christian was to put oneself at a terrible risk.  The same authorities who arrested and crucified Jesus were on the hunt for his followers.  Contrary to centuries of anti-Semitic hateful thought, this persecution had far more to do with state power than anything intrinsic to Judaism.  In Israel, political power and religion were fused together in much the way that many people today push for Christian Nationalism in the United States.  Inevitably, when that happens, people are forced into religious practices.  Those who refuse, are punished by the state as a threat.  Mix religion and state power and you get…dynamite.

So, being a part of a house church was a matter of immediate survival for our earliest ancestors.  Many of them lived under the same roof, ate the same meals together, blended all their resources, and worshiped and prayed together.  What happened next was totally predictable…even for a clueless guy like me.  People had trouble getting along.  They annoyed each other.  They wanted to eat different foods.  They had different opinions.  They didn’t necessarily want to worship the same way.  In other words, Paul’s work—trying to help these churches grow and thrive—was a huge challenge.  Literally, though, the longer they lasted as a community, the more likely they were to survive.

Here’s what Paul didn’t know and what we don’t talk about all that often.  The survival of Christianity was at stake, just not in the way Paul ever imagined.  Jesus was a threat to the powers that be, both the political powers and the religious powers, because they feared that he would lead a political revolution.  Judas betrayed him when he didn’t.  He died because the authorities were afraid he would.  Everyone was sure that they could see what was coming but no one ever would have guessed that two thousand years later, Jesus’ teachings would still be shaping the world in revolutionary ways:  telling people to love their enemies, to care for the overlooked and the ignored, to love your neighbor as yourself.

In Paul’s day, though, what no one saw coming was the complete decimation of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.  If Jesus died in 33 A.D., then the clock was ticking for the next 37 years.  That’s how long the earliest Christians would have to establish themselves in areas other than Jerusalem.  Christianity would have to become a rural faith and even a faith practiced in other countries because Jerusalem and nearly everyone who lived there were going to be destroyed by the Romans.  This happened because someone who really wanted to lead a revolution rose up and failed.  It also happened because someone who wanted to make a name for himself in Rome was assigned the task of putting Israel back in its place.  The revolution failed and that aspiring young leader from Rome starved Jerusalem with a blockade and then tore Jerusalem and the Temple apart, brick by brick, stone by stone.

Paul had no idea why the spread of Christianity, geographically, would matter.  In fact, I bet he found the challenges of traveling between those different places and sending letters to each of them annoying.  This “spread” was probably something he just had to accept and deal with in order to do the work that really mattered to him…except the “spread,” itself, was probably the most important thing that he would ever do. 

The other thing that Paul seemed to find annoying was that people in different places ended up practicing their faith in different ways.  Some communities he seemed to genuinely love—probably because their practices were closer to his.  Some communities he really struggled with, probably because they were different.  In Paul’s earlier life as a Jewish authority, he enforced uniformity and conformity.  However, the truth is that the differences which still exist in Christianity among different people remain a source of strength and resilience.  If we can get past trying to make each other believe what we believe, we might discover that others can help us see aspects of God’s presence that we would otherwise totally miss.  This may be why there are so many different churches and even so many religions—because no one church or even one faith is ever going to own the sole rights to God.

Paul didn’t see any of that coming—which makes me totally sympathetic to Paul.  He and I are soul mates.  Here’s what Paul thought he knew for sure.  Paul was absolutely, 100 percent convinced that the world was about to be radically transformed. He was sure that everything that they were doing in the churches was about biding their time until this radical change came.  So, he ended up saying things like:  married people should stay married and single people should stay single and slaves should stay slaves because all of that’s about to change anyway.  He was so wrong…

Paul and his followers waited and waited for that change to happen.  For two thousand years, people have waited and waited for that change to happen.  Every now and then, someone would rise up and say, “I think it’s going to happen today…or a year from now…or on this future date.”  In the meantime, people were about the business of trying to live what they believe and trying to live together and learn from one another—you know…actually being the church.

That’s what we are renewing today—our commitment to trying to live what we believe and trying to live together and learn from one another.  Faith is far more likely to survive, I’m convinced, if we live in community. Of course, we annoy each other occasionally. Of course we disagree.  Together, we will still fail to see what’s coming. We will totally misunderstand what the future holds.  Such mistakes make us human.  Every time we find a way to forgive one another, or we acknowledge our humility and humanity, we are invited to keep working, with God’s help, to be the church.

The bottom line is that there is faith to live in the present.  We’ll share what we have.  We’ll help each other out.  We’ll keep each other company as we face the hard things in life.  We’ll drink coffee that’s not the best coffee we’ve ever had and we’ll sing together even though most of us can’t sing and we’ll pray together until we run out of words and it finally dawns on us that the silence that we have arrived at is actually the heart of what it means to pray.  We will find a home in life together. We will find meaning in caring for one another.  Hope will come to life for us when we realize that at least we’re not alone.  Thank God!

Paul couldn’t predict the future.  Neither can we.  Paul didn’t get everything right.  Neither will we.  Listen, though to the truth that Paul tells us: “Get along among yourselves, each of you doing your part. Our counsel is that you warn the freeloaders to get a move on. Gently encourage the stragglers, and reach out for the exhausted, pulling them to their feet. Be patient with each person, attentive to individual needs. And be careful that when you get on each other’s nerves you don’t snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.”

Whatever the future may hold, life is better when we’re together.