Scripture: Acts 2:42-47; Acts 5:1-11; Joshua 1:1-9 Series: 2021
Opening a ‘Church: Past, Present, and Future’ series, this sermon reads Acts 2:42-47 alongside the contingency of history (English Civil War, WWI, the Astros, and Bee Creek’s own unlikely founding) to argue that the early church and this congregation both exist because people were caught up in God’s dangerous love and open to unpredicted directions. It warns against nostalgia, contrasts looking back to a golden age with Jesus inaugurating the coming kingdom, and lands on a pledge appeal celebrating the paid-off debt and casting vision for children/youth, adult education, and missions including Bee Creek Village.
Illustrations: history-of-methodism-podcast, buckingham-english-civil-war, laud-prayer-book-bishops-war, franz-ferdinand-assassination, astros-greinke-game-7-2019, faulkner-past-never-dead, peter-pentecost-9am-joke, love-will-not-play-fair-quote, bee-creek-founding-story, ananias-sapphira-church-stuff, joshua-tribes-competing, like-church-not-church-stuff, kids-these-days-nostalgia, wesley-heart-strangely-warmed
October 17
The Church in the Past
The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything. They would sell pieces of property and possessions and distribute the proceeds to everyone who needed them. Every day, they met together in the temple and ate in their homes. They shared food with gladness and simplicity. They praised God and demonstrated God’s goodness to everyone. The Lord added daily to the community those who were being saved. - Acts 2:42-47
I studied history in college. I enjoy history. Not just the stories, but the complexity that emerges out of such study. I have shared in the newsletter about my History of Methodism podcast. I started it a few years ago but stopped after a few episodes. And then, through some encouragement, I started it back up again. I put out a new episode once a month and it covers Methodist history with a very wide lens. Most stories of Methodism begin either at the birth of John Wesley or at his experience in college with the Holy Club. I began 200 years before Wesley with Martin Luther, in order to show the different intellectual and political influences that shaped the movement that shaped the church we are in today. One of the main reasons for going so far back and into such detail is to realize that a lot of what many people see as John Wesley’s innovations were just him repackaging what others had already done. If you ignore the history, Wesley seems a lot more impressive. When you pay attention to the history, Wesley is not as intellectually creative, but I think that that makes the movement more powerful. It is not just about him but about God moving through him. Another big reason for going back so far in history is to realize the absolute contingency of most human events. Starting just with English History, if James I had not made his best friend and son’s dancing instructor into the Duke of Buckingham, England probably would not have lost so many battles in the 1620s to make Charles I disband parliament for over a decade of personal rule, which led to Civil War. If Charles had not demanded the Scottish use William Laud’s prayer book, the Scottish would have not revolted in the first Bishop’s War, which also caused the Civil War.
All of human history is filled with these contingent moments. If Franz Ferdinand’s driver hadn’t tried to hide from the assassins in Sarejevo in front of Gavrilo Princip, there would have been no first world war. If the Astros former manager had kept Zach Greinke on the mound for Game 7 in 2019, the Astros would have won their second World Series. This is absolute fact.
Our history shapes our present and our future. Our history did not need to be the way it was. This goes for the world and for the church, as well as the local church.
My friends we are starting a new sermon series on the Church: Past, Present, and Future. Looking at where we have been as a church, where we are, and where we are going.
We start with the past, but as William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The decisions and choices of the past shape who we are today. The generosity of the past shapes our understanding, as well, of what is possible today.
Pentecost is celebrated every year as the birthday of the church. Pentecost is the time when Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to the people, as he had promised at his ascension. And earlier in Acts 2, Peter gives a great sermon. He has a fun joke about how people are accusing the Christians of being drunk, but how that is absurd because it is only 9am. Thankfully tailgating was not around at the time.
We then get to this passage at the end of chapter 2.
The believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the community, to their shared meals, and to their prayers. A sense of awe came over everyone. God performed many wonders and signs through the apostles. All the believers were united and shared everything.
This sounds wonderful! A taste of heaven. The believers were united and devoted to God in teaching and prayer and meals. This is the church being the church in a powerful way. They shared everything. They prayed all the time. But the radical thing was not what they did with their money or their time, it is how they let God guide their lives. As one of my teachers once wrote,
“People caught up in the love of God not only began to give thanks for their daily bread, but daily offered to God whatever they had that might speak that gracious love to others. What is far more dangerous than any plan of shared wealth or fair distribution of goods and services is a God who dares impose on us divine love. Such love will not play fair. In the moment we think something is ours, or our people’s, that same God will demand we sell it, give it away, or offer more of it in order to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, or shelter the homeless, using it to create the bonds of shared life.”
I love that line, ‘Such love will not play fair.’ So often we look to God’s love, for it to work within the status quo we find ourselves. If we are at a good place in life, we want it to stay the same. If we are struggling, we want the struggle to change, but not too much. We want to get to the good place.
Twenty years ago, the land we are sitting on was a failed real estate deal from the 70s. There were no plans for a church or anything in the area. The Austin District of the UMC was looking to North Austin with their church plants. This area did not fit the profile. The demographics didn’t fit with what the textbook said would be a good location for a church plant.
Our present existence as a church was contingent on circumstances no one could have expected. Nothing was inevitable. The next year, a group of residents in Briarcliff wrote the Austin District Superintendent about the need for a church here. By the summer, David Payne was appointed. By the next Palm Sunday, in 2003, the first official worship service took place at Resort Ranch on Pace Bend Rd. The original property search focused on that area, especially the land right around Pace Bend Rd and 71, but no plans were firm. The church was chartered that September, which meant that it no longer received support from the Methodist Church and could stand on its own. Chartering less than a year after a first worship service is never done, but it happened with Bee Creek. That is when the direction of the property search shifted here, to what is now 3000 Bee Creek Road. The dream of the building was a dream for God being present and glorified here, as well as for the community here to be served and cared for. In August of 2005, a few years later, after the land had been donated and purchased, the church approved a loan from the Texas Methodist Foundation of 2.4 million dollars for the building of the original campus and sanctuary. A lot of people have come to Christ here. A lot of people have been baptized and turned their lives around here.
What was true with both the early church and with the beginnings of Bee Creek is that people were open to the movements of God in directions that they could have never predicted. People were caught up in the love of God, but God’s love can be dangerous for our expectations of ourselves. God may ask us to do things we didn’t predict.
As well, in the early church, and at Bee Creek, there has been some church stuff going on. This term comes from one of my parents’ friends, who said, i like church, i don’t like church stuff. People have left. People have been hurt. People have said things that should not have been said. Acts 2 is great and beautiful, but in Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira stop sharing and the church basically goes off the rails. The church, in fact, begins to look like the tribes of Israel in the book of Joshua, after they entered the promised land and got a place for themselves. Brothers started competing against brothers. There was a lot of fighting. There was also a lot of talk about the good old days.
The great danger of our past is nostalgia. Nostalgia makes everything old great and everything new problematic. “Kids these days, I tell you what. If only things would be like I remember, everything would be fine.”
The yearning for a past golden age is as old as writing itself. The ancient Greeks spoke of it often.
The troubles of the present always seem new and the troubles of the past always seem minor, yet this is not how God views history or the past. Were that the case, God would be trying to get all of us back into Eden. Jesus says, “You foolish Generation” again and again, but he doesn’t do it in a ‘kids these days’ kind of way. And instead of looking back to the glory days of the temple or of the tabernacle or life with Abraham and Sarah or even the garden, Jesus looks forward to the coming kingdom of God. More than that, Jesus inaugurates it. The kingdom of heaven is here! Repent! Which means, turn around! Turn your life around! You don’t need to follow the path of destruction. The path of life is here.
This building wasn’t built for the people at that first worship service in 2003. This church wasn’t built for the first donors. People didn’t pledge and give to glorify themselves but for God’s future and God’s kingdom. The point was not to recreate the church of the past but to share God’s grace and peace and love now and in the future.
We have shared pledge cards with you all here today and you all watching at home. Pledges for the next year. We are pretty darn excited to no longer have a place to give for debt reduction on the card.
After Pentecost, the church gathered and shared together not because they knew what God was doing, but because they knew that God was there. A pledge is a gift for the future based on an experience in the past. The church has historically understood the tithe as a balanced way to give to God. 10% of our income as a reachable goal for us to honor God. A tithe to God is not a membership fee nor is it a maximum gift. It is a way that Christians have responded to God and found grace in responding. Your pledge helps us plan and budget the next year for what God is doing and we don’t want to slow God down. Paying off the debt is not a moment to rest on our laurels but to continue our mission with untied hands. Next year, we hope to support our children and youth programs even more. Next year, we hope to increase our adult education and bible study opportunities so that everyone has a chance to grow closer to God in the Scriptures. Next year, we hope to build out our missions work here and around the world. We want to start in our community, with a dream called Bee Creek Village, but we also want to intentionally serve the different communities of our mission field, on both sides of the Pedernales River.
The past is not the future, but Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. The same Spirit that floated on the tongues at Pentecost, the same spirit that settled on John Wesley and made his heart strangely warmed, the same spirit that spread Methodists around the country and around the world, the same spirit that planted a church here 19 years ago, the same spirit that dreamed this building 16 years ago, that same spirit is with us this day, and that same Spirit is not finished with us.
May you receive God’s grace this day. May you be caught up in the love of God, but may you also be ready for God to push in directions you cannot imagine. God is here for you, but not just for you. God wants you to be here for others. That is why the church is here. That is what our past is about.
Let us pray,
Heavenly father, your grace was sufficient at Pentecost, your love filled the hearts of the early Christians, may we receive that same spirit this day. May we remember that the love of God continues to transform lives and transform the world, and may we be willing to be transformed by God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.