Scripture: Acts 15:6-12; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Matthew 18:20; Acts 2:44-46 Series: 2021
Second in a past/present/future series on the Church, this sermon uses the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 to argue that faithful disagreement is built into the church’s life. Drawing on the pastor’s high-school debate experience (and the manipulative tactic of ‘spreading’), it contrasts shallow talking-point culture with the humble, Spirit-led discernment of Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and James over Gentile inclusion. The present is the unsettled time where the church has agency and choice; God includes debate in Scripture as a model. Applied to current UMC General Conference tensions and the pastor’s own delegate role, the call is to be a field hospital rather than a private club, to discern together, and concretely to support the church through a stewardship pledge and a Helping Hands give-away.
Illustrations: high-school-debate-spreading, politicians-talking-points, aggie-longhorn-fans, lincoln-douglas-ideal, church-under-bridge-screamer, mikveh-circumcision, general-conference-kansas-city, field-hospital-private-club, eighty-twenty-organization, glass-darkly, helping-hands-giveaway
October 24
The Church in the Present
The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” The whole assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles. - Acts 15:6-12
When I was in high school, I was on the debate team. I enjoyed it because my friends were there. It was an excuse to leave campus because we would go to debate tournaments in the middle of the day. And so you got to get out of the class, which was great. At tournaments, I mostly did foreign extemporaneous speech. I had done a lot of research and would draw a random topic and have about 5 minutes to prepare a speech on it. I also did LD, Lincoln Douglas, which is a one-on-one debate format that goes back and forth a few times, but I was much better at extemporaneous debate. I had friends who did CX or cross-examination debate, which is a format where you have a partner and there is one topic for the whole year. For instance, this year, the topic is “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase its protection of water resources in the United States.” There’s an affirmative team and a negative team. So even if you personally think that the US should increase protection of water, you have to find arguments against the resolution. And, if you disagree, you have to make arguments in favor of it. The point, though, is not to convince the other side, but to convince the judge, who was usually either a college kid who had done debate in high school, or a parent who had no idea what was going on. I had a lot of fun practicing CX, even though I didn’t compete in it. That’s where I learned how to spread. For instance, here is the preamble of the constituon spread
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The point of spreading is to talk so fast that your opponent doesn’t understand all of your argument, because they are taking notes, but the judge does.
Outside of the formal area of high school debate, the language of debate and argument changed dramatically because of the internet. There used to be this hope for honest debate. People would imagine that they were like Lincoln and Stephen Douglas laying out extensive arguments and people could be persuaded by them. But the reality is far from that. Every politician says their talking points and little else whenever they speak or write or tweet. Even during an interview or debate, they try to race back to their talking points as soon as possible. A lot of online interactions seem to be people who have absorbed the talking points of politicians or podcast hosts, which they then spew those back and forth in this consistent regurgitation of what other people say. Attempted political dialogue online is as reasonable as an Aggie and a Longhorn talking about whose fans are better.
The church from the very beginning has had debates about how to be faithful to Jesus Christ. These debates can also be contentious. It often seems like it would be easier and nicer if everything was already resolved. And we could just go through with what other people had already agreed to or what God had directly told us to do. It would be great if we didn’t have to think, if we didn’t have to persuade, if we didn’t have to debate, but that is not the church we have. That is not the world we have. Ours is not a world of robots, but of humans made in the image of God, seeking the good of Jesus in the midst of a broken and challenging generation. My friends, we’re continuing our series on the Church: past present, and future. Last week, we talked about the church of the past and how it forms and shapes us. Today, the church of the present. Sometimes the church of the present is not as comfortable as the church of the past or the church of the future. We’d like things to be settled. The present is the most unsettled time because the present is the time when we actually have the opportunity to change things. We have agency over our now in the church and outside of the church. For instance, one of you, at this moment, could choose to stand up and start screaming at me. I’ve been at a sermon where someone stood up and started screaming at me. It was actually at church under the bridge, under interstate 35. When that happened, I just kind of kept going, but it could happen anywhere. There is this potential of something really weird taking place. It’s not likely, but there is the potential. We all have choices in our life. You have the choice to get up in the morning. Now, if you don’t get up in the morning, there are consequences. For most of us, if you don’t go to your job, you may not have that job again, but it is a choice you can make. The church at present is filled with opportunity, but also everyone does not agree about everything. It would be nice in some ways to go back to the church in Acts 2 where everyone lived of one accord. But like I said last week, that perfect church did not last very long. Here, in Acts 15, after the martyrdom of Stephen, after the conversion of Paul, we have the great Jerusalem council. A debate is going on about whether or not Gentiles can be Christians, whether or not circumcision is necessary.
What we understand as Baptism came out of ancient jewish practice. It was a cleansing called the Mikveh, which means immersion. John the Baptist did not invent it. Orthodox Jewish communities practice it during conversion. Someone interested in becoming Jewish is immersed in water to be cleansed. After that, if you’re a male, you have to be circumcised, whether or not you were eight days old or eight years old or 80 years old, you had to be circumcised in order to become Jewish. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day. A lot of circumcision talk today, not what you expected, but that’s where we are with the Bible. In Acts 15, they trying to figure out how important circumscision is for the faith of Christians. And the debate that took place in scripture at Jerusalem was this: what was the breadth of inclusion in the church of Jesus Christ? What steps need to be taken to receive grace? There were voices on both sides, the results of the debates and the act of the Holy Spirit was to include Gentiles into the faith. But I think what we need to hold onto today is that God in God’s wisdom includes this debate and argument in our holy scriptures. We have a model of what debating about the faith can and should be. The church has debated many things since that time. There’ve been many church councils about what faithfulness looks like. Some of them have to do with the person of Jesus Christ, another looked at what the person of the Holy Spirit is, another tried to figure out what to do with images, whether or not images are inherently wicked and idolatrous, or whether we can pray to God through representations of Jesus and the prophets where icons can be holy. These councils and debates didn’t always end in unity. And yet, to seek the faithfulness of God, I think we should be like Peter and Barnabas and Paul and James and seek God with humility without control. We should realize that we are not finished by God’s grace. At this moment, we are not now in glory. We do not currently see God face to face and so we should seek and trust others who are seeking the truth together.
Over the last few years, the United Methodist Church has been in deep debates about its future. The UMC is found in the US, Europe, Africa, and the Philippines. The regular meeting that makes decisions for the church, General Conference, was supposed to meet in 2020, but it did not. Now, it is scheduled for next year in Minneapolis. I am a member of our conference’s delegation so I have been a part of a lot of these conversions.
I’m going to go to Kansas City this afternoon to be a part of another one of those talks. I want to be open with Bee Creek about these conversations about our future because they start right here and now in the present. We cannot put our heads in the sand. Conversations about how to read the Bible together, how to love people, how we can be church together, how we can make tough decisions together, how we can talk to each other. Even though it may feel good sometimes to put our heads in the sand or try to fast forward life, we have agency over this. The church of the present has agency over choosing who we wish to be, who we wish to follow, choosing this day to be a church of Jesus Christ and not of ourselves. We say the creed at 9am during communion to remind us what has been revealed about God. What is non-negotiable. The Trinity, Jesus as all human and all God, creation, redemption, the Holy Spirit active in the world. Our need for grace. Beyond those, there are still a lot of choices we can make
We can choose this day to be a church that is not a private club, but a field hospital, caring for the wounded in this world.1
In a lot of see ways, it would be easier to be a private club. You don’t have to think about other people outside the gates there. You just think about your members, give them what they want, make sure they’re happy. This is not how Jesus ministered or preached or lived or loved because to love someone is not to let them stay in states of self-destruction. He doesn’t just go around, correcting them either. Jesus comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. As well, we aren’t given this perfect method of knowing exactly what we need to do. We have to discern it together. We have to be the church together. We have to invest in this together. We have to take the time to talk to each other about difficult things. We have to take the time to not just regurgitate talking points or spread like a did in debate, talking so fast and sharing so much information that no one has time to respond, but instead, to hear and listen and seek faithfulness to God. The church of the present is a church in the midst of ever-new self discovery of who we are. Part of that is how we read the Bible together, how we worship together, how we serve others together, how we share the good news together. It’s also how we are generous to God and to each other, how we show Christ’s generosity in our lives. Questions that may seem obvious to us are not as obvious when we talk to others of different circumstances. Last week, I talked about pledges. I’m talking about it again today because the pledge is an opportunity for the church today to be a part of what God is doing here. For us to commit to this continual journey of self discovery as the church. We are not just our past. We are not just our potential. We are the body of Christ right now. And when we submit a pledge, we are making a claim about who God is for us and who this church is for us and who this church can be. The claim is not based on earning anything or membership fees, but it’s wholly on the grace of Jesus Christ that God has offered to each of us. Generosity is an opportunity to grow closer to God, to let go of control over all aspects of our life and offer it to God in the form of this body of Christ. Where we come together to worship, serve, love, listen, discern and pray about the best use of the resources that you have given us, seeking to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this community to draw people closer to God, to invite people to make a commitment to Jesus, to raise our children in the faith, to form believers into disciples, to share mercy with those who are hurting to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to give as a body, not just for ourselves to give our own tide as a church, to ministries of mercy and sacrifice. God doesn’t call each of us to put the weight of the world on our backs or the weight of the church. The church is not just another 80/20 organization where 20% of teh people do 80% of the work. Sometimes it seems like that with the same people volunteering for the same things, but the difference is that this body is present now and in eternity. The church is the place where God’s yes is said, which is stronger than the no of the world. We do not ask you to have all the answers but we need you to be the church. We need each of your to respond to God’s yes in this place. We are more together. We will be more tomorrow than we are today. Your pledge of support now let’s us look forward to what God can be doing here. This week, as well, we will start collecting for our community give away. We will be collecting fall/winter clothing, shoes, linens, pots and pans, dishes, utensils, and small kitchen appliances to give out for free at Helping Hands Crisis Ministry on November 9. It is an opportunity to lighten your home in order to share what you have with those in need. It is a chance to see where you are, but sometimes we don’t like to look where we are. We would rather look to the future or the past.
The church of the present is not always easy, but it is always meaningful. Sometimes it means that people will disagree with you. In most aspects of life, if you come across someone who disagrees with you, the easiest thing to do is to just leave, go somewhere else or ask them to go somewhere else. We don’t have a debate judge, like I did in high school. What we do have is the holy spirit where Jesus tells us where two or three are gathered there I will be also. Where we are gathered, we open ourselves up to God, Christ is present here. And now my brothers and sisters, Christ is present with us. Christ is present not to resolve all things that are confusing here and now, but to offer love in the midst of this brokenness, when we still do not see God clearly, as it says in first Corinthians 13, when we are with him, we shall understand all. But now we see through a glass darkly. In this darkened glass, we are offered life. Help us be the church together, commit to support the church here and now. We have agency, you have a choice. We cannot decide today who we have been We can decide today who we are. We can decide to be the body of Christ here and now as fully and expansively as humanly imaginable. In fact, beyond our imagination, God can be present here. We can choose to be a part of it. So take that choice. My brothers and sisters take that choice in prayer. Take that choice in love. Take that choice in self-sacrifice offer to God this day and God will meet you. Let us pray
Heavenly Father, you did not make us to be puppets but to be friends. Help us to accept the responsibility of friendship with you by faithfully serving you and our neighbors. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Footnotes
-
Pope Francis ↩