Scripture: Acts 28:28-31; 1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Corinthians 15:54-55; Leviticus 25; Isaiah 6:9 Series: 2021
Concluding a three-part series on the Church (past, present, future) on a celebration day, Pruitt reads the abrupt ending of Acts (28:28-31) where Paul, frustrated but not rejecting, keeps ministering under house arrest. He argues the church’s story is unfinished—God is still writing ‘Acts 29’ through the congregation. Paul’s frustration (echoing Isaiah’s ‘eyes but do not see’) models persistence, while the resurrection (‘spoiler alert, Jesus lives’) is the known ending that frees us from anxious speculation about an unpredictable future. He develops Leviticus’ Jubilee as a ‘trumpet blast of liberty’: God’s economy cancels all debt, an ‘inefficient’ economy of grace that creates a moral-hazard objection (why be good if saved anyway?). Answering with Peter Maurin’s ‘I try to make it easier for people to be good,’ he casts the pastor/church’s task as removing roadblocks to faith. Free in Christ and entering its own Jubilee, the church must still respond to grace—feeding the hungry, welcoming new people, and being the body of Christ, closing with 1 Corinthians 15’s promise that death is swallowed up in victory.
Illustrations: bible-as-solved-mystery, movie-twist-spoilers, frustrated-parent-chores, acts-29-network, leviticus-jubilee, mortgage-amortization-grace, black-swan-future-speculation, peter-maurin-easier-to-be-good, removing-rocks-from-childs-feet, failed-real-estate-deal-beacon, jesus-likes-to-party-cana-song
October 31
The Church of the Future
“Therefore, be certain of this: God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles. They will listen!” Paul lived in his own rented quarters for two full years and welcomed everyone who came to see him. Unhindered and with complete confidence, he continued to preach God’s kingdom and to teach about the Lord Jesus Christ. Acts 28:28-31
I love the sense in a mystery novel or movie or show, of trying to solve the puzzle. I love being in the position of figuring out what happened. Whodunit? One of my teachers said that we should read the Bible like a mystery novel in which we already know the ending. Spoiler alert. Christ is risen. The Bible is one of those great mysteries where you can go back and see all the clues even after you know the twist. You know who Kaiser Sosé is. You know who Luke’s father is. You know whodunit. Every mystery has two narratives on top of each other. One is obvious and contains a lot of misdirections and red herrings. The other is only revealed at the end, usually by the lead detective. It doesn’t take much time to tell the second narrative, but in that moment, the whole truth is explained.
But what happens after you solve the case? For a lot of mystery writers, you just publish the next book the next year and people read them on airplanes and that is a successful career. But what happens for you and me once we solve the great mystery of our life, the great puzzle of our life, what happens next? What is our future? My brothers and sisters, I’m concluding our series on the Church: past, present, and future looking at where we have been as a church, where we are now and where we are going. Today is a very special day, a celebration, but a celebration does not an ending. Our existence does not end today. God has more in store for us, but what exactly is that? The acts of the apostles, which covers the earliest actions of the church ends in Rome. The apostle Paul is in Rome. He is under house arrest. He had been accused of actions against Rome. He is a Roman citizen and so he had the right to appeal to the emperor, which he did. He also took the time to minister to the Jewish and Christian communities in Rome at the time. In the passage just before my reading, just before the very end of the book, Paul reads from Isaiah and says that the prophet is describing the church in Rome. It’s the same passage from Isaiah that Jesus quotes: “they have ears, but do not hear they have eyes, but do not see.” Paul was frustrated by the people. Frustration is a common occurrence in life. It happens when things you think are going to happen don’t happen. That tension can lead to frustration. The things your kids say they’re going to do, and they don’t do. Brush your teeth. Make your bed. Wash your hands. And you get frustrated. Why didn’t you buckle your seatbelts? These are always things we need to do. I’m not angry. I am frustrated.” Frustration is not rejection. You can be frustrated with someone, but that is not a way to reject them or to give up on them or to walk away. Paul is frustrated with the people, but he does not walk away. He stays and ministers to them and the book of acts ends with the words of Acts 28. There is a church network movement called the acts 29 network. A number of churches around the country are involved with, at emerged in the early two thousands, especially with, the Village in north of Dallas and the former Mars hill in Seattle. Churches with a very heavy Reformed mentality. This is following the works of John Calvin, focusing on total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints, focusing on these five things that come from the Synod of Dort, but they call themselves the acts 29 network.
I don’t agree with the theology or most of the churches, but I like the name. I like the idea that the God is writing Acts chapter 29, now, through us. It is very biblical. What happens after Paul, after Peter and James and John? What happens after Polycarp and Ignatius and the great fathers of the early church? What happens after Perpetua and Felicitas and the mothers of the early church? Paul, in reading from Isaiah, points to the prophecy and frustration of the old way of knowing God, as well, he points to frustration in the new way of knowing God after the resurrection. After the existence of church, there is still frustration in this world. There are still moments of having eyes but not seeing, having ears, but not listening. Being a church often fluctuates in those moments. And yet, we know the end of the story. We know of Christ’s victory. We know of the resurrection. Spoiler alert, Jesus lives. What happens next Is our future with God. We know what brought us to this day. There was a vision for a church in this place. People responded to God’s word, proclaimed God’s mercy and lives were changed, hearts were transformed, A failed real estate deal from the seventies, turned into a beacon on a hill. We are not done. The end of acts 28 does not mean the end of the church. Our story does not end God’s story. Jubilee is not an ending but a new beginning.
A trumpet blast of Liberty. That is a Jubilee in the book of Leviticus. The third book of the bible stipulated that after a Sabbath of Sabbath years, so seven of seven years, then there shall be a trumpet blast of Liberty. The debts shall be free. What you owed will no longer be owed because all the land was given by God, The title to the promised land, if you follow the title all the way back, it goes to God. This is one of the reasons why land transactions in ancient Israel did not happen very often. There were no large landowners because the land had been given by God to the tribes and would always return back to the original owners.The system of Jubilee did not continue very long, though. There aren’t many recorded instances of Jubilee. Modern economists might use the term moral hazard with Jubilee. If you know that your debts are going to be paid off, why pay back any of them at all? Here we get to how the economy of God is very different from the economy of man. God doesn’t fluctuate between good debt and bad debt, between the red and the black. All of this is a gift from God and all has been paid off. One of the most fascinating things for me, in growing older is the long term planning of mortgages, of pensions, of saving for vacations. When I was younger, none of that seemed possible. As I grew older, as I got married, these sorts of plans around future debts, future expectations, crept into my life. The church of the future does not have an easy amortization schedule, though. There’s not a 30 year fixed or a 15 year fixed rate for God’s grace. The economy of grace is entirely inefficient. The economy of grace of God offers a deep, moral hazard. Why, if I am going to be saved anyway, why should I be good? Why should I be kind? Doesn’t it make more sense just to do whatever I wanted to do anyway and then ask forgiveness at the end? “God forgives, i don’t” or some other macho mantra. Doesn’t it make more sense? Shouldn’t we just be happy with what we’ve got here? Why should we invite new people? We like the people here. What if we don’t like the people we invite? What if we invite the wrong kind of people? What if people move to our area that don’t act like we think they should act? What if instead of becoming more like us, they want us to become more like them? What about the stuff that’s going to happen? What about people who are going to die? What about that? I am going to die.
There’s this downward spiral of future speculation that we all can suffer from, whether we’re 16 or 60 or 106. There’s no end point to the speculation. Sometimes, there’s solace in financial planning because that, at least, has some basis of past history, but there are still black swan events. Many things we cannot predict about the future. We don’t know the twists and turns our life will take. There are probably some red herrings or paths we are going to go down and then have to turn around. We don’t know the twists and turns our faith will take, we don’t know the twists and turns this church will take, but we know the mystery, we know who did it. We know the secret: Christ is risen. One of my great influences in Ministry was a man named Peter Mauron, who was a French hermit. He traveled around and wrote these poems and helped Dorothy Day start the Catholic worker movement in the 1930s. In one of Peter Maurin’s poems, he says, “I try to make it easier for people to be good.” I try to make it easier for people to be good. I can’t make people be good. I can’t make someone make a good decision with their life. I can’t force it on them, then it wouldn’t be theirs. What I can do is make it a little easier. Take away some stumbling blocks. As a parent, I can remember the places where I tripped up and then try and move those rocks from my child’s feet. I know they’re going to trip. I know they’re going to fall, but maybe they won’t fall in exactly the same way as I did. As a pastor, I know the ways I’ve fallen in faith and that God has lifted me up. And I know that people at my church are going to fall and get hurt. People are going to be sick, but maybe just maybe, through God working through me, I can help it be a little easier on them. I can help take away some of the roadblocks to faith for our children and youth. I can help take away some of the roadblocks to faith for those going through hard times. As a church, even if this is your first Sunday with us, we are stepping into our own Jubilee future, our own trumpet sound of liberty, I think that’s what the point of Jubilee in Leviticus is about. It’s great to be able to build a beautiful sanctuary like this. It’s great to be able to build a wonderful church where people can feel at home, where we can worship God, where we can share mercy, where we can teach the faith, where we can say, I love my church, But it’s also great not to be limited by past decisions, which is what debt is. All debt is using the future to pay something now in the present. Paying off debt is freeing our future from the obligations of the present and the past. It is having a wide open footing for God’s grace to act now and in the future. It’s great to be nimble in responding to God’s call on our life. This is why we are celebrating after the service. As I wrote in a children’s song about the wedding at Cana. Jesus likes to Party, he doesn’t want us to feel sorry. When others think that their not fine he turns the water into wine.
A trumpet sound of Liberty. You are free in Christ. You know the end of the story. Jesus is alive. Death has been defeated. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15
“Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”” 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, 54-55 NRSV
Our future in Christ is free. Our Jubilee makes it easier for us to be good, but we still must respond to God’s grace. We still must respond to God’s call to feed the hungry. We still must respond to God’s call to gather together to be the body of Christ here and now, to welcome in new people, to seek out those hurting in this time and in this place to offer mercy and love, to live out the mission that God has called us to. Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we are so honored by your mercy and love and faithfulness. Help us to honor your faithfulness towards us by building the church of the future now. We know the end of the story. We know of your victory over death, let us live into that truth now together. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen