Lessons from the Early Church Part Two: Costly Faith

Faith costs something. Depending upon your perspective, that is either so obvious that it is trite, or a powerful reminder that discipleship is not without a price. Last Sunday we addressed the resurrection of Lazarus as a defining event in the Christian faith, a story that gave those early communities great hope and our community a sense of the possibilities of a faith life together today. In this the second week of our sermon series we turn to a story about the first Christian Martyr, Stephen.

Many of us enjoy being first in line, first in a race, or first to be promoted, but few of us wish to place first in martyrdom. It is too high a price to pay for faith. Acts tells the story in the style of great legends, and in the words of his speech it is clear that Stephen must have been considered a person of bold faith. After all, his ability to speak with unwavering conviction led to the confrontation that ended in his death.

The account we have in Acts has all of the elements of a Hollywood classic where a hero-figure is the object of injustice and evil. I mean, honestly – who would you cast as Stephen? Surely one of the best lines in this story is when he calls those who have gathered to judge him “stiff-necked people”! I need to remember that line when I become frustrated. And how interesting is it to know that Saul is waiting in the wings about to have an amazing transformation of his own?

Stephen, we know, ultimately pays the price for his strong convictions. Depending on where you live, religious persecution is still very real today. This past week, the Jerusalem Post published an article about the thousands of Palestinian Christians denied access to the holiest of Orthodox Easter sites by the Israeli authority.   In Nigeria, a suicide bomber killed 36 people and injured 13 others in Kaduna on Good Friday this year, after church security workers turned him away from the church they were guarding.  Perhaps even today Bibles are being smuggled into regions of Columbia where many outspoken Christians have been imprisoned for their beliefs by the FARC, a Marxist paramilitary group.

Granted, these situations I mention have a multitude of other social, economic and political issues to deal with. And I’ll also agree that there have been plenty of times in our history and when Christians have committed atrocities and persecuted others. Sometimes we Christians even persecute one another because we may have deeply held convictions or interpretations that conflict with one another.

What I do want to suggest to you is that no matter where we live or who we are, eventually our faith will cost us something.

When the 1992 Los Angeles riots broke out, 15 year old Karla was on the bus heading home from school. She could smell the smoke and see the fires. When she looked out the window she would see looters running down the streets, their arms full of things they took from vandalized stores. In fear and terror she was let off the bus to run home from safety that day. It was about a week later that Karla worked up the bravery to leave her family’s small apartment.

Her neighborhood was like an abandoned warzone, everywhere she looked were piles of burnt rubble, twisted metal, and smashed concrete. The streets around her looked nothing like southern California, but more like her native El Salvador which her family had fled when she was a child. The city and its people seemed lost, unable to begin putting the pieces back together. Everyone was afraid.

Karla’s high school biology teacher, Tammy, was deeply upset about what was happening to her students and how they had suffered during the riots and their aftermath. She wanted to empower Karla and the others and help them regain their sense of community with one another. Before the riots, you see, students easily crossed racial, ethnic and religious boundaries. But now, that kind of coexistence was shattered. Tammy wanted her students to know that they could live peacefully together again.

So this teacher had an idea. Behind their classroom was a cluttered, weed-filled vacant lot. Tammy invited her students to farm this quarter acre plot of land and plant a community garden. The students pulled the weeds one by one, creating a place for new life to grow. They planted herbs and tomatoes. Next came cabbage, lettuce and carrots. Soon the vacant lot was transformed from wasteland to wonderland.

The students were thrilled to donate 25% of their first harvest to their local homeless shelter. They sold the rest to farmer’s markets. Eventually, the profits from this adventure in urban gardening became a scholarship fund which sent many of those inner city kids on to college and successful careers.

In November of 1994, Prince Charles accepted an invitation to come and visit the program they now called “Food from the Hood”. And guess who gave him the walking tour? Karla. The young woman afraid of leaving her house after the Los Angeles riots was now the one that was chosen to lead the way. Karla’s faith in her community, after experiencing such devastation and fear, led her to a life of commitment, service, humility, and sacrifice.

When we respond to any great love there will be calls for our time and energy, as well as our money and resources. Just as any significant relationship can stretch us and challenge us to grow as a person, so our relationships here in this faith community stretch us as Disciples of Christ. One of the opportunities for that to happen here is when we gather in worship.

Some of you come to worship to be comforted, something in your life is causing you sadness or pain. Others want our time together to challenge their assumptions and beliefs; they want to be inspired, to have something to think about going out into the week ahead. Some of you want to know that your contribution to this community matters, and others are waiting to hear an invitation to serve. To follow through on such connections requires us to be bold.

There are other ways in which we are bold together. When I think of the cost of faith here in this community, I am reminded of our commitment to OCWM – Our Church’s Wider Mission. Every year around budget time we ask ourselves why we are being so generous. It costs so much to be in relationship with the wider church. Why do we do it?

We give to OCWM so that churches like ours have help in times of transition and conflict. MCC needs help to find our next Associate Pastor. Our regional minister, who spends countless hours helping us sort through resumes, is paid through OCWM. We give so that new churches can be planted, so that God’s love may be shared in a dry and weary land. We give so that missionaries in conflicted places like the ones I spoke about earlier can help existing Christian communities live and worship without fear. We give so that young lives may be changed at Silver Lake Conference Center. All of these bold witnesses for our wider church are supported through the generosity of churches like ours with OCWM financial support, and yes, it has taken a lot of courage in lean years to make such a costly gift.

In this congregation, we hold in front of us both a personal and communal discipleship that is rooted in love and grows through faith. This sense of discipleship compels us to move out of the shallow waters of daily living and into the depths of true life. This much we have in common with Stephen: Our lives are not always made easier by being a disciple; but they are made more fulfilling when we are together, moving into the deep waters of faith.