Lessons from the Early Church Part Three: Love is a Verb

Acts 2:42-47 For the past two weeks we have been considering together what life might have been like for the early church. The Raising of Lazarus reminded us of the resurrection hope of the community then and the new life we embrace together today. Stephen’s bravery last week suggested to us that we too can be bold in our living and our giving as a faith community.

In today’s final installment, we will hear a little bit about how the early church got along with one another, how they held all things in common and supported one another. How the strength of their love for one another helped them spread the gospel to a world that desperately needed to hear the Good News.

But first, I just need to ask you: Seriously? Are we to believe these early church folks were really like this? Especially that bit about the selling what they owned to give to those in need. Do you feel even a little bit skeptical that life for them was really that way?

On the western shores of the Sea of Galilee, at the foot of Mount Arbel facing the Golan Heights lies the kibbutz at Ginosar. Founded in 1937 by the Young Socialist Party, a kibbutz is an experiment in communal living. Once an active farm, the site has become a tourist location featuring a museum which houses the 2,000 year old “Jesus Boat”.

Here on the kibbutz, young Israelis and Jews from all over the world gather to live and work together in community. Presently there are about 106,000 people living on the 256 different Kibbutzim. Residents share everything they own, and hold all property in common with one another. No one earns a paycheck, but they do earn food, clothing and housing.

During my visit at Ginosar I had the opportunity to meet some of the young people who live and work there. They spoke to me with great optimism about the community and its many benefits, and the depth of friendship among its members.

They told me things like:
…“I always know that my sisters and brothers here have my back.”
…“It’s wonderful to live closely together, sharing these experiences with one another.”
… “Each new person arrives with their life stories. We stay up late learning from and listening to one another.”
… “Holding everything in common helps us to keep the peace, no one has any more or less than he or she needs.”

I have no idea if these statements the youth shared with me were really true or not. These outgoing young people might have been from the Kibbutz Welcoming Committee for all I know, trying to get me to sign up and live there with them.

It’s a tempting thought, but I am not so sure my family would be into the move.

Speaking with these earnest, happy young people reminded me of my youth and the time I spent living in community at Silver Lake Conference Center. A part of me longs for those teenage years when I had such a close group of friends and the world was bright and beautiful every day.

Sometimes when we remembering times gone by we forget all of the bad stuff we’d muddled through. When I think about those years living at camp with so many others,
… it’s easy to forget that I shared a bathroom with nine young women for the summer,
… or that we argued about whose turn it was to use the washer/dryer,
… or which one of us borrowed another’s sweatshirt

It’s far easier for me to remember that we shared a common space, that when one of us received a care package we shared it equally, that when one of us cried we dropped everything to comfort that person, and that we covered for one another when we were exhausted. When I think back to the memories of my summers living at camp, I remember best the moments when we were a blessed community.

I wonder if being young has something to do it. Is it harder for adults to pull off living in community well? I mean, we’ve got – well – stuff! Most of us bring years of emotional baggage which we either suppress or use to keep others away. We’re established in life! Adults are concerned with who is in charge, and who has the authority in the system.

Both of these communities I describe: the kibbutz and Silver Lake are filled with mostly idealistic young people who are ready to change the world. But young people in any community, when they can be real with one another, share their sorrow as well as their joy. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean that you haven’t felt pain, rejection and grief.

Christians, and Congregationalists in particular, have always had a bit of an idealistic streak. We want peace in our church community, without any tension or arguments. We try and balance our ministries so that everyone has a share of resources according to their needs. We serve in places like Monroe, Bridgeport, Sharon, South Dakota and Cleveland so that all God’s children might have food, shelter, education and friendship. And we go on living our regular lives here in this regular town striving for a higher love.

What is clear is that at the heart of this church community is relationship. How we treat one another as brothers and sisters is the way we live out the commandment to “love one another as we love ourselves”. Those words we say each week from our covenant: “in Christian Love, we will care for and support each other” mean something real.

At coffee hour last week, I wandered over to say hello to some of our church school children. They were eating a quick lunch between church and Junior Choir rehearsal. I approached one of them and remarked about what a yummy lunch she had. And so, this child offered me half of her sandwich. What a loving heart that child has (for the record, I settled for a carrot stick)! For me, in that moment, the love of God here in this place was tangible.

Love is really what life in community is all about. Today’s text is a snapshot we who are shaped by the Christian tradition are meant to be. Our ancestors in faith took their meals in common, because there is nothing more satisfying than breaking the bread of life with those you love. They shared their possessions and resources, so that no one would be left out. All were welcome at the table. There was always room for one more. This, dear friends, is the realm of God!

I hope that this short sermon series has been helpful to you in considering our lives together. It isn’t easy living in community, but that’s what we are called by Christ to do. May we here at the Monroe Congregational Church learn to:
… Live as a community of resurrection people, with hope and possibility;
… Speak with courage as disciples;
… Remember that God’s love is the center of all that we do and all that we are.  Amen.

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.

Lessons from the Early Church Part One: Unbound

Today I will be preaching the first of three installments of a short sermon series called “Lessons from the Early Church”. I hope to lead you through three different stories from this era. The themes of death and resurrection, the cost of faith, and the necessity of love are among the most important messages that Jesus shared with those who had ears to hear. Together we will look at how some of the themes they wrestled with back then and relate them to our covenantal life together today.

The period of time that I am calling ‘early church’ is from the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313 A.D. The apostles and other followers of Jesus had scattered following the first Jewish Revolt. Many of them became martyrs and died for their faith, others founded religious communities in far-flung places like Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. At first, these communities followed the Jewish Law and the Prophets of the Hebrew Bible and some of the Psalms. There were no formal creeds or confessions. They began to use simple affirmations of faith, such as "Jesus is Lord". Worship was unstructured, held in secret locations throughout the Mediterranean, and existed in a variety of forms.

This early community anticipated the imminent return of Jesus Christ, and yet the first generation of believers had begun to die. So they decided to write down all the stories that were being told in their communities, those that had been passed down by their apostolic founders. The Gospel of John which we read from today came together around 90 AD. Sometimes I think we forget how radical a story the Raising of Lazarus might have been to those who heard it first. Given the very real problem of living in a violent time of religious persecution, I imagine that hearing these words brought comfort to those who feared for their lives. I also think that telling a resurrection story about one of Jesus’ closest followers gave them a lot of hope. I think it opened the door of possibility for them, it unbound them from the expectations of death and turned them towards life.

When I think of what it means to be unbound from limitations I am reminded of my son Zack. Before I go any further, it’s really important to me that you know I have his permission to talk about him today. If he had told me even ten minutes ago that he changed his mind, I promise you that I would stop. Many of you know Zack as a sensitive, tall, twelve year old boy. What you may not know about him is that when he was a small child we began to suspect something was different about him. Most babies begin babbling at about a year, but Zack didn’t really speak until he was three. He had sensitivity to light, sound and touch, so much in fact that when we would go see a movie I knew to cover his ears during the sound test because he would panic. When he did finally speak, he could tell you with amazing clarity everything there is to know about dinosaurs, bugs and spiders whether you wanted to know about them or not. But when he spoke he couldn’t look you in the eye. We began taking him from one specialist to another when he was five. They ran a battery of tests to try and understand what it was that was causing some of his social skills to be delayed. His behavior seemed to slip further and further behind his peers.

Finally, in Kindergarten, we were given a diagnosis. Zack lives with a very mild form of autism called “Aspberger’s Syndrome”. Some of the characteristics of ‘Aspies’ include: delayed speech, trouble with reading facial cues and emotions, obsessive behavior and clumsiness. Our next job as his family was to learn everything we could about how our son related to the world. We found out that autism is a spectrum that presents itself differently in each individual. Although he would have to work hard to learn things that many of us take for granted, there was hope. We advocated for special education at his school and enrolled him in social activities that he could handle. We taught him very specifically how to communicate with another person. We even quizzed him on things like sarcasm and metaphor – which to his logical mind is still a little bit like learning a foreign language. Possibly the very best thing we did for his development was to enroll him in a martial arts program. I remember in 2008 when he took his first Tung Su Do class he was unable to do a jumping jack. He struggled that first year, but kept up with it. Zack practiced at home and attended 2 or 3 classes a week. He studied his Korean terminology and forms. He even demonstrated his progress at last year’s MCC coffeehouse!  In a few short weeks he will test for his black belt. When I think about how far Zack has come, and how hard he has worked, I am overcome with gratitude for all of the people who have helped us. We know that he will always have to work a little harder in social situations, but there are also gifts to be found in someone living with Aspberger’s. Delayed speech can become thoughtful response. Obsessive behavior can become a thirst for knowledge. Being taught to interpret emotions can lead to a deep sense of empathy. I can’t wait to see what is possible in his life as he continues to grow.

I think that when the early church told the story about Lazarus being raised from the dead by Jesus they were speaking about new life and possibility – same kind of possibility I see in my son. Jesus says to the crowd surrounding Lazarus at the edge of the tomb: “Unbind him and let him go”. Just when his family thought there was no hope, Jesus is there. Just when the disciples felt their faith had been in vain, they discover that hope never dies when God is involved. Lazarus becomes for them, and for us, a symbol of new beginnings, of hope and possibility, not just for an individual but for the entire community.

We know that many churches like ours are facing overwhelming difficulties. Shrinking mission budgets, apathy, overwhelmed lay leaders, interpersonal conflict, power struggles and a desire to “keep things the way they have always been” are just some of the struggles we face. We say that we are “resurrection people” one moment, but that “our hands are tied” the next. I want to suggest to you today that our life together need not be this way. We belong to God; we belong to one another. In his book, Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen tells of a reunion with a former student, an experience that revealed to him the meaning of community: “It is the Christ in you, who recognizes the Christ in me… From now on, wherever you go, or wherever I go, all the ground between us will be holy ground.”

Let us be a community that walks on holy ground, practicing the radical hospitality Jesus modeled. Starting with our most personal relationships and moving through expanding circles – of friends, relations, church family, co-workers, and others with whom we come in contact. And then, let’s widen our circle, reaching out to unknown neighbors. As a center of hope and transformation, of possibility… let us be a church that shepherds people onto holy ground. There is life and hope. There is joy and love. There is compassion, and generosity, goodwill, energy, and passion. All these things are gathered here, in this community of faith. And there are people outside our walls that need to know that MCC has these things to offer. They need to hear that in this place we have been unbound, set free, able to lead a new life of bold possibility.