Library
Sunday, September 13, 2009
RETHINK CHURCH
First in a series on Rethinking Church and Rethinking Life
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Acts 2 41:47 New Revised Standard Version
41 So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
How often have you heard one of your friends or neighbors say that they are spiritual but not religious? How many persons do you know-perhaps yourself also-who have had bad experiences or images of “organized religion”?
I was talking with one of our members two weeks ago about some friends of theirs whom they had invited to church. The folks they invited were very skeptical because the picture of “church” they had in their minds was one where people were other worldly and hypocritical and too focused inwardly instead of focused on helping with the hurts of the world. One commentator used to call that sort of church “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good.”
Many of us understand why some folks shy away from anything that has to do with organized religion or with their painful experiences of “church.” Many of us have seen the hypocrisy or closed minds that some religions have been known for.
My own father was not very active in church as I was growing up. He would go to worship occasionally with the small Greek Orthodox community in Wichita Falls, Texas where they could only have a priest lead worship once a month. The priest would travel there from Dallas or Fort Worth. I am pleased that I am able to have that rich tradition of Orthodox Christianity in my personal heritage. He would attend church at the Methodist church occasionally with my mother and sister and me, but he would not go often because he had a bad experience there.
My father was in the restaurant business for most of my growing up, but before I was born, there was a period of a couple of years when he was in partnership with another Greek immigrant in a store that sold wine and beer. During that period of his life, he began to attend church more regularly with my mother and went a few times to the Men’s Bible class of the old traditional Methodist church in town, but he stopped pretty quickly when some of the men criticized him for the kind of business he was in. The hypocrisy of course was that these were the same persons who would come into his store during the week and buy wine or beer from him.
What he saw of church first hand was judgment and hypocrisy. He was able to balance that with the vital personal faith and love that he saw in my mother, but in my family “organized religion” had some negative connotations.
Can you understand why for many people “church” is a really negative word? It does not take much looking around to know why.
Roberta Bondi taught Christian history at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She told a group of us a few years ago, when she was with us for a weekend in our congregation, about the small congregation in Atlanta where she and her husband worship. They got a new pastor after the former pastor left. Some of the folks in the church were members and others were very active each week but had not formally joined. The first Sunday that they celebrated communion with the new pastor, he had apparently learned who was a member and who were not members, and when the non members came forward to the Lord’s Table, as usual, to receive communion, he refused them and put his hand out to bar them from the table of Christ!
What does that feel like to even think about that in a congregation where we have always, since John Wesley started Methodism 260 years ago, always practiced open communion? It makes me shiver just to tell you that story because it seems so opposite from the open spirit of Jesus Christ! Paul encourages us in one of his letters to “have the mind of Christ.” It is so easy to see church people failing to do that.
Can we understand why many people have trouble with church, with organized religion? We can even look in the news last week and read about the pastor in Tempe, Arizona who explained to his congregation why both he and God want President Barack Obama dead and urged his congregation to pray for the death of the President. I have reprinted that article for you and it’s available for you this morning.
We can find many very bad and scary examples of church and organized religion if we just look around. They are so different from the report of what was going on in the original community of Christians just a few weeks after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
We just read from the book of Acts about those first followers who heard the invitation from Peter to join the movement. They did what Jesus’ friends have always done, they met together for study and prayer and mutual support and encouragement. They ate together. They shared what they had with each other with glad and generous hearts. They would not let any person go in need when another person could share and make a difference. And every day God added to their number persons who were being saved, a very important image, not persons who had BEEN saved and were finished and perfect already, but people who were BEING saved because of their participation in a fellowship of love and compassion. This is an extremely important distinction!
What if, today, church was people sharing with whomever had a need, people who were on a journey together toward wholeness and who had not arrived yet, but people who were in process and who were being made whole and were people who are being saved from emptiness and hypocrisy and shallow living?
The United Methodist Church across the country is offering a new way to understand church for people who want and need that opportunity. It is called RETHINK CHURCH, and many of you have seen the pictures in print in National Geographic or Newsweek or Parents Magazine or on cable TV. We have printed some of those for your bulletin today. I like them very much. They are designed to reach persons who have negative and painful pictures of church folk and organized religion.
I like especially the one from the National Geographic with the image of the child with the water pump and the report that you and I as Methodist Christians are sponsoring clean water projects in 35 countries across the world. A portion of your offering today will go for that program internationally!
I will be using our worship time these next few weeks to ask all of us to Rethink Church and to rethink life together, to ask us to be part of a fellowship where we come to reflect on what is most important and how we are using the gift of every day to make a difference. Making a difference is one of the purposes of “church,” isn’t it – to keep us from majoring in minors? It is to help us live fully and not just on the surface.
What if church were people like that story of the original followers who cared as much for others as themselves? What if church were a gathering like our afterhours service where Judy and I were last Sunday night, where at the end, we got up and made sandwiches and packed sack lunches to take downtown to the El Centro program so that day laborers could be sure of at least one meal that day as they waited in uncertainty each morning to know if they would be able to eat and to get paid that day?
What if “church” were the group of twenty persons who went to Guatemala six weeks ago to provide medical care for people who had never seen a health professional before until the group from this congregation paid their own way to get there and be there?
What if church offered a story of God, not as an angry finger shaking judge, but God the compassionate and patient who offers grace and new life and new beginnings, a God like the story Jesus tells of the father who welcomed back the foolish son and celebrated because the one who had been lost had now returned?
What if church were people who think the Bible is important not because every jot and tittle has been literally placed there by God but because the Bible is full of stories of changed lives and full of stories that tell us about God’s hopes and dreams and plans for our lives lived in peace and harmony?
What if church is a place where we see more clearly the humanity of Jesus, the compassion and grace of Jesus, and where we are inspired by that compassion and grace to do what Andrew did after he met Jesus of Nazareth? Andrew invited people to come and take a look at Christ for themselves.
What if church is a group that helps people develop, in ourselves, the mind and spirit of Christ instead of believing just the right set of doctrines?
What if church were a place that lets us live out our gratitude and thanksgiving for being alive and lets us live as people from whom much is expected because much has been given to us?
What if church were people whose lives were really being changed for the better and where people encouraged each other and helped each other gradually make those changes?
What if church was a fellowship of folks where we comforted those who are grieving, where people dealing with various addictions can start over again?
What if church taught that there is no conflict between science and faith, that we can use both reason and spiritual wisdom together?
What if church were a place where we give each person a chance to make a difference with the talents and skills and gifts God has given us, a place to serve as well as receive?
What if church is a community where all are welcome-all are welcome-and where each of us is on our personal spiritual journey and where each of us is in the process of BEING saved, being made whole, and there is no room for self righteousness or arrogance or hypocrisy-we are just all on the journey together?
What if that is what church is like? Can you be excited about being part of that kind of church? Can you be excited about inviting others to come and take a look for themselves? Will you join me each Sunday for these next eight weeks as we rethink church and rethink life together? It will be challenging to be here because we will begin construction this week to make room for each other and others, but it will be worth it!