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Sermon, July 7, 2013
Grace UMC
Rev. Kate Hurst Floyd
Acts 15:1-29
Church folks love a good fight!
You know it, I know it….the thought of it may make us squirm in our seats; laugh quietly with shame or embarrassment. But if you’ve been in the church any length of time, you know it’s true. We may as well be honest, come out of our closet, and admit for all the world that in the church we savor a good fight. In fact, if it’s been too long without one, we start to look for one.
I’ve been in the church over 30 years, in various churches in different parts of the country, most of my friends are clergy, serving all over the world and in diverse denominations, and from what I can see, this is pretty much a universal truth, not isolated to a particular congregation or denomination.
Conflicts can range from disputes about the paint color of walls in the parlor to the pattern of carpet in the fellowship hall. One pastor in NGA tells about a church he served that finally replaced their worn out pew cushions with new ones. There was lively debate and loud opinions about the color and fabric of the replacement cushions. One women in particular objected mightily to the final selection, even though everyone else had compromised and settled on a color. The day that the pew cushions were dedicated and used in worship for the first time, this woman brought her lawn chair to church and refused to sit in the pews! Conflicts can move beyond decorating choices, however, to issues more central to the mission of the church: from conflicts over music in worship to how leadership is elected to the missions in which the church engages.
When we’re new to church, or even for those of us who’ve been in the church for a while, we can think that church, of all places, should be a haven away from conflict or dispute…thinking surely as Christians, as people who talk about, sing about, and pray about love, we won’t ever disagree. Well, the cold hard truth is, just because we’re in the church doesn’t mean we’re not human. We’re a group of fallible, opinionated, strong-willed children of God and when we come together we’re not always going to hold hands, sing kumbaya and agree on everything.
Church folks have been disagreeing with one another for centuries. Kyle’s teaching a class this weekend to local pastors on early church history (period) and I’m struck as he prepares by just how much of what we believe and know today was shaped was constant conflict….councils coming together to resolve disputes over how we understand the trinity, the nature of Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit….the history is interesting and complex, so complex that I won’t get into it all now (save that for a different sermon)…but rest assured that good church folk have engaged in vigorous debate for many, many years.
In fact, we can trace it back all the way to the book of Acts…the book we’ve been moving through over the summer as we explore the formation of the earliest Christian church and how this community helps shape and enliven the community we are and vision for ourselves in the future. This is our last week in this series in the book of Acts, and we find the community gearing up for a fight.
If you’ll remember, this community has been through a lot up until this point….death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus….gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, at which time they seemed drunk to outsiders and had the gift of speaking multiple languages….share everything in common, baptize believers, Paul’s converted, Peter takes on a leadership role…that most recently includesPeter’s realization that the mission is not just for Jews, but for Gentiles too. Last week we explored how the Holy Spirit spoke and worked through Cornelius, a gentile, who preached to Peter. Peter had a dream, a vision from God, realizing that all of the boundaries and rules he thought were in place for the church needed to be shattered—all were welcome.
If I were them I’d be more ready for a nap than a fight.
You can understand why there’s some tension, some disagreement, some confusion…the Holy Spirit is moving fast, and there’s a lot at stake…not the color of pew cushions, but the very welcoming nature of the church of Jesus Christ. No wonder they had strong opinions.
The issue before them is whether gentiles are really meant to be part of the church, and if so, whether they need to follow the same Jewish laws and customs that Jews have been practicing for centuries. Certain people start saying: Hey! Stop! Unless you are circumcised, you can NOT be part of the church. That’s our line in the sand. There are two centers of the church: one in Antioch, where the desire to spread to the Gentiles is most fervent, and the real mother church, the church in Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas, aware of the conflict in the church, decide to go to Jerusalem to address this matter with the church leaders, altogether. While there Peter bears witness to the power of the Spirit among the gentiles. They discuss, they debate, they try and determine what to do.
They are trying to figure out what’s essential to their faith. What laws need to be followed by Christians? What are the boundary markers of the community?
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, had a wonderful guide for how we engage in holy conversations with one another. He said, quote: "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity."
In essentials: claiming Jesus Christ as God incarnate, gathering around the communion table and the baptismal font, we are unified; in non-essentials: paint color, musical preference, pew cushions, we have the liberty to have diverse opinions and to express them; in all things, charity….No matter where we stand, we love one another, no matter what. That is a non-negotiable essential.
And that’s what we see exhibited here so beautifully for the community in acts: they listened to each other with an open mind, expressed their opinions, core beliefs, openly and freely…and then they sent Paul and Barabbas to Antioch to seek out the gentiles and provide support for the church there. They didn’t split up and say we are now two churches, they trusted the Spirit, read scripture together, listened to the prophetic word of God, then acted together, out of love and most of all care for the church and the spreading of the Gospel.
And together, even though it wasn’t easy, and there were conflicts and arguments, even some infighting, they worked together to determine what the essentials were for the church. Circumcision, they finally decided, wasn’t a marker of what it means to be Christian. But opening up their welcome more widely also didn’t mean that there weren’t some boundaries: after much discernment, they agreed that Christians shouldn’t eat meat sacrificed to idols, as this could be construed as idol worship, and not engage in immoral behavior. And they agreed to spread this message to Jews and Gentiles alike. They moved through their disagreements and came out on the other side with a refined sense of essentials, and in all things, love.
What does this mean for us in our visioning process? If you think the process will consist of everyone holding hands singing kumbaya, you’ve come to the wrong place. And I’ll let you in on a secret…you’re not going to find a community of humans where that stays true for very long. And it shouldn’t be that way….it’s actually not the Christian ideal, anyway….Christian isn’t synomymous with “nice” or “getting along”. Being Christian means we follow Jesus Christ…Jesus who turned over tables in the temple, interrupted the stoning of a woman, and was kicked out of his hometown for his prophetic message. Being Christian means we gather as the church, like the first community in Acts….that we’re willing to share things in common, that we will be persecuted, that we will have crazy dreams and might be rejected when we share them…upset the delicate order of things…receive the spirit and act drunk and start speaking in many languages…cause some controversy…Being Christian means we worship the God of resurrection….who isn’t concerned with playing nice, but with destroying the destructive powers of the world, and ultimately death. Being Christian means we participate in this kingdom work. And it’s not always going to be easy and it can get a little messy. And sometimes we’re not all going to agree about what exactly that looks like.
Because being Christian means we are passionate about the Gospel…And this is why church folks have conflict…because we are passionate.And.conflict isn’t something to be scared of. It will happen. What matters is how we respond…and we are called to respond like the community in Acts. So my hope and my prayers is all of us will come to the visioning weekend in August, and we will listen to one another, we will feel safe to express our core beliefs, we will most of all read scripture and leave room for the prophetic word of God to enter. We will craft the core essentials of what it means to be Grace UMC and in that find unity; in the non-essentials, we will find liberty, and in all things, charity. Love.Respect. Because when we dare to come together, like the early church in Jerusalem, not afraid of disagreeing but willing to engage one another and God, the whole world can and will change.
One of the essentials for us is this communion table, the place where grace is offered and all are welcome….we can be confident that no matter our disagreements, we can all come around here knowing that we are one in the body of Christ. Eating together and practicing for that day when all of us eat together at the heavenly banquet table, feasting in the kingdom of God. In the meantime, we have some work to do, so let’s get to fighting—to listening, sharing, dreaming, reading, and refining our essentials so that more people know the love of Jesus. Thanks be to God! Amen.