First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church

Rev. Sam Pendergrast

April 13, 2008

Acts 2:42-47

 

 

“Doing Church”

 

Once upon a time a sailer was marooned on an uninhabited island. After several months a boat appeared on the horizon. The man built a signal fire and attracted their attention. When his rescuers landed on the island the grateful castaway was overjoyed. “Before we leave, let me show you around my island,” said the man. He showed them where he had built a tower to keep watch for passing ships. He described how he had hunted and fished and gathered wild fruits and plants for food. He showed them the simple hut in which he had slept. Pointing to a larger structure fifty yards away, he said, “And here's my church.” Down the beach another hundred yards was another hut. “And what's that?” asked one of the rescuers. “Oh, that's the church where I used to worship until I had an argument with myself.”

 

There's something about church that makes it one of the most paradoxical of all institutions. In the very place where we believe we get in touch with what is deepest and most true about the meaning of existence, we disagree passionately about what is deepest and most true about the meaning of existence. I have heard it said that wherever you find more than one Baptist you will find more than one Baptist church. The Baptists are easy to pick on because there are so many different kinds. Even so, many Christian groups believe that if you don't belong to their particular church, you're not really a Christian.

 

One day a group of newcomers was getting the orientation tour of Heaven. As they strolled through Paradise, they passed an area separated by a high wall. From behind the wall they heard laughter, singing, shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Amen!” What's behind the wall?” asked the newcomers. “Oh,” said St. Peter, “that's for the Baptists. They think they're the only ones here.”

 

We laugh at jokes like that because there's a little bit of that mindset in all of us. If we could only get it “right” then everyone else would agree with us if they could only see it our way. If we could just get the beliefs and practices right, if we could develop the perfect way to do church, a way that would always be successful, then we wouldn't have any more church fights and church splits. The trouble is, even though the church was created by God, founded on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and given through the power of the Spirit – it is made up of human beings. This side of the Kingdom, I think we will always disagree about something, whether it's ordination standards, the color of the carpet or how to spend our money. Even though the church is the Body of Christ, it is made up of people. And as an elderly relative of mine once said, “I love humanity; it's people I can't stand.”

 

But that is what the church is. In the words of the old Avery and Marsh song: “The church is not a building; the church is not a steeple; the church is not a resting place; the church is a people.” The English word, “church”, derives through the Scottish “kirk” through Germanic languages from a Greek word that comes from the combination of two other words: “kurios” (lord) and “oikos” (house). The kirk or church, then, is the Lord's house. The commonly used word for “church” in the New Testament, however, is the Greek word “ekklesia.” “Ekklesia” means “those who are called out”, or an assembly. An ekklesia is a group of people. The use of this word reflects the early Christians' belief about what it meant to be part of the church. They didn’t choose to be in the church; God chose them to be part of a new family. Just as Jesus “called” the first disciples, so God “called” people into the church to be part of a new community. The church was not a place or a building, but a community of people who were called apart to live a new way of life, following their Lord. Easy to say. Hard to live out. The blessing and the challenge, the promise and the problem of the church is that it is a community of people.

 

In the church of the Twenty-First Century, we see an expanding variety of forms of church, or of ways to “do church.” Some churches still have pipe organs; some have rock bands. Some have hymnals; some project the words on an overhead screen. Some churches have their own recreation centers. Some churches focus more on scattering for service in the world. In some churches worship is an entertainment experience. Quakers worship in silence. Worship in Catholic and Episcopal churches follows forms that have been used for centuries. Some churches value spontaneity over all else. Which one is right? Some churches of every type are growing. Some are declining. Which style is successful? What does it mean for a church to be successful anyway? It is tempting to think that if you find the right program or the right gimmick, the church will be successful. Should one church look at another that seems to be thriving and try to be like them? Can any group of people agree on the right combination of ingredients to make up the ideal church?

 

Some churches have looked at the model of the early church as depicted in the Book of Acts and have tried to imitate it. If this is the way it started, and if it spread over the entire earth, these early Christians must have done something right. So, if we can be a New Testament church, we'll be successful, right? Well, no and yes.

 

No. We can't be like the New Testament church and imitate their success. We aren't the first generation of believers. We aren't a misunderstood and persecuted minority. We don't confront a culture in which the emperor was worshiped as a god. We can't undo our history and pretend we're starting from scratch again. Since the First Century, the church has existed in a variety of forms. For three centuries it was a marginal movement on the fringes of society. It took until the Fifth Century for the church to set down in writing its understanding of one God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and Jesus as both divine and human. Until 1056 and the split between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism there was only one church. At the height of the Holy Roman Empire, the Pope and the Emperor walked hand in hand. Not only was there no separation between church and state, but there was no clear line that marked where one ended and the other began. After the Protestant Reformation of the Sixteenth Century the diversity of forms of church has multiplied in ways both exciting and confusing.

 

With apologies to Crosby, Stills and Nash, we can't “get ourselves back to the Garden.” We can't go back to a pre-adolescent state of innocence and pretend that the problems we now face in adulthood don't exist. We've grown up. We're not perfect, not finished; but we’ve grown up. We have a history. We have to take our past into account.

 

On the other hand, yes. The early church as recorded in the Book of Acts established a workable formula: teaching, fellowship, sharing of bread in homes to remember Jesus, and sharing of prayers. We need to teach the basics of faith, nurture fellowship in order to build community, emphasize the Eucharist in order to remember who it is who makes us a church, and we need to be devoted to prayer. Who could object to that? Those are basic to any church. However, we do those things in light of our past and in the midst of present reality.

 

Part of our present reality that clashes violently with the picture of the New Testament Church is the consumer culture of 21^st Century America and the obsession we have with individual rights and private property. The part of the early church that many Christians today dismiss as unrealistic is the way the bonds between the members of the early church led them to share their lives and livelihood in ways that are foreign to our culture. “All the believers agreed to hold everything in common: they began to sell their property and possessions and distribute to everyone according to need.” When wealthy, modern Christians hear those words they tend to freak out. They are quick to point out that this is a description of the early church, not a prescription for how churches have to be organized. They observe that it’s unrealistic. “That's mine,” we say. “I have a right to it because I worked for it. I earned it.” Just as you can't ask a fish about the water it swims in, don't ask us to think differently about property and rights. That's just the way it is. Or so we think.

 

Hunter Farrell is director of World Mission for the Presbyterian Church (U. S. A.). Hunter and his wife, Ruth, spent ten years as mission workers in Peru, primarily among indigenous people whose understanding of community is very different from that of North Americans. Writing in the March, 2008, issue of Presbyterians Today, Farrell writes of the way the Quechua people used language about community.

 

English has only one word for the first-person, plural pronoun “we,” but Quechua-speakers have two: ñoqaku and ñoqanchik.

 

Ñoqaku – the “just us,” exclusive “we” - creates a kind of community by drawing lines that exclude someone else. Ñoqanchik is different. It is the inclusive “we” that welcomes all – speaker, listener, friend and foe. Ñoqanchik creates community by including everyone despite their differences. It erases lines of exclusion and draws a circle that includes everyone.

 

In the Quechua translation of the Bible, more than 90 percent of the time it is  ñoqanchik that is on the lips of Jesus when he says “we.” Throughout the New Testament  ñoqanchik “makes family” of people who have nothing in common – except the saving grace of Jesus Christ.

 

Hunter Farrell is interested in our Presbyterian Church becoming a group that emphasizes the ñoqanchik kind of “we” instead of the more exclusive kind. He hopes we can realize that if God brought us together, we belong together and that we can learn more by listening than by fighting over the same issues year after year.

 

Certainly, the early church was a separate community from the Roman Empire. They would not have spoken of themselves as a “we” that included the Romans. But everyone was welcome to become part of the “we” that was the church – whether Greek or Roman, slave or free, rich or poor. Everyone in this new community left their previous lives and took on a new identity. Their old life had ended. A new life had begun. As they devoted themselves to learning from the apostles, to fellowship with this new community, to breaking bread in homes and to regular prayer – a remarkable thing happened. This new community began to function like one family. Everyone shared. No one was in need. They shared more than beliefs. The purpose of their common life was to nurture a new community. As they broke bread together, they made a decision that no one in this community would go without bread.

 

The Bible does not tell us that we are to give up our individual possessions as a requirement for entering the church. It describes a new community that began to share in radical ways as they grew together. The sharing they did was a result of the way their lives had changed.

 

Most of us came to Christian faith in a culture that at least tolerates religious faith. Most of us came to Christian faith in a church that accommodates itself to the culture. We live in two worlds, and sometimes we’re not sure which one is more important. We are not separatist like our Amish neighbors. We come to church for an hour on Sunday morning. We go on with our lives. Many of us don't devote ourselves to the apostles' teaching. We are lucky if we have a monthly fellowship event. We rarely break bread in each other's homes. And our prayers too often depend on how we're feeling and how busy we are. And we wonder why so many churches are declining. Changing the way we “do church” would be a radical rearrangement of our schedules, our lives and our priorities. It would require us to die in some major ways.

 

I would be willing to bet that churches that are thriving find ways to attend to the basics that we read about in the second chapter of Acts. They teach, nurture fellowship, share the Eucharist and devote themselves to prayer. When churches do that, extraordinary things happen. People who once were separate become a new community. If today in our culture, people were to give up their individual possessions and share with one another to meet common needs, I would consider that evidence of signs and wonders. That would be evidence of a new way of thinking about who “we” are.

 

If the church can attend to those four activities of the early church and can do them well, we probably won't be asking what it takes to be a healthy church because we'll be doing it. After reading the second chapter of Acts again this week, I wonder if the modern church has become so preoccupied with finding the programs and gimmicks for “doing church” that we have become too busy for “being church.”

 

I invite you to a renewed commitment to learning, fellowship, breaking bread together and prayer. Pray to grow in faith and understanding. Pray for the renewal of the church. Pray for peace. Pray for the well-being of your neighbors. Invite them to church. Pray for one another. Have a meal together. Learn about each other's lives. Pray for our leaders. Pray for yourself, that God will change your heart a little more each day. Pray that we can become, little by little a new community of love.