Sermons

“Becoming Church”

I Corinthians 12:4-13; Acts 2:1-21 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – June 4, 2017

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words that we, too, might receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and proclaim your glorious good news. In the name of Jesus we pray, Amen.

I am still kind of basking in the glow of the wonderful Leadership Retreat we had this weekend. I am always a little nervous about whether everything will come together, especially since I never have quite as much time to plan as I’d like. But it turns out that once the people of God show up in the room, the Spirit takes over and does her holy work! One of the things I think we learned this weekend, though we didn’t articulate it this way yesterday, is that our church is on the cusp of a moment of re-invention. Actually, re-invention probably isn’t the right word; re-creation would be more appropriate. We are entering into a season that is inviting us to re-learn how to rely on God. When we do that, it’s not that we’re re-inventing ourselves, but that God is re-creating us, making us into something new. If that sounds scary, just think how the caterpillar feels.

It’s not that God is going to do this all on God’s own, by divine fiat. God’s work happens through us, in partnership with us, using the gifts that God activates within us, as Paul said in First Corinthians. But if we try to do it on our own, church likely wouldn’t be what we’d end up with. So if we’re going to enter into a process of re-creation as a church, it would probably be a good idea to make sure we know what becoming church looks like. And as Disciples, our tradition would suggest that we look to the Book of Acts for some clues. And what better day to do this, than on the day of Pentecost, when we’re celebrating what some call the church’s birthday?

In the chronology of the New Testament, the day described in Acts when the Holy Spirit arrived on the rush of the wind, with tongues of fire dancing over the heads of the disciples, is considered the beginning of Act Three, in a sense. It’s the day when the church was given life, when the portion of history we’re still living out began, so yes, a birthday of sorts. So if the story of Pentecost shows us what God did when the church was created, it would make sense to examine what happened for clues about what church should be. The signs of God’s authentic and true church are scattered all around this story, so if we can identify them, we will know what to look for in our life together today. So let’s look at some of them.

First of all, we need to pause briefly for the very first sentence. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” It turns out that showing up is a requirement. Now, we know that there are exceptions to this rule, but they are exceptions, not excuses. For us to be church, we need to be together. It makes a difference if you’re here or not. As we discussed this weekend, you may not feel like you need to go to church some sunny day, but it’s highly likely someone else really needs you to be here. Your presence matters. The Spirit is coming, and you don’t want to miss it!

The second thing we might notice in this story is that when we get together and God makes us church, we’re suddenly called to do new things, things we didn’t know we could do. It seems to me that the disciples – who were basically Galilean hicks who’d managed to get out of Dodge – were probably as surprised as the surrounding crowd to find themselves suddenly praising God in Parthian and Elamite and Arabic and Latin. “Look! I am doing a new thing!” says God in Isaiah. And it just keeps happening. So if we’re not interested in doing new things, we’re going to miss the boat. Whether it’s learning new things, or serving in new ways, or singing a new song, or making a new friend, the Spirit is often very pushy. If we allow our hearts and souls to become brittle and stale, the arrival of the Spirit is going to be more painful than it has to be. Part of the reason we gather together in one place is to learn together how to cultivate hearts that are open and soft, pliable in the Spirit’s hands.

Perhaps the most dramatic thing we learn about church from this origin story taking place on Pentecost is that church is a place where barriers are broken down. The obvious one, of course, is the barrier of language, ethnicity, or race. All of those different people – “devout Jews from every nation under heaven” it says – had been living in proximity to one another for a while, who knows how long. But suddenly, they were having an experience of unity. Rather than struggling to understand what was happening in their adopted home, they were hearing about “God’s deeds of power” in their native languages. The Spirit had brought them all together, removing the barriers that had separated them.

And it wasn’t just the barriers of language or ethnicity that fell down that day. Once Peter launched into his sermon, quoting the prophet Joel, it becomes clear that all the other divisions our societies like to create were crumbling as well. Sons and daughters, men and women will prophesy, breaking down the barriers of gender and sexuality. Young and old will have visions and dreams, breaking down generational division. Even the slaves, Peter says, destroying any lingering tendencies to divide ourselves by economic status.

This may be the hardest lesson of Pentecost. It turns out church isn’t a place where we go to hang out with people who are like us. Church is a place that brings together people who are different from each other and manages to give good news to all of them. Because it’s centered on God and God’s work in our world, becoming church is about something bigger than any one of us and the particularities that make us who we are. Because the Spirit makes us one body, as Paul writes, the concerns that we thought were someone else’s turn out to be ours too. All those wonderful specificities that make us individuals cease to divide us and instead enrich us. This is another pathway for learning to rely on God, because when we’re left to our own devices, we tend to flock together with the birds of our own feather. That’s how we can tell the difference between a church and a social club. Because it’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit that a community can come together across the barriers that normally keep us apart, whether they are barriers of language, gender, age, class, or hobby, education, party affiliation, or sports.

Finally, I want to turn also to the hints about becoming church that are in the passage we heard from First Corinthians. Especially since we spent time this weekend equipping our leaders for the roles they’ve been called into, this reading is important to hear. The church has known for always that it’s made up of people with different kinds of gifts, and that this is a source of strength, not division. While the list of gifts Paul delineated may not be quite the same as one we might create, what he says about them is still true. The gifts that are truly gifts for the church all come from one and the same Spirit. They are all activated by God. And most importantly, as Paul writes, “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” We don’t have these gifts for our own sake. We have them for each other. We have them for the sake of the world, “for the common good.”

So if we’re looking to become church, these are some good guidelines. If we will come together, ready and open to the new things God is going to do through us, if we can stay steady while the Spirit breaks down the barriers that divide us, no matter how comfortable those barriers may have helped us feel, and if we can offer up our individual gifts for the good of the whole, we will be well on the way to becoming church. And who knows what God will do then?   Alleluia and Amen!