Showing posts with label unity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unity. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Sunday, September 02, 2018
Being a Unifier ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 2)
[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
In his book, I Am a Church Member, Thom Rainer talks about how, if we are to be faithful members of Christ’s Church, we must seek to live in unity with our fellow church members.
But I want to move away from talking about things that can destroy church unity and move to talking about what builds church unity.
We read on: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:8-11)
We have good friends who are members of a Lutheran congregation which, while being one of the strongest and most faithful churches I’ve seen, has had a succession of seemingly bad pastors. One was paranoid. Another, a thief. Another, lazy.
For years when we saw our friends, they would, without malice, tell us about what was happening at their church. We would listen and pray.
Then another pastor came along. He wasn’t paranoid, a thief, or lazy. He was just there. A low energy presence. A diligent if less than inspiring preacher and teacher. A little awkward in social situations. Our friends told us about him and we couldn’t help thinking, “That poor church.”
But a few months later, we saw our friends and while they reported that their pastor was still less than a fireball, they appreciated him. “Pastor’s faithful,” one of them said. “And he’s our pastor.” They said that they prayed for him and opened themselves up to loving him and serving alongside him. Under that pastor, seemingly un-dynamic and unpromising, the congregation has done well.
This experience is a lesson on how church unity happens. It happens when we look past the faults and idiosyncrasies each of us has, forgive one another for sins, repent for our own, and seek what is best for the faithful witness for Christ by the congregation.
This experience is a lesson on how church unity happens. It happens when we look past the faults and idiosyncrasies each of us has, forgive one another for sins, repent for our own, and seek what is best for the faithful witness for Christ by the congregation.
We don’t sit around waiting for the pastor or other members to become perfect.
We seek to forgive our fellow church members as the Savior forgives us.
We seek to accept one another, imperfections and all, just as Christ accepts us.
It’s this mutual forgiveness, acceptance, and love that allows us to be used by Christ to fulfill our only mission as His people: to be and to make disciples.
The apostle Paul routinely advertised his flaws and imperfections. This is one of the things I love about him. For example, he wrote to young Timothy: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1:15-16)
The apostle Paul routinely advertised his flaws and imperfections. This is one of the things I love about him. For example, he wrote to young Timothy: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1:15-16)
The unity of the Church is enhanced when we can confess that we are all in bondage to sin, incapable of freeing ourselves and that while we may at times be called to point out an abiding sin to our sister or brother in Christ, we will never do it because we think we’ve got it all together. We will do this only because of the love of Christ and because we don’t want them to lose their grip on grace.
That’s why the homepage of Living Water shows a group of us praying together during worship with the caption, “Far from perfect: We are a church of imperfect people seeking God’s grace, love, forgiveness, and guidance.” Speaking for me, I totally own that!
In his book, I Am a Church Member, Thom Rainer talks about how, if we are to be faithful members of Christ’s Church, we must seek to live in unity with our fellow church members.
He points to the words of Jesus which we cited last week: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35)
And, Rainer points out, before He was arrested and murdered, Jesus pleaded with God the Father for His Church, “...that all of them [His disciples] may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...” (John 17:21)
Jesus is not here pleading for organizational unity; He’s asking that His Church would always be united in Him, a people drawn to each other as they gather around His cross and His gospel. It was to be united to Christ that many of us left the organization of our former denominational body to be part of the North American Lutheran Church.
In chapter 2 of his book, Rainer also says that there are two things we must avoid in the Church in order to live out our unity in Christ: gossip and unforgiveness.
But I want to move away from talking about things that can destroy church unity and move to talking about what builds church unity.
Philippians 2:1-11 is a good place to learn how church unity is built. Paul’s letter to the Christians in first-century Philippi was written in about 60 AD. One group of scholars has described it as a “missionary thank you letter.” Unlike the apostle’s letters to the Corinthians, for example, there’s no problem in the Philippian church. Paul just wants to thank them and, as that same group of scholars puts, describe what makes for a life worthy of the gospel. By that, Paul didn't mean to describe what a person needed to do to be worthy of God's salvation and love. Rather, he meant to describe what kind of life people who have already been saved from sin and death by God's grace through faith in Jesus should seek to live. For Paul, a life worthy of the gospel is one built on gratitude for God's undeserved, unmerited grace that comes to us from the crucified and risen Jesus!
That, in fact, is the whole purpose of this I Am a Church Member series: to help each of us live a life worthy of the gospel, a life that can only be lived out in the often wonderful, sometimes infuriating fellowship of the Church.
So, please open your Bibles to Philippians 2:5-11 and pull out a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Paul writes: “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2)
So, please open your Bibles to Philippians 2:5-11 and pull out a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Paul writes: “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.” (Philippians 2:1-2)
In other words, if Christ and His gospel, if being saved by Christ from sin and everlasting separation from God mean anything to you, then be committed to living in unity with Christ and with each other.
When you disagree with the church, do it in love.
When decisions are made that you don’t like, stick together anyway.
When your elected leaders work hard, pray hard, and do their best (and we are blessed with elected lay leaders like that here at Living Water), stand with them, pray for them.
Have “the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.”
When our aim is to look out for others because Christ has already looked out for us, we will be on the road to living as unifying church members.
Please read on: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:3-7)
Please read on: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” (Philippians 2:3-7)
Selfish ambition and vain conceit have no place in Christ’s Church! If a church, church member, pastor, or anyone in the Church ever acts from selfish ambition or conceit, what they do will never glorify God. Never.
Our translation says that we are to have “the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” But in the original Greek, Paul is much more radical than that. He’s not saying we should try to be like Jesus. None of us will ever be like Jesus if we try to be. We can never be like Jesus in our own power. Jesus is God incarnate. We are fleshy people, sinners by our very nature.
What Paul is really saying here is, literally, “Let the mind of Christ be in you.”
In other words, let the mind of Jesus Christ invade and take control of your brain.
When the holy onslaught of God’s Word comes to you in Word and Sacrament, in sermons or in Bible reading, in conversation with other Christians or in prayer or in the singing of hymns or praise songs, don’t resist.
Let the Word of God engulf you, conquer you, overcome you, transform you!
Stop resisting God and let Him replace your will, your power, your thoughts, your desires with the will, power, thoughts, and desires of Jesus Christ.
When God calls you to confess, confess.
When God calls you to trust that through faith in Jesus, You are His child for all eternity, trust it.
When God calls you to witness, serve or pray or study His Word, witness, serve, pray, study. Let Jesus in and you will be changed. Christ will live in you!
This past week, I got a text from a Living Water disciple. A repairperson had been at her house and he noticed her copy of a Christian book. A whole conversation about Jesus ensued. Our member wrote to me: “You have the Kroger deli and I have Renewal by Andersen!”
As Christ transforms us with His grace, humility will become our MO. Not because we’ve decided to be Christ-like but because, through our submission, Christ makes us over in His image. We will be Christ’s witnesses without planning it out.
We read on: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:8-11)
Why has God the Father given Jesus the name that is above all names, the name by which we are able to speak to God in prayer, the name that is respected even by those who claim to hate God, the Bible, and Christian faith?
The answer is simple: Jesus, though God, was also man, a human being, and was the only human being ever able to resist the temptation to strive “to be like God.”
Jesus sought the glory of the Father, not His own, and, because of it, was able to save all who trust in Him for all eternity. When our common aim is to glorify God and not ourselves, the Church is united, and others come to faith.
Whose glory are you seeking?
Whose way are you rooting for, yours or God’s?
Whose thoughts are you reflecting, God's or your own?
Jesus says that in His kingdom, the first will be last and the last will be first. The way of life with God is the way of a servant in Christ’s Church!
So, how is unity built in Christ’s Church? It boils down to this:
So, how is unity built in Christ’s Church? It boils down to this:
- When Christ calls us to be His own, we submit to Him and to each other;
- we never count ourselves better than others; and
- we seek to glorify the God Who has given us life and life made us new in Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him, ‘Come and die.’” When each of us heed that call, dying to ourselves so that our new selves can rise with Christ, we have unity with Christ and with His body, the Church. Amen
Monday, April 09, 2018
Set Free to Take Care of Each Other (Church Lessons, Part 1)
[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday, the Second Sunday of Easter, April 8, 2018]
Acts 4:32-35
As is true every Easter season, the appointed Scripture lessons for Sundays include passages from Acts. So today, we begin a new series of Sunday messages based on Acts that we’re calling Church Lessons.
We start today with Acts 4:32-35.
To dip into this amazing book four chapters in, it’s necessary for us to set the scene.
Acts begins with the risen Jesus reiterating the great commission to the eleven apostles and His whole Church. “...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” Jesus tells them, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
In Acts 2, as 120 disciples were gathered in Jerusalem for prayer, the Holy Spirit descended on them and the Church was empowered to fulfill Jesus’ commission. By the power of the Spirit, they told the crowds from all over the Mediterranean who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival, in the diverse languages of those crowds, about God’s mighty works. Especially the mightiest act of all: God becoming human in Jesus, living a sinless life, dying on a cross for our sins, and rising from the dead to give forgiveness and new life to all who believe in Him.
On that day, Peter then preached a sermon that brought 3000 people to faith in Christ. We’ll be celebrating Pentecost Sunday six weeks from now.
After Pentecost, the Church continued to pursue its mission and ran into opposition for it. But instead of collapsing or falling to the temptation of returning violence or hatred to its persecutors, the Church, as well portrayed in the fantastic new movie, Paul: Apostle of Christ, prayed for boldness in lovingly sharing the good news, the gospel, of the crucified and risen Jesus with the world.
It’s soon after this that we come to our passage for today.
Verse 32: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.”
We need to spend some time talking about what these words mean and what they don’t mean.
As we talked about a few Wednesday nights ago during Lent, the disciples in Christ’s Church did have conflicts and disagreement. They seem to have known the wisdom of the modern wag who said, “If two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant.
To be of “one heart and mind” doesn’t mean that the first Christians always agreed with each other. They didn’t.
Among the many disagreements and conflicts, the one most consequential to you and me, maybe, is the one that raged for some time over the ministry to Gentiles, non-Jews, by Paul.
There were Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentiles couldn’t be grafted into the Church or the Kingdom of God. They were sure that only Jews could be Christians and that Paul was blaspheming God by welcoming non-Jews, Gentiles, into the fellowship of Christ’s Church.
In Acts 15, we’re told about what’s now called the Council of Jerusalem. There, all points of view were aired and those gathered finally agreed to let Paul reach out to the Gentiles. As long as Gentile believers would respect Jewish Christians, Gentiles would be welcomed into the fellowship of Christ’s Church as fellow heirs of God’s grace given in Christ. That was a good decision for you and me, making it possible for us to know Jesus and the free gift of new life He gives to all who repent and believe in Him!
There are some non-negotiables for people to be part of Christ’s Church, of course. The Church expects believers to accept the deity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the belief that we are saved by God’s grace through our faith in Christ, the witness of God’s Word in the Bible.
But the first Christian disciples, led by the witness of the apostles and the Holy Spirit, concluded agreement about unimportant matters like times of meeting, the kinds of songs, the color of the carpet, or whether people wear jeans or suits and ties to worship, to put it all in modern terms, was unnecessary.
Scholars tell us that the phrase “one in heart and mind” refers to the Old Testament vision of God’s Kingdom. Deuteronomy 15 described something of what life in covenant with God would be like. Believers were to be part of a community in which, every seven years, all debts were to be forgiven and possessions lost restored. Deuteronomy 15:4, says to the Israelites who were about to enter the promised land (this is from the English Standard Version, which gives a better translation of the verse): “...there will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess…”
In other words, when you were part of God’s community, no one who is part of it should be in need. But Jesus has expanded the meaning of Jubilee. Through His once-and-for-all sacrifice of Himself on the cross, He has forgiven all of our debts and told His people that as we have been forgiven of our eternal debt to God, so we are to go about relieving our sisters and brothers in Christ of their debts to God, to us, to the world. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," Jesus teaches us to pray.
This is really what Luke, the author of Acts, means when he says at the outset of our lesson: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.”
The proof that he’s talking about the first Christian disciples taking care of each other’s needs here and not about always agreeing with each other comes in the very next thing he writes: “No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had…”
This doesn’t mean that the first Christians sold off all of their homes and properties and lived off the land or on the streets. (Practically speaking, they would have had nowhere to meet for worship if they'd done that.)
It means that all recognized that everything they had was from God. As James writes in his New Testament letter: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…” (James 1:17)
So, the first Christians did something far harder than agreeing with each other: They took care of each other.
When their widows or other destitutes among them, who had no Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid to rely on, no 401k's or 403b's, were in need, their fellow Christians met those needs.
To be the Church means, among other things, that we take care of each other.
Many congregations have the attitude that the pastor is the hired caregiver.
But that’s not the Bible’s vision of the Church. Acts tells us that the whole Church took care of the whole Church: in prayer, in ministering love, in shared burdens, and in money given in support.
Years ago, I wanted to take a group of young people on a weekend during which they would worship with hundreds of other Christian young people, meet to study, pray, and reflect in small groups, hear great speakers with inspiring messages geared to them, and do service projects in Jesus’ name.
One of the boys in our group wanted to go, but his mom, a single parent struggling to make ends meet, couldn’t afford the modest registration fee or the additional expenses for things like meals during the trip.
I went to the Church Council and laid out the need. The council spent the better part of a half-hour going over the pros and cons. Money was not an issue; the congregation had the money. Council members were afraid of the precedent that might be set if they authorized the expenditure of a few hundred bucks for one kid to experience something that might change his life.
They decided against paying for the young man’s registration. I was shaken. This was a truly great congregation, but its leaders couldn’t see their way clear to helping a fellow disciple in need.
The meeting ended and I wondered what I was going to tell the mom. "I'm sorry, but the congregation doesn't care about your kid?" "I'm sorry. We can't afford to invest in your child's discipleship?" Things were lean for Ann and me: I was willing to help, but I didn’t have all the money needed. Besides, I felt that this was a responsibility of the whole community, to help grow the disciples in our fellowship.
In this state, I was walking out of the building, when a member of the council approached me. “Pastor,” he asked. “How much is the registration and expenses?” I told him what I thought it would all add up to. He said, “I think that I can find a source.” I looked at him to be sure of what he was telling me. “I think I can find someone who can give what’s needed.”
I knew that the man’s “source” would be his own bank account, though it was clear he wanted no credit for it. All I could do was thank him again and again.
That man, still a friend of ours, was, in that small way, living out the Biblical vision for the Church: He saw the needs of another disciple in Christ’s Church as something he was called and enabled by God to take care of.
Disciples in Christ’s Church live in the absolute certainty that as God has blessed them, they are set free to bless their fellow believers--and the world, strengthening our witness for Jesus.
The rest of our lesson from Acts underscores this truth. Verse 33: “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”
Notice that it was God’s grace at work among them powerfully that enabled the first Christians to take care of each other. Anyone who tries to do God’s will without an utter reliance on the grace--the charity--of God will fail.
But when we let the gracious God we know in Jesus lead us, we can do anything that God is calling us to do, including taking care of one another in this community of faith, Living Water Lutheran Church, whether we agree on things like the color of the carpeting or whether men show up to worship in ties.
A not-very-good nineteenth century hymn was called, God Will Take Care of You. It has an atrocious sing-song melody. It's awful; I love it! It's message is right on point: The God we follow through Jesus Christ is committed to providing us with our daily bread. He will and He does take care of us. But sometimes a Christian sister's or brother’s bread will be sent to them from God through those of us who, at the time, have more bread than we need.
Jesus says that the world will know that we belong to Him when we love each other (John 13:35). Acts shows us that loving one another isn’t about an attitude of friendliness. If, in response to God's grace, we set out to love others as Christ has loved us, there will always be a price tag attached, whether it’s in the sacrifice of convenience, time, status, money, sometimes our very lives.
When we make sacrifices to take care of each other, we give witness that we can live in utter reliance on Him because Christ is alive and the gospel is true. The risen Christ assures that no matter how much we give of ourselves, He gives us eternity and more. Christ gives Himself to those who give themselves to Him.
So, we are called to take care of each other.
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Acts 4:32-35
As is true every Easter season, the appointed Scripture lessons for Sundays include passages from Acts. So today, we begin a new series of Sunday messages based on Acts that we’re calling Church Lessons.
We start today with Acts 4:32-35.
To dip into this amazing book four chapters in, it’s necessary for us to set the scene.
Acts begins with the risen Jesus reiterating the great commission to the eleven apostles and His whole Church. “...you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,” Jesus tells them, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
In Acts 2, as 120 disciples were gathered in Jerusalem for prayer, the Holy Spirit descended on them and the Church was empowered to fulfill Jesus’ commission. By the power of the Spirit, they told the crowds from all over the Mediterranean who were gathered in Jerusalem for the Pentecost festival, in the diverse languages of those crowds, about God’s mighty works. Especially the mightiest act of all: God becoming human in Jesus, living a sinless life, dying on a cross for our sins, and rising from the dead to give forgiveness and new life to all who believe in Him.
On that day, Peter then preached a sermon that brought 3000 people to faith in Christ. We’ll be celebrating Pentecost Sunday six weeks from now.
After Pentecost, the Church continued to pursue its mission and ran into opposition for it. But instead of collapsing or falling to the temptation of returning violence or hatred to its persecutors, the Church, as well portrayed in the fantastic new movie, Paul: Apostle of Christ, prayed for boldness in lovingly sharing the good news, the gospel, of the crucified and risen Jesus with the world.
It’s soon after this that we come to our passage for today.
Verse 32: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.”
We need to spend some time talking about what these words mean and what they don’t mean.
As we talked about a few Wednesday nights ago during Lent, the disciples in Christ’s Church did have conflicts and disagreement. They seem to have known the wisdom of the modern wag who said, “If two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant.
To be of “one heart and mind” doesn’t mean that the first Christians always agreed with each other. They didn’t.
Among the many disagreements and conflicts, the one most consequential to you and me, maybe, is the one that raged for some time over the ministry to Gentiles, non-Jews, by Paul.
There were Jewish Christians who insisted that Gentiles couldn’t be grafted into the Church or the Kingdom of God. They were sure that only Jews could be Christians and that Paul was blaspheming God by welcoming non-Jews, Gentiles, into the fellowship of Christ’s Church.
In Acts 15, we’re told about what’s now called the Council of Jerusalem. There, all points of view were aired and those gathered finally agreed to let Paul reach out to the Gentiles. As long as Gentile believers would respect Jewish Christians, Gentiles would be welcomed into the fellowship of Christ’s Church as fellow heirs of God’s grace given in Christ. That was a good decision for you and me, making it possible for us to know Jesus and the free gift of new life He gives to all who repent and believe in Him!
There are some non-negotiables for people to be part of Christ’s Church, of course. The Church expects believers to accept the deity of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the belief that we are saved by God’s grace through our faith in Christ, the witness of God’s Word in the Bible.
But the first Christian disciples, led by the witness of the apostles and the Holy Spirit, concluded agreement about unimportant matters like times of meeting, the kinds of songs, the color of the carpet, or whether people wear jeans or suits and ties to worship, to put it all in modern terms, was unnecessary.
Scholars tell us that the phrase “one in heart and mind” refers to the Old Testament vision of God’s Kingdom. Deuteronomy 15 described something of what life in covenant with God would be like. Believers were to be part of a community in which, every seven years, all debts were to be forgiven and possessions lost restored. Deuteronomy 15:4, says to the Israelites who were about to enter the promised land (this is from the English Standard Version, which gives a better translation of the verse): “...there will be no poor among you; for the Lord will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess…”
In other words, when you were part of God’s community, no one who is part of it should be in need. But Jesus has expanded the meaning of Jubilee. Through His once-and-for-all sacrifice of Himself on the cross, He has forgiven all of our debts and told His people that as we have been forgiven of our eternal debt to God, so we are to go about relieving our sisters and brothers in Christ of their debts to God, to us, to the world. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," Jesus teaches us to pray.
This is really what Luke, the author of Acts, means when he says at the outset of our lesson: “All the believers were one in heart and mind.”
The proof that he’s talking about the first Christian disciples taking care of each other’s needs here and not about always agreeing with each other comes in the very next thing he writes: “No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had…”
This doesn’t mean that the first Christians sold off all of their homes and properties and lived off the land or on the streets. (Practically speaking, they would have had nowhere to meet for worship if they'd done that.)
It means that all recognized that everything they had was from God. As James writes in his New Testament letter: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…” (James 1:17)
So, the first Christians did something far harder than agreeing with each other: They took care of each other.
When their widows or other destitutes among them, who had no Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid to rely on, no 401k's or 403b's, were in need, their fellow Christians met those needs.
To be the Church means, among other things, that we take care of each other.
Many congregations have the attitude that the pastor is the hired caregiver.
But that’s not the Bible’s vision of the Church. Acts tells us that the whole Church took care of the whole Church: in prayer, in ministering love, in shared burdens, and in money given in support.
Years ago, I wanted to take a group of young people on a weekend during which they would worship with hundreds of other Christian young people, meet to study, pray, and reflect in small groups, hear great speakers with inspiring messages geared to them, and do service projects in Jesus’ name.
One of the boys in our group wanted to go, but his mom, a single parent struggling to make ends meet, couldn’t afford the modest registration fee or the additional expenses for things like meals during the trip.
I went to the Church Council and laid out the need. The council spent the better part of a half-hour going over the pros and cons. Money was not an issue; the congregation had the money. Council members were afraid of the precedent that might be set if they authorized the expenditure of a few hundred bucks for one kid to experience something that might change his life.
They decided against paying for the young man’s registration. I was shaken. This was a truly great congregation, but its leaders couldn’t see their way clear to helping a fellow disciple in need.
The meeting ended and I wondered what I was going to tell the mom. "I'm sorry, but the congregation doesn't care about your kid?" "I'm sorry. We can't afford to invest in your child's discipleship?" Things were lean for Ann and me: I was willing to help, but I didn’t have all the money needed. Besides, I felt that this was a responsibility of the whole community, to help grow the disciples in our fellowship.
In this state, I was walking out of the building, when a member of the council approached me. “Pastor,” he asked. “How much is the registration and expenses?” I told him what I thought it would all add up to. He said, “I think that I can find a source.” I looked at him to be sure of what he was telling me. “I think I can find someone who can give what’s needed.”
I knew that the man’s “source” would be his own bank account, though it was clear he wanted no credit for it. All I could do was thank him again and again.
That man, still a friend of ours, was, in that small way, living out the Biblical vision for the Church: He saw the needs of another disciple in Christ’s Church as something he was called and enabled by God to take care of.
Disciples in Christ’s Church live in the absolute certainty that as God has blessed them, they are set free to bless their fellow believers--and the world, strengthening our witness for Jesus.
The rest of our lesson from Acts underscores this truth. Verse 33: “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.”
Notice that it was God’s grace at work among them powerfully that enabled the first Christians to take care of each other. Anyone who tries to do God’s will without an utter reliance on the grace--the charity--of God will fail.
But when we let the gracious God we know in Jesus lead us, we can do anything that God is calling us to do, including taking care of one another in this community of faith, Living Water Lutheran Church, whether we agree on things like the color of the carpeting or whether men show up to worship in ties.
A not-very-good nineteenth century hymn was called, God Will Take Care of You. It has an atrocious sing-song melody. It's awful; I love it! It's message is right on point: The God we follow through Jesus Christ is committed to providing us with our daily bread. He will and He does take care of us. But sometimes a Christian sister's or brother’s bread will be sent to them from God through those of us who, at the time, have more bread than we need.
Jesus says that the world will know that we belong to Him when we love each other (John 13:35). Acts shows us that loving one another isn’t about an attitude of friendliness. If, in response to God's grace, we set out to love others as Christ has loved us, there will always be a price tag attached, whether it’s in the sacrifice of convenience, time, status, money, sometimes our very lives.
When we make sacrifices to take care of each other, we give witness that we can live in utter reliance on Him because Christ is alive and the gospel is true. The risen Christ assures that no matter how much we give of ourselves, He gives us eternity and more. Christ gives Himself to those who give themselves to Him.
So, we are called to take care of each other.
Church lesson #1: In all ways, we are to seek and are set free to seek to take care of the needs of our fellow believers so that together, we can be authentic witnesses for the new life God is establishing in all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.Amen!
[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]
Sunday, May 08, 2016
What's Christian Unity? And What It's For?
John 17:20-26
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ. Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them [that is, the first century disciples who were following Him back then] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message [that’s you and me], that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...”
Jesus prays for unity among Christians. But what exactly does it mean for Christians to live in unity with each other? It's easier, in some ways, to talk about what Christian unity isn't, allowing that to help us form an answer to that question.
So, first of all, it’s not unity with each other apart from unity with Christ. In a denomination to which many of us once belonged, we were accused of breaking the unity of Christ’s Church when we left. But when a group of people calling itself the Church breaks with Christ, it’s no longer united with Christ. We left that old denomination in order to have unity with Christ and with His true Church. Those who repudiate the authority of God’s Word over the life of the Church and the life of Christians are the ones who break the Church’s unity. Unity with other people without Christ is not unity.
Secondly, Christian unity isn’t coerced uniformity. I knew a man who bragged about his marriage: “I’m so proud that we’ve been married more than fifty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor for years because her husband was a thoughtless dictator. He was happy; she was a wreck. Unity is not coerced uniformity, whether in a marriage or in a church.
Thirdly, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict and disagreement are to be expected. Only spiritually immature people think that good churches don’t have disagreements! As someone has said, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or maybe dead.
Consider the Biblical record of Jesus when it comes to conflict.
Fourthly, the unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations. As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth. The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, one of Lutheranism’s basic statements of faith, “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
As much as I appreciate the North American Lutheran Church, of which Living Water is a part, it is only the Church to the extent that it remains faithful to that Biblically-rooted understanding of the Church.
The same is true of Living Water Church.
Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy.
Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”
Love allows for disagreements, and even a little neurosis. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.
Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. What would be the point of that?
It turns out that Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity as His Church. Look at verse 23 of our Gospel lesson. Jesus prays, “...Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”
The unity for which Jesus prays has one overriding purpose: to empower the disciples of His Church--you and me--in fulfilling our one and only mission of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That’s it!
I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other--and how comfortable and united they felt with each other--that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. They would brag about how friendly their church was, but when visitors came to worship, Bible studies, or church activities, they were only friendly to each other, not the visitors. (That’s a contrast to Living Water, where visitors have to negotiate a gauntlet of unofficial greeters as they make their way to the sanctuary!)
A church united in Christ loves nothing more than making disciples, seeking out and welcoming others so that they can know Christ as their God, Lord, and Friend.
Disciples from united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”
They love taking the time to help others to know and grow in a saving relationship with Christ!
We do this in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends through saved, repentant sinners like us, disciples of Christ who bet our whole lives on Jesus Christ!
In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Like the apostle John, a Church united with Jesus Christ wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God. A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!
As someone has famously put it: “The Church is the only organization that does not exist for itself, but for those who live outside of it.”
Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.
Disciples of Christ and His Church believe that Jesus meant it when He said in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If Christians live in unity for any other purpose than helping people follow Jesus, they may be nice people; but they are not a church.
One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of resolving to be united. Unity in Christ is God’s gift to people who are focused, not on themselves or their preferences or obsessions, but on Jesus Christ alone.
Sometimes, I have Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and tell them to pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus. Here’s the deal: As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.
As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. Jesus prays that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.
As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves.
Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I think that I may have misunderstood what you were saying, could you explain it to me again? How can I share Christ with others? How can I invite others to know and follow Christ?” will be spoken among us.
More and more disciples in our midst will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus so that they can be part of His priesthood of all believers, each of us having ministries to the Church and to the world.
As we live each day as part of this community of Christian faith, Living Water, may we turn always to Christ in repentance and renewal and pray that, as we do so, Christ will unite us in doing the very thing that we all were saved by Jesus Christ to do: Turn this dying world upside down by living and dying for Christ alone and by making disciples; reaching up, reaching in, reaching out. Amen
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays, shortly before His arrest and execution, for unity between God and the people who have been won to faith in Christ. Beginning at verse 20, Jesus prays: “My prayer is not for them [that is, the first century disciples who were following Him back then] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message [that’s you and me], that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you...”
Jesus prays for unity among Christians. But what exactly does it mean for Christians to live in unity with each other? It's easier, in some ways, to talk about what Christian unity isn't, allowing that to help us form an answer to that question.
So, first of all, it’s not unity with each other apart from unity with Christ. In a denomination to which many of us once belonged, we were accused of breaking the unity of Christ’s Church when we left. But when a group of people calling itself the Church breaks with Christ, it’s no longer united with Christ. We left that old denomination in order to have unity with Christ and with His true Church. Those who repudiate the authority of God’s Word over the life of the Church and the life of Christians are the ones who break the Church’s unity. Unity with other people without Christ is not unity.
Secondly, Christian unity isn’t coerced uniformity. I knew a man who bragged about his marriage: “I’m so proud that we’ve been married more than fifty years and we’ve never had one disagreement.” But I later learned that his wife had been taking antidepressants and seeing a counselor for years because her husband was a thoughtless dictator. He was happy; she was a wreck. Unity is not coerced uniformity, whether in a marriage or in a church.
Thirdly, the unity for which Jesus prays for His Church does not mean that Christians will never disagree or get upset with one another. In fact, since the Church is Christ’s body in the world, the group of people given the most important mission in the world--making disciples of all nations--conflict and disagreement are to be expected. Only spiritually immature people think that good churches don’t have disagreements! As someone has said, if two people agree on everything, at least one of them is irrelevant...or maybe dead.
Consider the Biblical record of Jesus when it comes to conflict.
- Jesus publicly disagreed with Pharisees and Sadducees for valuing their religion instead of a personal, saving relationship with God.
- Jesus also condemned those among His fellow Jews who refused to believe in Him, despite Jesus being the clear fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah King God would send to save His people from their sins.
- Jesus called His own disciple, Peter, a satan for trying to keep Jesus from following God’s plan for Jesus’ cross and resurrection.
Fourthly, the unity for which Jesus prays is also not about denominational organizations or even our congregations. As Lutherans, we believe that the earthly institutional Church is not to be confused with Christ’s Church, the body of Christ that exists in both heaven and earth. The real Church, says Article 7 of The Augsburg Confession, one of Lutheranism’s basic statements of faith, “is the congregation of saints...in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.” “For the true unity of the Church,” the Confession then says, “it is enough to agree about the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments.”
As much as I appreciate the North American Lutheran Church, of which Living Water is a part, it is only the Church to the extent that it remains faithful to that Biblically-rooted understanding of the Church.
The same is true of Living Water Church.
Of course, the unity of an individual congregation can sometimes seem to be threatened over disagreements, too. But we know from other relationships that disagreements aren’t unhealthy.
Presbyterian pastor and writer Charlie Shedd once told about a fierce argument he had with his wife Martha one morning. He left home angry. He came back several hours later to an empty house and a note. “Dear Charlie,” it said, “I hate you. Love, Martha.”
Love allows for disagreements, and even a little neurosis. As the sinless Savior Jesus loves and forgives us despite our faults, He makes it possible for us to love and forgive our sisters and brothers in Christ despite theirs.
Of course, Christ doesn’t want us to be united just so we can sit around being happy about our unity. What would be the point of that?
It turns out that Jesus has a particular purpose in praying for our unity as His Church. Look at verse 23 of our Gospel lesson. Jesus prays, “...Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me”
The unity for which Jesus prays has one overriding purpose: to empower the disciples of His Church--you and me--in fulfilling our one and only mission of making disciples for Jesus Christ. That’s it!
I’ve known many churches whose members were so content with each other--and how comfortable and united they felt with each other--that they never thought about welcoming others into their fellowship. They would brag about how friendly their church was, but when visitors came to worship, Bible studies, or church activities, they were only friendly to each other, not the visitors. (That’s a contrast to Living Water, where visitors have to negotiate a gauntlet of unofficial greeters as they make their way to the sanctuary!)
A church united in Christ loves nothing more than making disciples, seeking out and welcoming others so that they can know Christ as their God, Lord, and Friend.
Disciples from united churches love telling the spiritually disconnected and lost about the new life that only comes from Jesus Christ, and calling all our fellow sinners to “come and see Jesus Christ.”
They love taking the time to help others to know and grow in a saving relationship with Christ!
We do this in the passionate hope that those not connected to Jesus will be reached by the amazing grace God extends through saved, repentant sinners like us, disciples of Christ who bet our whole lives on Jesus Christ!
In John 20:30-31, John explains why he wrote his gospel: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Like the apostle John, a Church united with Jesus Christ wants to so present Jesus to others that they will come to believe in Him and so have eternal life with God. A united church has the salvation of the lost as its animating passion and purpose, the very reason for its existence!
As someone has famously put it: “The Church is the only organization that does not exist for itself, but for those who live outside of it.”
Jesus prays for our unity so that the world we touch and reach out to will come to believe in Jesus Christ, the only One Who can give human beings forgiveness of sin and the new life that He died and rose to give to those who believe in Him.
Disciples of Christ and His Church believe that Jesus meant it when He said in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
If Christians live in unity for any other purpose than helping people follow Jesus, they may be nice people; but they are not a church.
One last thing to note about the unity of the Church is that true unity can’t be manufactured by us. We saints who are also sinners are incapable of resolving to be united. Unity in Christ is God’s gift to people who are focused, not on themselves or their preferences or obsessions, but on Jesus Christ alone.
Sometimes, I have Catechism students scatter to different parts of a room and tell them to pretend that a Bible I place on a table is Jesus. Then I tell them to walk toward Jesus. Here’s the deal: As they draw closer to Jesus, they also draw closer to one another.
As we draw closer to Jesus, we grow closer to our fellow Christians. Jesus prays that His Church will be one with God and one another because Jesus knows we can’t manufacture or coerce our unity; unity is a byproduct of a people who turn their eyes on Jesus.
As we pray, read Scripture, receive the Sacraments, and serve others with a focus on Jesus, our hearts will be more dialed into others, not just ourselves.
Words like, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. I think that I may have misunderstood what you were saying, could you explain it to me again? How can I share Christ with others? How can I invite others to know and follow Christ?” will be spoken among us.
More and more disciples in our midst will understand that they too have been transformed by Jesus so that they can be part of His priesthood of all believers, each of us having ministries to the Church and to the world.
As we live each day as part of this community of Christian faith, Living Water, may we turn always to Christ in repentance and renewal and pray that, as we do so, Christ will unite us in doing the very thing that we all were saved by Jesus Christ to do: Turn this dying world upside down by living and dying for Christ alone and by making disciples; reaching up, reaching in, reaching out. Amen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)