It's Hard to be the Church
David C. Myers
Acts 10:34 - 43
Romans 1:16 - 17 and 3:22b - 31
Matthew 7:21 - 29
Text: "The truth, I now realize, is that God does not show partiality." . . . Acts 10:34
Karl Barth, the great theologian of two generations ago, posed a question that I may never forget, especially when I preach. Barth said: "When people come to church, they come with really only one question: "Is it true?" Is the story of faith true? Is the resurrection true? Is it true that my most dark and deepest secrets are forgiven? "Is it true?" The question comes from the fact that to be alive is to know and share the reality of fear and anxiety about how we relate to one another both now and in the great unknown called the future.
The answer to Barth's question, I believe, in part lies in the words of another great thinker: mathematician, philosopher and theologian, Alfred North Whitehead. He wrote, "You do not persuade people in life nor in the gospel by your logic, only by your enthusiasm." You see, if you ask the questions about your faith and expect logical answers, it's likely that your question will never be answered. There is no proof in a logical rational sense about the mysteries of life and faith. No amount of words logically arranged will ever answer the question, "Is it true?"
Perhaps this explains why Barth would also say late in life when queried by a student in the United States asking him what the greatest thing he ever learned about his faith would be. He answered with 12 short words: "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
Even a study of the Church and the Bible do not finally explain our faith. Actually it's the other way around; they are explained by the mysteries of life. Take for example the resurrection. There would be no church and no Bible unless there had first been the Resurrection. On Good Friday Jesus died an apparent failure, His friends scattered and His movement stopped. But three days later He arose from the dead. His friends reassembled, and God's movement started up again, never to stop. The resurrection explains these things.
It's also important to note that the resurrection - the great mystery of faith did not change the world in which the disciples lived; but it changed the disciples, dramatically and drastically. It was still a frightening world in first century Palestine. Rome was still Rome and was still in power. The political and military structures went about their business as usual, taking little if any notice from this event that was to transform the disciples and to set into motion a movement that would completely outlive the seemingly eternal glories of Rome.
Before Christ was crucified the disciples weren't sure of what the world was coming to. But after the first Easter, that wasn't even the right question. For now it wasn't a matter of what the world was coming to. Now, it was a matter of what had come to the world.
And what does it mean to us as we try to discover what it means to be the church.
Carlyle Marney, the Baptist Preacher and author of a generation ago spells out what the heaven of his fantasy includes and what it eliminates. Sitting on his mountain retreat in North Carolina, he wrote:
"The heaven of my fantasy would contain, I fear, no pietists, no scientists, no mathematicians, nor any other kind of fundamentalist. It would consist, in the main, of a small group of agreeable theologians, not too smart for me, who generally are in agreement with me, and who speak English. There would be few, if any Yankees, for I find them too provincial; no Democrats or Republicans, for they all sound alike; but a few good atheists for spite and everyone's amusement.
"My mother, of course, if she really liked it and decided to stay. . . .
"My heaven would include my father, because he has never in all his life presumed on the Almighty just because of his faith. It would include almost no theological students, for they are too arrogant and know far too much for heaven. There would be a few rascals, one car mechanic I know to fix things where he couldn't charge for it. I would include an old uncle who would be so surprised he would be fun to watch; but no high-church Anglicans, no professional pastors, no denominational experts, no finance campaigns, and no Saturday evenings without a sermon ready.
"No linguists, no faddists, no experts on anything, but I would need a good flutist, a good organist, and one real tenor.
And then Marney adds, "How absurd, you say? How profane, how limited you are, how provincial, how insular, how little can you get? Heaven - or the church - is not safe in your hands! Precisely, and neither is life! In spite of all our vaunted adequacies, neither your life nor mine is safe in my hands. I am not competent to decide the constituency of the Eternal, and neither are you."
Nor are you and I competent to decide the constituency of the church! We just wouldn't include enough of God's people!
Every time I go to a large gathering of the larger church it seems that either I or someone who comments to me, "now if you were a marketing person, you would just say, let's pack it in." This organization will never work!" I have never understood why God has such poor taste, but God always seems to include people that I would never think could understand God and/or the church. God is always more inclusive than I am!
And for that very reason, it's hard to be the church! But then, from what little reading I've done here and there in the Bible suggests to me that it's always been tough to be the church. There in Acts is the Apostle Peter, who if he is sure of anything, it is that his own Jews are not only his kind of people, but they are God's people! And there's no way that we can know the shock and disbelief which he experiences when he looks around and sees the Spirit of God falling upon the Gentiles - the outsiders - the scum of the earth; the enemies of God; so that they are following this Jesus Whom Peter loves while many of his own people will have nothing to do with him. And Peter stares at the heavens and says, "Lord, it's hard to be your church!"
But Peter came around - and the answer came to him. Indeed, it is true, for Peter experienced newness and admitted his error and spoke, "The truth, I know realize, is that God does not show partiality."
This story reveals one of the mysteries of our faith and allows us to experience the reality of the resurrection when we begin our confession with these same words, "the truth I now realize." It is a statement that marks a turnaround, a transformation in our thinking, while at the same time acknowledging that God is at work within us. It shows how we are not conforming to this world, but instead are being transformed by God.
Imagine again the resurrection experience. Well, who were the first people the risen Christ revealed Himself to? The religious or political leaders, as if to say, "I told you so, I am the Son of God!?" No. How about at least to His disciples, the faithful ones that traveled with Him and endured His trials? No. The first ones to experience the resurrection were the ones in that society that had no power, and certainly no place in matters religious - they were women. It just causes a number of folks to say, "the truth, I now realize, is that God shows no partiality."
But going even another step, imagine the transformation those women must have experienced as they went to the tomb. So unbelieving they must have thought the tomb was robbed; it just couldn't be possible that Christ had been resurrected. And then Jesus appeared to them and instructed them to tell the others, the disciples. "The truth, I now realize . . ."
Or, imagine the faithful disciples being told by these women that Jesus had risen from the dead. Old Thomas represented them all - and Karl Barth's question is really valid in this case - "Is it true?" - Thomas represents all of us when he expressed his doubts. And then he came around by saying, "The truth, I know realize, . . ." (or words to that effect).
Or, imagine the faithful disciples in every time and in every place that think they have it all figured out - that their church, their mission, their fellowship grows comfortable, stable and predictable; and then, lo and behold, there comes a challenge that upsets our understanding of who can be in the church.
There is something fundamentally simple and yet, o so profound about all of this. The underlying truth that unites all of us is that each person on earth was created as a finite person with limited knowledge. Given free choice we begin to make mistakes; that is, we begin to sin. We begin to feel good about ourselves, and those like us, and then we start getting exclusive looking at those different from us as somehow less than us, with a lesser understanding about the truth about the world. And something breaks through - for Peter it was a dream; for us it might be some vision of God's inclusive acceptance.
You see we all stand in need of the transforming resurrection experience that finds us confessing, "The truth, I now realize, is that God shows no partiality." As the church of God we affirm that God keeps coming to us transforming our thoughts and moving us to new realities about the world and about who God loves.
A story in closing.
After trying all kinds of diets for years, Jean Nidetch ended up going to an obesity clinic in 1962. A skinny nutritionist asked the group how they felt when shown a smorgasbord table, going on to say that she got sick to her stomach at the very sight of it. Jean thought to herself - "What she doesn't know! She doesn't know that if you feel lonely enough or worried enough - and if it doesn't move - you'll eat it. She doesn't know that if you need a jelly bean bad enough, you can go looking for it in your son's pants pocket, and even if it is covered with dirt and crayon, you'll eat it." Jean ended up following the clinic diet with but one exception - cookies. Tons of cookies! How she would lie about the cookies to that skinny nutritionist, saying: "How could you tell a woman who gets sick to her stomach when she looks at food, that you have to have cookies?"
As a result of her experience, Jean invited some overweight friends to her home, and they began to tell one another of their struggles. When one school teacher confessed that when one of her students had thrown-out a half-eaten donut in the wastebasket and she could think of nothing else until class was over and she could fish the donut out and eat it, every person in the room could understand what she had gone though and how relieved she was to be able to tell someone about it. But more than that, the participants discovered that when you could talk about it, the passion for food no longer had quite the same hold over you. From that meeting in Jean's living room, a famous weight-reduction program evolved, of which Jean Nidetch said, "It's a church made up of sinners."
Of course, it's not a new radical concept - a church for sinners. For a fellowship to be a church, it has to be a church for sinners. To exclude sinners from the fellowship of the church is like having to show a clean bill of health before you can be admitted to the hospital.
As the search for truth continues in our lives we can find a ready fellowship in the confessing church; a church admitting its errors, a people sharing their hurts and worries, the fears and anxieties in their lives and for the world - all seeking the answer to the question, "is it true?"
It is a ministry for the sinners, of the sinners and by the sinners. This ministry to one another will not be accomplished by skinny nutritionists talking about how food makes them sick, or by the holier-than-thou" types who never admit pain or hurts, or simply by studying dogmas and creeds. As Alfred North Whitehead said, "You do not persuade people in life or in the gospel by your logic, only by your enthusiasm."
Indeed, there is transforming power in the fellowship of sinners who dare to name the One Who "receives sinners gladly" - a liberating power greater than we ever dared to imagine. And then we can join the confession and affirmation, "The truth, I now realize, . . ."