Delivered August 19, 2007
by Pastor Marilyn Henderson
Have you ever tried to go "back home?" I have. When we visited the Elkhart-Goshen, Indiana, area where I spent my growing up years, it was amazing how small the houses and streets seemed, how big the trees were and the distances between places didn't seem nearly so great. There were new stores, malls and shops. The places where I had shopped with my mom and sister were now restaurants or bakeries or fast food places. There were new houses and new schools. And the places I had grown up with were no longer there.
Our church was different, too. Since our family had moved away, Belmont had built a larger, more modern meetinghouse with a community centre just down the street from the small brick building where I attended as a child with my family.
And every other place we've visited after being gone awhile has changed, too. Or was it me that had done most of the changing? Perhaps you've had a similar experience.
While I've always enjoyed reconnecting with old friends where we've lived before, it is sometimes disorienting. And sometimes disappointing. It is never the same. I have become a different person, my friends have grown and changed and this is all because of maturing and the different experiences and lives we've had.
Life is that way. To grow is to change. Change can hurt or be uncomfortable when we don't feel ready for it or don't want it. Growing pains are a physical example of change hurting. It is sometimes uncomfortable or even painful when a situation we've become familiar and comfortable with - perhaps depended on - changes: a good friend or family member moves away; a close relationship is broken by hurtful, harsh words; a co-worker who has become a friend quits without a word; a company buys out another and replaces workers; a confidence is betrayed by a friend.
Sometimes change is beyond our control: the livestock markets and stock market; what happens in Parliament; the cumulative effect of many people's irresponsible attitude towards our home, the Earth; the attitudes and actions of others; a loved family member or friend dies; we grow older.
But sometimes we welcome change: we welcomed Pieter into our church family this year; we welcomed warmer weather; we welcome Sunday as a day of rest when we do something different from the rest of the week. We welcome vacation times to relax, to have a change of pace from our everyday responsibilities, to refresh and restore ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually. We welcome good news of people being set free. We are glad to see young people committing themselves to marriage. And there are many other ways we welcome change.
You have perhaps been thinking of a particular change in your own life as I've been talking.
The early church had growing pains. Growing pains indicate that something natural and good is happening in a child's body, but growing can be painful for awhile, particularly when one is growing quickly. So it was in the early church.
Here's the situation in Jerusalem:There was a viable and lively community of followers of Jesus in Antioch where both Jewish and non-Jewish, or Gentile, believers worshiped God and discipled each other. The group seemed to be doing quite well under the teaching of both Barnabas and Paul, with Gentiles confessing Christ as Messiah of all people and the Holy Spirit doing signs and wonders among them.
A number of Jewish believers from the church in Jerusalem, who were also Pharisees, unofficially travelled to Antioch to set the congregation there straight. They were concerned that uncircumcised Gentiles were being told they would be saved merely by confessing Jesus as their Lord. According to the Jewish way of thinking, a man couldn't be saved or participate in Passover unless one was circumcised.
Paul and Barnabas believed and had been teaching what Peter expressed in vs. 8-9, 11:
And God, the heart-knower, openly supported them by giving them the Holy Spirit the same as he did to us. And when, through their faith, he straightened out their lives, he didn't make the slightest distinction between us and them ... Instead, we believe that they, exactly the same as we, are saved by the undeserved favour of the Lord Jesus." The Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament
The story we're thinking about today was not a new one for the early Church. One source placed Cornelius' conversion 10 years before the Jerusalem Council. If this is accurate, the Church had lived with the Gentile question for at least 10years. Why was this issue so hard? The simple answer is because it meant changing the ways people had thought about their religion for hundreds of years. Thousands of years in the case of the early church.
And it is helpful to keep in mind that the early church was birthed from the womb of Judaism. Therefore its leaders and structures were essentially Jewish. The Church had spread beyond Jerusalem after Stephen's stoning and the subsequent persecution of Jerusalem Christians. It was "overseen" by the elders of the Jerusalem church. At least, it seems from the New Testament texts that this was so.
The issue was an important one in the early church. Would this new experience of God-Among-Us - the Holy Spirit gracing the Gentile believers - continue as God's new Way or as another sect or expression of Judaism?
Let me tell you a story:A man worked for an oil company and he and his wife moved to Southern California in September of 2000. They moved from a suburb of Houston, Texas, where they had lived for 5½ years. Their best friends in their Texas church moved into the same Houston suburb because they lived there.
The wife continues with her story: Joan, my best friend, would come over every week for coffee and we would pray, sit and talk about life, our kids and our relationships with God. Leon and I have a little black and white Boston terrier named Zippy and she would run and jump into Joan's lap as soon as Joan would sit in her favourite chair at my house and stay there pretty much until Joan left.
One day after our move, Joan called me in California from Texas and she sounded like she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong. She told me that she had a doctor's appointment but she was too early so she went to a furniture store across the road. When she went in she saw my exact furniture in the store. She thought of me immediately and started missing me and Zippy. She went over and sat down on the couch and started weeping.
A salesman came up to her and asked if he could help her. Joan said, "No... you see my best friend in the whole world moved away recently and she had furniture exactly like this. I thought if I sat here long enough I would be able to smell the coffee and Zippy would run and jump into my lap."
Joan, left behind in Houston, grieving the loss of her friend. Thoughts and feelings reverted to those comfortable, familiar times of conversation and prayer and connecting automatically. And these thoughts and feelings collided with what Joan knew to be reality.
What was the reality of the situation in the early church? God had indicated through visions, signs and wonders that God was doing a new thing - first in Jesus' ministry and now the power of the Holy Spirit was working in and by means of followers of Jesus. This new thing was the inclusion of the Gentiles into the Kingdom that Jesus established. This was the reality of the early church, but it wasn't comfortable. Not at all. It went against everything they had been taught about their relationships with Gentiles.
This new, on-going presence and action of God was not necessarily easy to deal with. The Holy Spirit's work was unpredictable. It was uncontrollable. It was even wild at times. At least, it must have seemed so to the Christian Jews. How was an essentially Jewish church going to deal with new followers of Jesus who were not from Jewish background?
And this question leads to a greater: was this a new expression of the faith as the Jews had known it from ancient times? Or was this a radically different understanding of God informed by God's past acts in the Jewish history? What was required of the followers of Jesus? Who was in and who was out?
Acts 15 describes the gathering.
In the story of The Elephant Who Couldn't Forget, little Congo had forgotten the elephants' first lesson. Grandmother Manyara told him, "You have forgotten to remember what is important. Sometimes, in order to remember something important you have to forget something that isn't important … It is important to remember that you and Zambesi are brothers."
In Acts, James was calling the church to remember that God in Jesus died for all people. James was reminding them that God in the Holy Spirit was hard at work blessing and gracing people who had never belonged to Abraham's family, men who had never been circumcized. And James, through the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was inviting the Jerusalem elders to be gracious and sensitive toward their new brothers and sisters in Christ. James was saying that these new brothers and sisters - people who now belonged to God's family - were now more important than strictly enforcing the Jewish practice of circumcision.
It is an intriguing story, fascinating in its complexity. But now - so what?
Change is inevitable. We know that without a doubt. This congregation has gone through significant change in the last year and will being going through significant change in the next two years - at least! How will you respond to the changes that need to take place?
A number of you have expressed the opinion that this group needs to attract new people who, hopefully, will choose to "join" this group. How will you include them in your lives? In the life of the congregation?
From my experience in trying to "enter" congregations, how people are initially welcomed and how they are included in congregational life is crucial. In our visits with those who have, at one time or another, been a part of this congregation, there has been a refrain: it is hard to feel like we really belong at PMC.
Granted, Eric and I don't know the whole story but the truth is that no one except God the Knower does. Perhaps part of the truth is that, unknowingly, we resist change by not allowing newer or younger members make decisions or by refusing to cooperate with those decisions. Perhaps we dampen the Holy Spirit by saying, "We don't do it that way here" instead of saying "Maybe it's time to change things up." Could it be that we discourage others from seeking God with us by rehearsing how it used to be? By regularly talking about experiences and events not shared by those who are new?
Perhaps part of the reality we must face, as Joan did in that furniture store, is the fact that we cannot keep change out of "our" church. Reality is that God created all things to change. We don't necessarily throw everything we've learned in the past away, but we learn new things about God and about ourselves and we embrace them.
God constantly calls the followers of Jesus to grow into the people they were created to be. God calls followers of Jesus remember what Jesus told them to do - to make disciples of all people. God appeals to us all to change, to turn from what we have been to being more open to the changes God wants to do in our hearts and lives - and in the church.
Are we at Petitcodiac Mennonite Church remembering what is important?
And God, the heart-knower, openly supported them by giving them the Holy Spirit the same as he did to us. And when, through their faith, he straightened out their lives, he didn't make the slightest distinction between us and them ... Instead, we believe that they, exactly the same as we, are saved by the undeserved favour of the Lord Jesus.
Who will be "in?"
Who will be "out?"
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This is a story about four people named
Petitcodiac Mennonite Church