Being Church

Sermon

In an interview from 2002 with the Christian Century magazine, author Frederick Buechner made this observation. “I say the best thing that could happen to your church is for it to burn down and for all your fax and e-mail machines to be burned up, and for the minister to be run over by a truck so that you have nothing left except each other and God. And then I say if you want to know what the original church was like, go to an AA meeting where all they have is each other and God, and they have to say to each other: ‘We cannot live whole lives without each other and a “higher power.”’”  

Happy Pentecost! 

 It is Pentecost today, fifty or so days after we celebrated Easter and the resurrection of Jesus, and today we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. So it occurred to me it might be a good day to reflect on what it means to be the church. 

In the Greek New Testament, the word we translate as “church” is ecclesia. It means a gathering for worship, an assembly of the followers of Jesus. It doesn’t mean a building; it doesn’t mean a committee, it doesn’t even mean a pastor and parishioners. It just means a gathering for worship by people who follow Jesus. 

After Peter preached that first sermon of his in the second chapter of Acts, Luke tells us how the Holy Spirit brought the prophecy from Joel to life, and he described how the ecclesia took shape.  

The ecclesia was where people were baptized, where they went through that very particular ritual of belonging. 

The ecclesia was where the apostles taught, a place of fellowship and prayer and shared meals. 

The ecclesia was where these Christians understood that all they had belonged to all in the community, the place where, after people sold their possessions and goods, they would give away money to help those in need. 

The ecclesia was where those called to healing and teaching and charitable work used the power of the Holy Spirit to carry out their work. 

It all started after Jesus ascended into Heaven and the Jewish festival day of Pentecost arrived – Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, a celebration of the harvest. People gathered from all over the place – faithful Jews coming to Jerusalem for this religious festival, people from different places, observing different cultural traditions, speaking different languages. Picture Costco on the Saturday before Christmas.  

Then God let the Spirit loose, and the disciples received divine power that looked a bit like a dancing flame over each of their heads. And suddenly everyone understood everyone, and Peter interpreted all of it and said it was of God. And so, propelled by the wind of the Spirit, the ship of the church set sail. 

The Book of Acts is a good read, recalling the trials and tribulations and barriers and celebrations that the disciples of Jesus experienced as they took his message on the road and sea. Most of them got into trouble for it, but they persisted, establishing the roots for this thing that would become church.  

The early church struggled, and at times, it looked like it wouldn’t make it. And then, in the 4th century, the Holy Roman Empire made Christianity the religion of the state, and the power of the Holy Spirit was boosted – or thwarted, some might say – by the power of the state. Because as much as the church can be a catalyst for good in the world, it can also be a place where institutional power is abused and people get hurt.  

Of late I have heard too many stories of churches and denominations abusing their power. If you’re the type to listen to podcasts, you might want to check out “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill,” a 12-episode story about a mega church that began in Seattle and fell apart largely because of the toxic culture created and maintained by their founder and lead pastor. 

The Roman Catholic church continues to struggle with acts of abuse by priests and cover-ups by bishops.  

Or consider a recent report from the Southern Baptist Church, the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. A few weeks ago, the denomination published a 300-page report of an internal investigation of sexual abuse by pastors. That report was prompted by an a different investigation by The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News which “revealed that nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders, from youth pastors to top ministers, had pleaded guilty or been convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/23/us/southern-baptist-sex-abuse-report.html) The report detailed not only acts of abuse but cover-ups by those in power.  

We Presbyterians are far from perfect in all of this, particularly with regards to our schools for native children which robbed them of their fundamental identity. Our failings and abuses have not been on the newsworthy scale, and our form of government helps to prevent mass cover-ups. It hasn’t always been this way, but it’s getting better. 

In additional to crimes of sexual misconduct, over the centuries the church – all of Christendom –  

• has been a party to misogyny, denying the full personhood of women and their God-given right to lead;  
• has been party to racism, particularly in its support of the enslavement of human beings;  
• has added its weight to the sin of homophobia; and 

• has been intertwined with politics on both sides of the aisle but particularly in the rise of the Moral Majority. 

I fear that we, the church, have forgotten that our power comes from God and not man, and the victims of injustice and abuse pay the price, while those who commit crimes are moved on, moved up, or given a golden parachute. 

This is not what Jesus meant when he told Peter that upon that rock he would build the church.  

This is not what the disciples gave their lives for in the book of Acts.  

This is not what is meant by the Body of Christ. I think we Christians over the centuries may have lost our identity as the Body of Christ, thinking we are merely a human institution.  

We can do better, and we must do better, and we have to remember what it means to be the church.  

Let me tell you a story about church. 

Back in 2015, a group of us from Westminster attended the Next Church conference in Chicago. Held at the beautiful Fourth Pres on Michigan Avenue, it was a magnificent conference that got all of us to thinking about what it means to be the church in the 21st century. 

What I remember best from those great three days was one small titter moving through the gathered attendees. On the second evening, the plenary session was led by Diana Butler Bass, a church historian whose writings should be required reading for all of us. She had taken the mountaintop view of church history, noting that every 500 years or so, the church goes through a major transition, and that we were facing that transition right now. 

People listened with respect and encouragement and hope, but then I noticed – and I was sitting in the back – people whispering to each other here and there. To my knowledge, Dr. Bass hadn’t said anything that would give rise to whispers in the audience. 

Finally, one brave soul stood up. I don’t remember their exact words, but I remember the electricity that ran through the sanctuary where we met. The last presbytery needed to vote to ratify our Presbyterian constitution had done so, and the last major institutional barrier to then full inclusion of LGBTQ folks had been removed. Anyone could be married in a Presbyterian church by a Presbyterian pastor; anyone could serve as deacon, elder, or minister. There was a brief silence, then applause, and shouts of joy, and tears. 

It was a joyful moment that arrived after decades of ugly debates on the floor of presbytery meetings, after centuries of denying all of God’s children God’s love. It was a moment of true victory, but one tinged with the pain of so many who had been excluded for too long. 

I hope for more joyful moments like that.  

I am so glad that Westminster called Chris because of who he is and the gifts he shares with us, but it took us 128 years to call a person of color to serve as a pastor.  

I am thrilled to be here, but it took 119 years for this congregation to call a woman as head of staff.  

It took 94 years for the congregation to call Cheryl Nutting, the first woman to serve as any kind of pastor here.  

We have come a long way, and God is not done with us yet. We are still making our way out of the woods that have been the COVID-19 pandemic, feeling our way into a future that feels awfully unsure, trying to get our bearings about being the church here and now. 

To that end, let me share with you a more recent thought from Diana Butler Bass. 

In one of her weekly e-mail columns, she talks about the future of religion after the pandemic. She writes, “The word religion is believed to have come from the Latin, religare, meaning to “bind” or “reconnect.” Religare is about mending what has been broken, recovering what has been mislaid, and reconnecting that which is frayed….  

“If we think of religion in terms of religare, however, the task of the post-pandemic church – the work of finding, repairing, and relocating – is clear. We must reconnect ourselves and others with time, history, physicality, and relationships. In this sense, the future of religion has never been brighter – our lost world needs finding. Pandemic dislocation calls for guides and weavers of wisdom. We don’t need to return to the old ways, we need to be relocated. We need to find a new place, a new home in a disrupted world.  

“And at the very heart of finding our lost selves is relocating our hearts in and with God. There is a journey beyond the pandemic, and we will find the way a step at a time. We haven’t been to this particular future before.” She concludes, “And we will need one another to get there.” (https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/religion-after-pandemic?s=r) 

We find each other in the ecclesia, in the gathering of the people of God. Yes, we will not always get it right, but hopefully we won’t get it horribly wrong. Yes, we’ve made some progress, but we still have ways to go. Yes, the pandemic has challenged the Big-C-Church and Westminster.  

But on this Pentecost, let’s remember that we do not do this on our own. That Holy Spirit that God let loose two thousand years ago is still hovering among us and within us,  

empowering us to see visions,  

empowering our daughters and sons and children to dream dreams,  

encouraging the old people to keep on.  

Now I don’t want to get hit by a truck, and I really don’t want this building to burn down, but Frederick Buechner was right: we cannot live whole lives, we cannot be the Church, without each other and God. 

To the glory of God. Amen.