They’re Right

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 16, 2014

They’re Right

Acts 2:36-47

They’re right.

Our young people who led worship last week

who led so faithfully,

enthusiastically, and creatively –

they’re right: we are community.

A community:

a group of people together,

a diverse group sharing a common faith.

All of us bonded by our faith,

our faith in God,

our faith in the one we follow:

our Lord Jesus Christ.

That’s what makes us community.

We’ve been called to community

for more than 2000 years,

but certainly our record as Christians

is mixed to say the least.

We’ve done community well at times

and at other times, we’ve done community poorly,

appalling poorly.

We’ve built community;

and we’ve also built walls to separate,

walls to divide,

walls to keep out.

We’ve reached out to others,

and we’ve retreated into our

own comfortable enclaves,

behind barriers of selfishness,

bigotry, and ignorance.

Over the centuries, we Christians have taken

the teachings of our Lord

and have interpreted them to suit ourselves,

making Jesus our “personal savior,”

forgetting that God revealed himself through Christ

because God “so loved the world”.

Jesus calls us to faith, calls us to community

calls to build the Kingdom of God,

a place where all are welcome… all.

Jesus teaches us to ground ourselves

in the two great commandments:

Love God

and love your neighbor.

Jesus teaches us that only the most expansive,

inclusive definition of neighbor will do;

it is what he intended.

Everyone is our neighbor.

Still we select, we choose,

we separate, we set apart,

we differentiate, we distinguish,

we pick and choose our neighbors.

It isn’t community as God intended,

or as Jesus calls us to create.

Our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles

shows us what “community” means.

Peter spoke to a large crowd

following the first Pentecost,

to people, Acts tells us,

“from every nation under heaven.”

Peter was filled with power of the Holy Spirit

and invited all who heard his voice to listen,

learn,

and become part of the new community.

“Tell us what to do,”

came the response from the people.

“Tell us what we need to do”

to become part of the community.

Simple, said Peter, “repent and be baptized”.

That’s it.

No tests, no documents to sign,

no creeds to memorize,

no background checks,

no committee to approve or disapprove.

Repent and be baptized;

that’s all it takes to be part of

the community of Christ.

And, as we heard in our lesson,

the people responded,

responded by the thousands,

joyfully becoming community in the process,

a new community,

a different kind of community,

one that reflected the Kingdom of God.

The three thousand surely reflected

a cross-section of society;

they would have been a diverse group:

young and old,

people from cities,

people from the countryside,

shepherds, carpenters,

merchants,

those with many children,

those with no children.

People from “east and west,

north and south.”

For all their differences,

they became community,

a community focused on community,

on building the community, building up,

seeking the common good:

“all who believed were together

and had all things in common.

…They would sell their possessions and goods

and distribute the proceeds to all,

as any had need.”

Do you find yourself cringing a bit

to hear that last sentence:

that the people would sell their

possessions and goods

and distribute the proceeds to all,

as any had need,

distribute to complete strangers?

It sounds like socialism, communism:

“From each according to his abilities,

to each according to his needs”

in the words of Karl Marx.

But there it is in Holy Scripture,

the life we are called to in community,

the life we are called to

through repentance and baptism.

New life,

a new way of life.

Life transformed in Christ,

life transformed by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

We hear the word “repent”

and we tend to think that it means

we are supposed to feel guilty about

the lives we lead.

“Repent miserable sinners,”

as preachers of a different era

might have fumed from the pulpit.

But that’s not what Peter had in mind

as he called the people to join him

and the other disciples

in the new community of Christ.

Repent means to change – change your thinking,

to turn from old ways of thinking,

old ways of doing.

To repent is nothing less than

“a radical change of mind,

of acts;

it is transformation.”

It is to turn from the life we’ve been living,

and live for Christ,

live by Christ,

live through Christ.

We begin this life in baptism.

when, even as an infant,

we go under the water and die to old ways,

and then come up out of the water

reborn, filled with Spirit,

a disciple of Christ,

born to live in Christ.

To repent and live fully in baptism

is to understand what it means to live in community

what it means to love one’s neighbor,

what it means to live for the common good.

The Reverend Jim Wallis in his most recent book,

calls us to “reclaim this idea of the common good,”

an idea, a way of life he argues,

that has been overrun by rampant “me-ism”:

“my needs, my wants, my rights,

what I want, what matters to me…”

the greater good of the community lost.

The great fourth century preacher

John Chrysostom preached,

“This is the rule of the most perfect Christianity,

its most exact definition,

its highest point,

namely seeking the common good,

for nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ

as caring for his neighbors.”

When we receive a new member into

the universal body of Christ through baptism

we welcome them as neighbors into community

and we respond communally.

When we receive new members

into our church family,

we welcome them as neighbors into community

and we respond communally.

We make promises in community to one another

to guide and nurture each other,

to welcome and encourage each other,

to build up and not judge

by word,

by deed,

with love,

with prayer.

We do this here in community

to help us learn how to live the same way

in the larger community

with all who are our neighbors.

“Do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

Paul tells us.

(Romans 12:2)

Paul also teaches us,      

“So if anyone is in Christ,

there is a new creation:

everything old has passed away;

see, everything has become new!

All this is from God,

who reconciled us to himself through Christ,

and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

…we are ambassadors for Christ.”

And as ambassadors for Christ,

called to a ministry of reconciliation

we are called to build community

here in the church,

and out in the world God loves so deeply.

In her book Traveling Mercies,

Anne Lamott wrote why she went to church,

and more important,

why she took her young son with her:

“I want to give him what I found in the world,

which is to say a path and a little light to see by.

Most of the people I know who have what I want –

… purpose, heart,

balance, gratitude, joy –

are people….in community,

who pray and practice their faith.”

Anne Lamott went to church and took her son

because there she found community:

a place of welcome,

a place of family,

a place of grace.

Community is a place we are called to by Christ.

But community is also a place

we are called to create,

shape,

and make as we follow Christ.

It is, as we learned last week

a forever community –

or at least, it should be.

But that means we each need to work at it,

each of us,

work at building community

instilling our community with

eternal, forever values

of love, welcome,

acceptance, compassion,

grace, peace.

They’re right, our young people.

We are community.

        

AMEN