Pas Ee iad

ae
faa ae

ea a ee
Community and Colebration

Acts 2:42 Exodus 19:1-6

June 7, 1970

John M. Buchanan

You and I are an accumulation of our past exporiences. We become who
we become as a result of years of input, extending back into our infancy,
Sometimes we have to go home to rediscover who we arc. Not in order to’ _
live in the past rather than the present, but simply to be reminded of
those places, persons and experiences which coincided in our history and
formed us into what we are today. Going back to Pennsylvania does that
for me. I like to walk the same streets I did as a child: to spend time
in the alley where many hours were devoted to play: +o look out the car
window at the school -— the baseball diamond. It's partly an exercise in
nostalgia, of course, but it's also a very personal, very warm reminder of
who I am - because these are the places where I had the experiences that
made mee «ll of us do that occasionally. If we con't go back physically,
we keep symbols of that place ~ those experiences - those persons: secrap-
books, photographs, trophies, momentos. They serve the same purpose: they
tell us who we are,

The Church needs to undergo that exercise too. We have our symbols -
our ancient creeds and liturgies, our sacramonts and traditions - which
remind us that the church was once an infant: that we, as churchmen, share
a history that extends thousands of years into the past. We can't go back,
but occasionally we ought to return, mentally, to those early, formative
years: to be reminded who we are by acknowledging who we were back in the
ist century.

That is what I propose to do this morning: take a brief walk through
the past: look at that carly church: and then look at ourselves in light
of what we have seon.

The fifth book in the New Testement, the Acts of the Apostles, is
all we have by way of an historical record of the earliest church. By

that, I mean the group of believers who were in\Jerusalem immediately

after the death, resurrection and ascension of our Lord. That is where we,
as churchmen, came from. Through that church we rediscover who we are. The
Sots of the Apostles gives us several fleeting but fascinating glimpses

of the early church. It wag apparently a very tightly—knit community, not
large at first. We assume that the believers were together most of the time,
perhaps even living together. They shared all they hads If any had real
estate or real property, and another was in need, it was sold and the need
was filled. They were secn daily in the Temple, they were held in high
esteem in those carly days, and many were sufficiently intrigued by their
life style and their message to seek admittance to their group. They were
obviously a care-free lot. They spent most of their time praying, teaching,
preaching, tending to the communal affairs of the group and waiting, -
waiting for what they belicved would be the imminent return of the Lord.

Now, there have always ee BS people who want the church to return
to its original form. ‘iell~meaning advocates of church renewal have always
been inclined to hold up this particular form of the church as the only,
and divinely inspired model. That's not what I have in mind. That makes
no more sense than you or I returning to the scene of our childhood and
actually attempting to relive the experiences of our past. Some, of course,
do try, and it is futile and very sad,

The early Christian Church showed its flexibility by changing its style
relatively quickly. The end didn't come as they had expected. The church,
it became apparent, had to find a form that would allow it to “settle in”
for a long stay. Besides they must have been notoriously “broke”. On
several occasions St. Paul solicited the financial gifts of churches in
other cities for the “Saints in Jerusalem - which leads us to assume that
the utopian form of communism which they practiced just didn't work.

The point is that the early church is not valid as a model or canloanee
of contemporary church style. But the distinguishing characteristics of

that church are: the things they did which marked them as a new and

PLE SE eee ee ee
compelling and winsome type of humanity. Church history is the story of

an institution desparately trying to preserve those characteristics, and

occasionally selling out, compromising its own identity by a merger of

convenience with the dominant culture of the time. But church history is

also the story of that same institution reversing itself, time and time

again, by rediscovering and returning to those peculiar Christian charac-—

teristics of the carliest church. It is the story of the church, in every

age, discovering what it is.

nThey ‘int genetentise to hear the apostles teach, and to share the
common life, to break bread, and to pray. Fs sense of awe was everywhere...
with one mind they kept up their daily attendance at the Temple, and, break-
ing bread in private houses, shared their meals with unaffected joy, as
they praised God and enjoyed the favor of the people." [Acts 2:42,46]
That's how the New English Bible translates it, and two words, I believe,
serve as focal points for our observation — ‘colebration” - including prayer,
praise, joy - and ‘community’, including the common meals, the concern for
the welfare of all, the sense of distinctive identity which set them apart
from everyone else.

Now before we go any further you and I probably have to undergo an
instant but major reorientation at this point. Because, in fact, our
Christianity has been pretty middle class and American and therefore
individualistic. The focus has been pul the individual's relationship with
God; the individual struggle of faith and the end result of personal piety
and hopefully salvation. Membership in the church, in this particular
culture, is not at all seen to be the equivalent of Christian faith.

Faith is some ambiguous emotion that some people have and some people

don't and which, in any case, is a matter entirely between a man and his
God. Church membership really doesn't have much to do with belonging to
a community, any more so than membership in any number of organizations

which are established on a common goal. If you doubt this, ask your

neighbor who doesn't belong to the church, whether on not he considers himself
a Christian. He will answer "yea" — at which point we ought “i Ke able to
tell him that he hasn't the foggiest notion of what he's talking about. But
that's another story, and besides I'm not at all sure we, in the church,
believe it either. Because if we did this sanctuary whould be full.

In any case, from the very beginning the Bible talks in terms of
"community" - not individuals. Someone has said that there is no such
thing as a solitary Jew. And the meaning of that is that the Heberaic
tradition deals with a covenant community made up of people who realize
their individuality only in relationship with the other members of the
community. At Mt. Sinai, God said to Moses ~ "... out of all peoples you
shall become my special possession.... you shall be my kingdom of oclente:
my holy nation ..." [Ex. 19:6] In the Bible God calls men into community,
into relationship with other men. That is how the early church saw itself -
as the new Israel, the new covenant communi ty. And that is where we mst
begin if we are going to recover our identity - with a new sense of the
community of faith — the true fellowship of Christ.

That, I believe, is the major item on the agenda for the church in our
day: — recovering its identity as a community, a community characterized
by its celebrating. On both counts we are in trouble today.

It was brought home to me recently in a discussion of the meaning of
church membership that our worship service is not very joyful; not at all
a celebration. Now that comes as a surprise to no one. dnd yet I confess,
at this point, to not know what to do about it. Think for a minute about
the words of some of the great hymms of praise we sing to begin our service:
“Joyful, Joyful we adore thee", "Praise ye the Lord, the King of Creation",
"Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God ilmighty! Early in the morning our song shall
rise to Thee!" Think about the fact that we confess our sin, and then
declare - "In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven." That's a very

happy thought - and the vehicle for our happiness is the singing of "Glory

e = “ha, ey rrp. tis a oe ake Ly, ey . ie
Dh Me ETS RS rs Pe cS , CO ee ae

~5-
be to the Father and to the Son etc." Think about the privilege of sitting
in this sanctuary - in this country - in this time - and having the opportun—
ity of sharing some small portion of our affluence. And standing togethor
as our gifts symbolically join the gifts of millions of others and singing
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow." All the ingredients for cele-
bration are here. We could change them a little. But I don't think that's
the problem. I'm inclined, rather, to raise the question of the whole atti-
tude of the average churchman when he goes to worship. I don't think he
goes to celebrate anything. And I don't think shuffling the service will
help mach until he hears the good news and feels the need to celebrate its
goodness.

I heard an apocryphal illustration recently that says it all. The
Rev. Mety Rollins, a Presbyterian minister and Executive Director of the
Caucus of Black Churchmen had concluded an address and was answering questions
from the audience. One man asked him if he attended an integrated church.
He smiled broadly and s®ii - "only during football season. You see you
folks go to church to get out. I know that if I attend a white ohurch I'11
be home for the Jets! kickoff. But in the Black Church we go to celebrate,
and we don't go home till we're done celebrating." |

We're in trouble because we've lost that sense of celebration so charac~
teristic of the early church. fnmd community - sometimes I feel that there
is more real commmity in the corner tavern, the fraternity house, at the
cocktail party, in the army ~ than there ever is in the church of Jesus
Christ. I know there is in the whole hippie movement. I've seen it. They
care for each other: they depend on each other: they support each other.
Their very presence judges the church of Jesus Christ because they have
something we ought to have — something we're always talking about but
rarely experiencing ~ a sense of wnity, a oneness, a communality that

reaches out to include all: an openness that excludes no one.

What do we have to offer the world if it is not that? Particularly
today, in a culture that finds itself dangerously and radically polarized,
what do we have to offer if. it is not a Gospel that is expressed in love
and acceptance and genuine affection between people. We are fractured
politically, with the rhetoric from both sides increasing in both volume
and venom. We are fractured economically ~ with-the poor getting poorer
the the rich adamantly retreating from anything that sounds like a threat j
to their affluence. We are fractured racially with the blacks having given
up on our noble sounding talk about integration, and the whites solemly
agreeing that you can't go too fast in these things: and most tragically
of all, we are fraotured across generation gap that shouldn't even exist.

We find ourselves unable even to communicate because of hair, and dress and
a life style that scares us to death because of its gut level integrity.

We = you and I - ought to be showing that fractured womld what it means
to accept someone with whom we disagree: what it means to forgive and to be
forgiven: what it means to love and be loved. We ought to be a model —
of people bound together in spite of their differences: a people who have
a depth and breadth that transcends politics, economics, race, and certainly
age. The Rev. William Laws, Moderator of the General Assembly said: "We
are God's gifts to each other." We need to learn what that means.

It would be embarassing if I said: “I love you." I do = but I don't
know how to say that. It would be extremely embarassing if I asked you
right now to turn and tell a fellow Christian that you loved him. I think
you do = or you want to — but you don't know how either. And yet until we
learn how to do that: to express care and concern and affection for each
other here, in this place, we aren't going to do mich about community. And
if all we do is talk about community, we aren't really evem going to get
around to celebrating anything.

Why is it g0 important? Because the goodness of the Gospel is disguised

and hidden away in the six-day emptiness of this sanctuary until we celebrate

+ re at

-7-
it - here ~ and then everyday. Because the love of God is just an intellectual

1s gaatearaena ween ea

abstraction until it is expressed between men. Not many of us are fortunate
enough to have had a mystical experience in which we truly sensed God's Love
for us. If we have, it hasn't happened often. The truth is that God's love
gets expressed through men who have the courage to show their love for each
other. That's how God himself arranged it. His love became incarnate - in
his own son — who proceeded to show it and live it and die expressing it.
That's how it always has been in the church. ‘That's how we must be.

"Our business as the Church", Revel Howe once said [p. 95, Man's
Need and God's Action] “is the business for which God brought her into being
namely to be the relationship through which men may experience, at least.
partially, the love of God that reconciles us to Himself and to one another."

To that I would add, only,
Amen.

You have shown us, our Father, what it means to love. You have called
us into your church in order that we might celebrate that love for all the
world to see. Help us to overcome the barriers which we have constructed

around ourselves — help us to love — through Jesus Christ our Lord.

mene